Matthew 25:14-30
There was smirking around the room, a little bit, when we read this story to each other on Wednesday morning at bible study. We didn’t want to admit it, but really, what an awkward year to read the parable of the talents as holy purpose, and the word of the Lord! We read it anyway. When we finished, Chuck Hannemann said
well, I recently bought half a talent of Ford Motor Company, and I would have done much better to have buried it in the ground.
Another member of the group commented in a tentative voice maybe this parable is a little misleading. To which Henrietta Jones, a saint who came of age during the great tribulation of the Depression, supporting herself with a full time job that paid in a week less than we spend for a large latte and a muffin, replied succinctly, I’ll say.
Talents were a type of money used in Palestine. They were worth several thousand dollars.
Though the parable doesn’t precisely
begin like this, years of tradition and the others stories that surround
this parable of the talents lead us to begin reading the story by the
supplying the words the kingdom of heaven is like….
And once we have done that, everything else that follows is plain as the
nose on our face, and at the same time, deeply disturbing. The kingdom
of heaven is like….a Master who leaves his resources spread out among
the slaves who must, for their survival, do his bidding, and then disappears, leaving his people behind. Just like here, in the creation that so often seems like God has left it behind, there are some of us who have more than others, and who, with what we have been given, produce abundance. And there are others, less obviously blessed, who have a reasonable living, and keep it that way….people who respond,
as my father used to when I was small and worried about where we fit
on the continuum of rich and poor, and whether destitution was around
the corner for us, as it seemed to be for others, we do okay.
And finally, there’s that other guy. The one who has little enough to start with, who is afraid to risk anything, who lives on the margin and daily expects disaster because that is what he has received before, the one whom we, for our own peace of mind and for consistency in our world view, are relieved to consign to the outer darkness of the streets and shelters and impoverished corners of the globe, where
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We are secretly relieved that the Master, regarding the person with one talent, says out loud what we all suspected: that he was worthless all along, deserves what he gets, and therefore, is no concern of ours, whether here or in God’s coming reign.
It’s a hard world, and a harder parable.
What, exactly, is a parable?
Is it a religious bedtime story, meant to scare or to charm God’s children into restful sleep? Does it describe the world we live in, or the world God wants for us? In literary terms, there are two kinds of ways stories teach us about the world and our
place in it: myths, and parables.
Myths can be defined as stories that sustain or explain or create a way of understanding the world. The myth of George Washington and the cherry tree sustains a world view in which honesty is rewarded and exhibited as a characteristic of leadership.
The mythic poem of creation in the first chapter of Genesis describes not a scientific view of the world’s beginning, but a religious one: the world is a creation of God’s devising, in which God’s holy attention shapes meaning out of chaos and God’s loving regard provides beauty, relationship, and sufficiency for human survival. The Greek myth of Pandora’s box explains how inordinate curiosity and an ability to practice restraint unleashes woes in the world for which all of us must pay. Myths support the world view we have, or ought to have. And sometimes, myths support the status quo.
Jesus didn’t teach with myths, though most of us do. Jesus taught in parables. So what is a parable?
A parable is the opposite of a myth: it does not support a world view, rather, it sabotages it. It does not reassure us that the way we see the world is right and good, it undercuts our belief system, it threatens the status quo. Jesus taught in parables; and parables are dangerous and slippery things. When we hear a parable, we never quite put our finger on what we were supposed to learn. We feel uneasy, threatened. We’re not supposed to go away satisfied when we are taught in parables, we’re supposed to be confused.
So, the story of the talents is indeed a parable. Not revealing the way we are supposed to see the world, but revealing rather the way the world already is, and asking us, really? Really, is this the way you think God wants the world
to be?
Who is the Master then? God?
Of course it doesn’t say so, though the Church whose theology was shaped by Western Values, and a western economic system rooted in capitalism,
has insisted, and convinced most of us, that this is so. This theology believes in myths, not parables. We believe in the person who has more talents than we do, and who can get from what he has, an embarrassment of riches. We know, because we have seen it again and again, that the person who has little to begin with, probably couldn’t do much with more, even if we made sure she had it….and in fact, if
we give her a handout, she’ll just waste it anyway and be no better off than she was. Look a little deeper, and think about how such fabulous rates of return were secured in first century Palestine.
It’s not like they had a stock market….or a global economy, or a system of innovation that could transform one man’s imagined widget into the technology that everyone had to have to get along. Things were simpler then. The people who made that kind of money in the stories of the bible were… extortioners, the “whore
of Babylon,” Rome, anyone who had the cruelty of nature and the near
absolute power to make excessive demands and enforce compliance with
threat of grievous bodily harm or death….what our story this morning
refers to as the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. Is this a description of God.?
Of Jesus’ kingdom of heaven? No way, this is not God we worship—but
it is a description of our own economy, the economy we have secretly
hoped and believed would become our own proving ground for worth and
wealth.
This master is the one we already have, investing in what we already have been seduced into valuing, even above our communal well being, even above our own, and the well being of our commonwealth. The master valued money, and money is what he got. Those of us who have five talents, and those of us with
two, thank God that we are not like the one who follows, and we value
what we have, serving the master who rewards our diligence and good
fortune with more good fortune. The man with one talent lived by fear,
and a life and death of suffering and terror is what he got, because
it is all he deserved.
Jesus tells this story as a parable
because the people whom he has chosen to reflect his path have deep
reservations about such a world, and though sometimes they are compelled
to live by the economy of this world, they do not want
to offer their ultimate allegiance to a master so small, so selfish,
and so ordinary. They want a kindom that operates by generosity,
mercy, and justice. They want a God who will help them get there.
What do we value, and how would we
go about getting it?
What if, we let the parable do its
work of undercutting and challenging, and imagine this story as it should
have been written, as Jesus meant for us to do?
What if…. he had been a master who
valued people? What would it have looked like for him to
say to the “good” servants — look, I’m giving you a lot because
I know you’re creative, imaginative, and fair. I know
you’ll work with each other and find a community and a way to make
this money really count for something. I know you won’t be satisfied
merely to put money in the bank while the world goes to hell.
And to the one, the one who was afraid,
and defensive, and whose life experience had not led him to believe
in himself or in the “Master” —I’m giving you one,
and access to the fifteen and to your colleagues. You don’t
think you can do much, I know… you’ve never had the chance to develop
your talent in this way. But I believe you can do great
things. Your two colleagues, who have more experience at this
work, think you have great potential. I trust the three
of you to find a way and to do amazing things together.
I can hardly wait to see what this team will do and how much you’re
going to surprise yourself with your capability.
For whom do you work harder? For whom do you try to exceed your best? The boss who doesn’t believe you can do much of anything? Or the friend or coworker
who thinks you are gifted and capable? Who gives you a project
you don’t quite believe you can manage, or a chance you don’t think
you’ve earned, or an opportunity you’ve always dreamed of but thought
you’d have to wait years to get the chance to try? What kind of God
do you worship, and how is that God asking you to change the way we
see the world?
Is there any way that the God in whom we trust (and that was a warning on our money put there by our ancestors, that reeks with irony today)
— is there any way we can believe that the God we trust has already given me, and you, and everyone else, exactly
the talents we need for the commonwealth that is creation?
Do we believe that God has given us enough, or is the only economy we trust, “More?”
That’s where Jesus’ bedtime story is leaving us tucked in today, with our goodnight kiss and our nightlight to keep the monsters away. The world we know is not the world God wants us to imagine. The people we have been — whether wildly successful or frightened, conservative, and alone, are not stick figures, incapable of change or of joining forces to create a commonwealth that will change each other’s circumstances and the end of the story for all of us. The God we serve is not the cruel master of slaves, but rather, the freeing Lover of our souls, calling us to a kindom that is just on the other side of our best dreams. Sleep well, God whispers, and sweet dreams, tomorrow is a big day.