Matthew 25:14 – 30
November 13, 2011
Fair warning: This sermon will not fall within the mainstream of interpretations of this passage (I know you are shocked that I would ever fall outside the mainstream). There are some common assumptions about this passage and what it means that I want to challenge, but I do so with great humility. I had some help from a couple of colleagues and some good historians, so I’m not completely alone here, but when I depart from such a large body of opinion without many companions, I figure you should know – and I should do so only with great caution.
Most people read this passage as an allegory where Jesus is the man who goes on the trip and then returns, because Jesus “left” when he died and they expected him to return at the second coming. The servants are the disciples – two of whom did what they were supposed to in Jesus’ absence and so are rewarded on judgment day, and one who didn’t, and so he is punished.
The talents are the gifts God has given us, and the moral is we should use these gifts to multiply God’s mission here on earth, and if we hide or hoard what God has given us, well, let’s just say God won’t bring candy and flowers. In fact, many, many preachers use this as a stewardship sermon, encouraging people to give as much as they can to the church, lest God’s work in the world be thwarted by our stinginess, and we be judged accordingly.
But, in the past week, I’ve had a growing dis-ease with that reading. My dis-ease centers on picturing Jesus as the rich man who goes on a trip. When we understand some things about households in Jesus’ day, the picture we get of this man is dramatically different from what we know of God in Jesus. And it’s not just that the rich man makes a judgment – throwing someone into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. To be sure, that makes me uneasy…and it doesn’t fit with what I know of God.
But, reading this allegorically, Jesus is imagined as a head of household in the ancient world, and that seems very odd to me…especially when you think about what kind of household. A “talent” was a specific amount of money. Scholars estimate it was worth somewhere around a million dollars in today’s terms. This means Jesus is compared to a wealthy millionaire in a world where millionaires were only millionaires if they exploited people below them.
When the Jewish people of Jesus’ time referred to “households”, they didn’t mean a peasant family of mom, dad and their three children. A “household” was the basic economic unit of society upon which the power of the city and the state was built. The leaders of a household may have been related by blood, but the purpose of a household centered on the control, management and earning of considerable money. No poor family would be perceived as a “household”; only the most wealthy and powerful would be.
Based on our understanding of households in Jesus’ day, we can fill in the passage a little bit. The head of the household goes away, and has to hand over management of the business while he’s gone. He summons three servants – which are better understood as managers than as house cleaners or butlers. Remember the household is a business, not just people living together in a home. These servants are a part of the economic system, deeply embedded in the dealings of the rich man. They are handling and making millions of dollars.
Jesus says the first two servants “invested” the master’s money and doubled his assets. The people listening to Jesus tell this story would have looked knowingly at each other; they understood well how that doubling occurred. It could occur only in one way – at the peasants’ expense. One scholar explains:
“The elites used their wealth to make loans to peasant farmers so that the farmers could plant crops. Interest rates were high; estimates range [from] 60 percent [to] perhaps as high as 200 percent for loans on crops. The purpose of making such loans… was to accept land as collateral so that the elites could foreclose on their loans in years when the crops could not cover the incurred debt.”
In other words, these two slaves likely doubled the master’s wealth not only by charging exorbitant interest on loans, but by foreclosing on farms and thus radically increasing the land owned by the rich man. They had done well. And they were rewarded well. But, the rich man and the servants are not sympathetic characters in the eyes of the masses – the 99% who were victims of the system.
Even if we want to argue the money is supposed to be metaphorical, we have to be mindful that this story would have evoked bitterness in the hearts of 1st century listeners toward the rich man and his two servants. They would not have been inclined to place Jesus in the roll of someone who, as the third servant puts it, “reaps where he doesn’t sow and gathers where he did not scatter,” or to put it simply, someone who exploits people’s labor and resources for his own gain.
My point is this might not be an allegory showing us what God’s realm will look like when Jesus comes again. Instead, it might be a description of the very reality in which they lived. Jesus might be reminding his listeners of the problem, not offering a solution.
A few years ago I was interviewed by the Presbyterian News Service for an article about our country’s use of torture. I said to the reporter, “Some people argue that we shouldn’t torture because torture is not effective, but we shouldn’t torture even if it is effective because it is always, unambiguously immoral – effective or not.” The article quoted me this way: “Rev. Kirsten Klepfer, Presbyterian pastor in Grinnell, Iowa, explains that we should never torture because torture is ineffective.” I was livid.
It’s true, they used my words, but it was obviously a misquote in the end because they took them completely out of context – specifically, leaving off the rest of a sentence. The rest of the sentence changed the meaning of the first part completely. Instead of it being my point, it sets up a contrast to my point. Likewise, I wonder if when we make this passage an allegory, we use Matthew’s words, but ultimately misquote him because we leave off the rest of the sentence – or in this case, the rest of the story.
This passage – the “parable” of the talents, as it is commonly called, is simply the description of how things are: like when I said many people say we shouldn’t torture because it’s ineffective. It’s the rest of the story that makes the difference. When we read the rest of the story, we see not only this first part in a new light and draw different conclusions, it becomes the contrast to what Jesus imagines as the alternative we should seek and live.
The rest of the story – the next parable in Matthew – has Jesus telling people that whatever we do to the least among us we do to him. He calls people out for not feeding him when he was hungry, welcoming him when he was a stranger, clothing him when he was naked. “When,” they asked, “did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked?” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “just as you did it to one of the least among you, you did it to me.” This casts a new light back on our passage as it becomes the alternative to the devastating, oppressing economic system of the day described in the story of the talents. Care for the poor, the hungry, the naked becomes the imperative – not economic success on the backs of those very people.
When we read this passage as a description of the reality of the day, we see the third servant in a whole new light. He’s the hero of this story. And he’s the hero because he had seen the evil both of what he was expected to do and of the enterprise in which he had been involved; he was converted; he was willing to stand with the exploited by confronting the rich man – by speaking truth to power.
And what did this whistle-blower receive for going over to the other side? The rich man
declares, “Take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless servant, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
What will be the result of exposure of the systems by those who become convinced of the evil that they are doing? The result will be that they will crush the protestor – even when he has been one of them. They will take away the wealth or power invested in him or her and distribute it to those who already have the most power. And they will take this now-worthless (to the system) person “and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
I don’t think Jesus is endorsing or embracing this economic system. That just doesn’t feel right. He is simply saying that this is the way the world is. The more the powerful have, the more they will acquire. And they will acquire more by taking it away from the powerless so that even the little that the poor may have will be taken away from them. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And anyone who threatens this system, who tries to speak truth to power, who tries to stand up and do the right thing, will be silenced.
Why does this all matter? Why do I go to such great lengths to figure out if this is an allegory or not? Well, here’s what I think: The traditional interpretation – based on allegory – too easily becomes individualistic – we think the parable is a message about what I should do with my life – with the gifts God has given me – lest I miss being a part of the realm of God when the judgment day comes. If instead it is a reminder for the people of the systemic realities of the day, the point being made is about systemic realities, not just individual ones. It’s a much more radical, and probably political, message. It’s a direct challenge to this system – an almost angry one. And Jesus’ strategy is to first bring to people’s awareness the problem – not let them forget what the least among them face every day – and then to offer an alternative.
We face systemic realities today. They are not the same as in Jesus’ day – and we can argue about whether things are better or worse. But, people all over the world – including here in downtown Grinnell – are camping out in parks to remind us of the pain people suffer at the hands of our economic systems today. The Occupy movement has been criticized for not having a clear message, when in reality I don’t think anyone misunderstands their main point: the system is broken, it’s hurtful, it needs to change. Today, the seven largest banks hold assets equal to 66% of GDP – a staggering concentration of economic power in a democracy. Twenty years ago that figure was only 18%.
The people who are bringing such things front and center might just be our parable of the talents today. As theologian Gary Dorrian puts it: “Occupy Wall Street set off the first protest movement that responds with anything like the moral outrage that is appropriate to the situation.” And in various ways, people are trying to silence them: either by minimizing the movement, discrediting them, or, even by cracking down violently.
The church can join with those who are describing reality – that is part of our job. But we have more to do. We have to tell – in fact live – the rest of the story. Describing reality is not enough. Speaking truth to power is not enough – though it is an important, and dangerous, start. The way the world changes is when we start to live outside the systems that oppress; when we start to act in ways contrary to market forces and individual self interest. It’s when we start to see those at the bottom of the economic ladder as Christ himself, and treat them accordingly.
We are being reminded that the wealth disparity in our world is an urgent, moral matter – and that we must have a solution. Reaching one is likely to require political courage – the kind we see in the 3rd servant. It requires those of us who are the “haves” to give up a system from which we mostly benefit in order to not just care for the “least among us,” but to build a whole new system that will serve all, not just a few. A whole new system: something like the realm of God Jesus and the gospel writers go to such lengths to describe for us. We must become the rest of the story. Amen.
