November
19, 2017
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
William G. Carter
"For it is as if a man, going on a journey,
summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave
five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his
ability. Then he went away."
I should probably admit from the outset that
I'm not sure what to make of this parable. There is a lot about this parable
that troubles me, and I’m not sure what troubles me most.
As a man departs on a long journey, he entrusts
his property to three people. If we’ve have ever taken a long trip, we
understand this. Some snowbirds here will soon flutter down to warmer climates.
They will hand off the house keys to somebody they trust and give instructions:
“Make sure the driveway gets plowed and the pipes don’t burst.” It’s their
property. They want to return to something intact, just as they left it.
What they don’t want is for the caretaker to
rent out the property while they are gone, or put an addition on the house, or
generally make money on their property while they are gone. So it troubles me
that the Absentee Owner in the parable turns the caretakers loose to do
whatever they want.
What’s more, the man in the parable must have
been very, very rich. He needed three caretakers to preside over his property.
Imagine how much he must have owned! So he does something that, on the face of
it, seems patently unfair: he divides his property in three uneven parcels
among three people of vastly differing abilities. That troubles me.
I’m the oldest of four children, and my mom has
always said, “Oldest doesn’t count. You’re all equal.” So every Christmas to
this day, equal number of presents, equal amount spent. She reinforced the
equality by saying, “One of you can cut the Thanksgiving pie, but you’re the
last one to select the piece.” So with surgical skill, I would cut that pie precisely
to ensure that my siblings didn’t get one crumb more than me. After all, we
were equal.
But not so in this Bible story. One guy gets
his piece, the next one gets twice that share, the third gets five times that
share. It doesn’t matter if they were loved equally; there was an inequality in
abilities. I know that’s probably true, and the story is about stewarding the
man’s resources, but that troubles me.
I’ll tell you something else that troubles me:
it’s all about the money. A “talent” was not a skill, but a huge sum of money. In
biblical times, it was about twenty times the average income. So fire up the
calculators. According to the old numbers of the 2010 census, the median
household income in our town was $65,000. Multiply that by twenty, and you’re
talking 1.3 million dollars for the one-talent peasant. I think he had to dig a
really big hole.
So we’re talking about sums of money that were more
than the three “servants” would have ever seen in their lifetimes. I think I
can understand why the third guy hid the funds. The money wasn’t his, for one
thing, and he didn’t want it to be stolen. And he didn’t trust himself to have
the money lying around, where he might be tempted to borrow a little, or use a
little, or even spend it on himself. He wanted to be faithful, so it troubles
me that he is condemned.
And that’s not all that troubles me. The owner
of the property was very, very rich. Scandalously rich! One-percent rich! And
he gets even richer. He praises those who double his money and then takes it
back from them. As for the hapless, one-talent man who plays it safe, the boss
takes his money back from him too. He’s sitting on a lot of wealth, and he has
just gotten a lot wealthier.
That fact is not lost on those who know the land
management practices of Jesus’ time. There weren’t a lot of absentee landlords
in first century Palestine, but there were a few, and no doubt some of the peasant could tell stories of their own. The third man’s retort tell the truth: the Absent Boss reaps
where he did not sow, he gathered produce where he did not plant the seed. At
the end of the tale, he is indeed revealed to be a harsh overlord.
As one Bible scholar notes, “The third servant is a whistle-blower who has unmasked the ‘joy of the master’ for what it is – the profits of exploitation squandered in wasteful excess.”[1] As we would expect, the whistle-blower is the one who gets punished, cast into the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As one Bible scholar notes, “The third servant is a whistle-blower who has unmasked the ‘joy of the master’ for what it is – the profits of exploitation squandered in wasteful excess.”[1] As we would expect, the whistle-blower is the one who gets punished, cast into the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is this what the kingdom of heaven is like? I
don’t think so.
For one thing, this is a parable. It's a story that compares itself to the kingdom. It's not the kingdom itself. And there's no simple one-to-one correlation, either. The story doesn't mention "God"; it describes a rich landowner. We are left to step into the parable, look around for an insight, and then come back, somehow wiser.
For one thing, this is a parable. It's a story that compares itself to the kingdom. It's not the kingdom itself. And there's no simple one-to-one correlation, either. The story doesn't mention "God"; it describes a rich landowner. We are left to step into the parable, look around for an insight, and then come back, somehow wiser.
Usually this tale is told at stewardship time,
since the lectionary reading always lands around November. The preacher is
tempted to reduce this to a small, moralistic lesson in giving: don’t be afraid
to try, be good stewards of your ability, take some risks, never say my little
contribution won’t matter, people may not be equal in talent but they can
surely be equal in effort, and especially, increase the Master’s money. All of
that is helpful – but it’s too small for the kingdom.
No, it seems Jesus wants us to see something
else, something deeper. Certainly God’s kingdom is not about exploitation,
about taking advantage of other people for your own personal gain. I’d like to
think that those fat cats who plunder others are the ones who will one day weep
and gnash their teeth. There are a lot of Bible passages that suggest as much,
not least of which is the prophet Zephaniah, who made an appearance this
morning: “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the
day of the Lord’s wrath.” (1:18) God’s kingdom is not about “reaping where you
did not sow.”
Some would say it’s more about reaping what we do
sow. The apostle Paul wrote that message to the Galatians: “If you sow to your
own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the
Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.”[2]
OK, then, what are the best practices for
sowing and reaping the eternal life of the Spirit? We have some clues.
Servant A and Servant B take an active
responsibility in managing their Master’s resources, while Servant C plays it
safe. O church of God, what a terrible and withering thing it is to pull back
and play it safe! I can tell you about a lot of churches that drive down the
road in neutral, never risking a thing, never ruffling the Empire’s feathers,
never trying anything new, always ready to hit the brakes at the slightest bump
in the road … while riding in neutral.
Can I confess something I do around here when
nobody is looking? I exert Editorial Privilege in our print publications. And
whenever one of our leaders submits an event notice that begins, “As we do
every year, we will have our Annual Blah Blah Blah,” I strike the whole first
part of it, because it smacks of “same, same, same.” Ho hum, boring, no life
left. And when I can, I press gently to ask, “How can we bring fresh energy to
the important things we do every year?” I would ask you to hold me accountable
to the same matter. No playing it safe, no coasting in neutral.
I think it also needs to be said that God does
love us all equally, but God equips us with differing abilities. I have a
family member who recently retired from a very responsible job in a major
corporation. She was given a brilliant mind and a decisive spirit. Then her
Presbyterian church selected her to serve on the Deacons (“That’s where most of
our women serve,” the kindly recruiter said.)
And when she showed up at her first meeting,
they spent well over an hour arguing about who should receive the leftover
flowers that nobody picked up after Sunday worship. She called me to unload for
a while, and asked, “Are all church people like that?” I said, “Uh, no…they
were probably wanting to fill an empty slot on the ballot.”
She said, “If they took me seriously, they
would have asked me to do something that I’m capable of doing.” Good point. The
kingdom of heaven is full of people who are able to do different things.
And there’s something else in this parable:
those who are capable are given more to do. Did you notice that? The man who
entrusts his riches comes back. He hears the reports on what the three servants
have done in his absence. Two of them doubled the riches, one of them did
nothing. The two that doubled are rewarded, and the one who hid his share is
cursed and cast out.
But take note: when the first two enter into
“the joy of their Master,” they are given even more to do: “You have been
trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.” It’s
kind of comical: the Master entrusted them with roughly thirteen million
dollars and two and a half million dollars, and refers to the sums as “few
things.” In the joy of their Master, they are given exponentially more to do.
It’s the old adage, “If you want to get something done, give it to a busy
person,” taken to the ten-thousandth power.
Yet it’s more than that – they enter “the joy”
while their third companion knows only fear. That’s the gulf that separates
those who belong to the Kingdom and those who belong to the outer darkness: the
gulf between joy and fear. The joy is expressed in action, in responsibility,
in fresh thinking, in taking risks.
By contrast, “wickedness” is equated with
“laziness.” And in the end, the lazy and wicked servant is ultimately described
as “worthless.” That is, he who was valued enough to be entrusted with a
lifetime of wages now has no value to the Master. He had so much promise, but in
the end his own shiftlessness has condemned him. He squandered an enormous
opportunity.
As someone notes, “In almost every other
parable in the Gospel, pride of some sort is attacked. This parable is unique
in attacking humility. The special peril for the one-talented person is
thinking one-talented people don’t matter much.” And if you think this, you are
“able to build an effective barrier between oneself and work.”[3]
So I hear this parable inviting us to keep at
it, to keep living out the Gospel while we wait for the Master to return. We
can’t compare ourselves to others in the same work. We must not disqualify
ourselves because we don’t have the ability or resources of someone else. It
would be lazy, even downright wicked, to stop serving those in need, loving the
unlovable, or working for the healing of the broken and the broken-hearted.
According to Matthew’s book, this Gospel
treasure is entrusted to us over and over again. The invitation is to get on
with it. To live out of the grace, mercy, and justice of Christ. To regard the invisible
riches entrusted to us as riches. To make a difference in the world with what
we have received. That is the invitation.
And the invitation comes with a warning: if we
don’t risk living out the Gospel, we risk losing out on it all.
When it comes to the Gospel, use it or lose it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment