Sermon: Nov 13 – A parable for our times Rev. Jane McDougle

Judges 4:1-7; Ps 123; 1Thess 5:1-11; Matt 25:14-30

Bankers, trading, investing, and turning a profit?  Now, here’s a parable for our times!  Farming and agricultural practices in first century Palestine may stretch us a bit, but this one? No problem!

It’s pretty straight forward, right? The master, before he leaves on a trip, gives five talents to one slave, two to second, and one to the third: to each according to his ability.   The first two go straight off to trade them and make a profit; the third buries his talent in the ground. On the master’s return, the first two proudly display the doubling of their talents and are rewarded; the third offers the unimproved talent back and is thrown into the outer darkness, complete with frightening sound effects.  Seems fair and reasonable: one should after all work a little harder; invest one’s treasure somewhere useful.  I would be remiss, this stewardship season, not mention the possibility of investing in one’s beloved church, for instance!

You might not be surprised to hear that changing cash into gold bars which can then be hidden somewhere safely has become a popular idea in recent years!  And should one not feel up to digging a hole in the back yard, it is actually quite easy to buy a bed with a built in safety box.   My favorite that I came across was a cartoon of a bed stuffed with bank notes, with the caption reading: “quilt edged securities”!

However, the thought of being thrown into the fiery furnace is enough to make one pause, so let’s pause to consider God’s teaching for us today.  Jesus never gives us parables to reassure us of our right actions and beliefs.  If understanding a parable seems straightforward, we’ve almost certainly got it wrong.

Our collect for today instructs us clearly:  our duty is to engage actively with our scripture.  So, here goes!

Let’s get some context around our parable.  It is found very similarly in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  In Matthew, it is a parable in a series of examples that all consider how we should behave in words and actions as we wait for the arrival of the Son of Man, that apocalyptic figure whose coming will presage the end of the age.

In the light of that positioning, this parable would seem to be suggesting that we shouldn’t just sit around waiting for the end times:  if time is short, all the more urgency to be responsible stewards of our own, and other people’s treasure.  This is no time to be sitting around being frightened and doing nothing.

Now let’s see if we can get some social context for this investment tale.  Let’s see if we can fill the story out a bit.  And for this I’m indebted to a book John Oda-Burns recommended by William Herzog. Our parable is set within a great household of an urban elite, an oikos, which along with the polis, or city, and the imperium or kingdom, were the framework of society.   The great households managed the activities of the peasant farmers; the cities operated as the centers of an interconnected web of large households, being controlled by the dominant families; and the kingdom was a collection of these cities held together by historical, economic and religious common ground.

The organizing unit, as you see, is the great household.  The master of which needed a substantial staff to manage his affairs.  The master’s job was to see and be seen, and so he would often be away from home, doing just that.   There was much room and incentive for members of his staff to prove their competency, and rise in rank and privilege.

Of course, while there are similarities between our time and theirs, there are also important differences.  In American society, being financially successful is seen to be a good thing.  If push came to shove, don’t most of us want to be comfortable?  Don’t most of us enjoy a bit of luxury every now and then.  And there’s always that lingering Calvinist narrative of our country’s history that suggests that those who flourish in the world are being rewarded by God for their righteous living, whereas those who struggle are undeserving of God’s favor.

In first century Palestine, that was not how things were seen.  It was believed that there was only so much ‘good’ to go around, and if someone was seen to be making a profit, it was clearly at someone else’s expense and pain, and was therefore a bad thing.

Masters of large households were all too aware of this theory of ‘limited good’, even though they may not have called it that, which was why they used their trusted retainers to get their hands and reputations dirty by acting as the master’s financial managers – as in our parable.

And how did they do it?  We know our master was gone for a ‘long time’: what were our investors/traders up to?  They had begun with an extremely large amount of capital (one talent being made up of 6000 denari, with a denari being the daily compensation for a day laborer).  Herzog tells us that the standard investment practice of the bankers of the day was to lend farmers the money with which to buy seed to sow in their fields.  Ideally, seed would be stored from one year’s harvest to sow for the next, but conditions didn’t always allow for that, and the farmers were routinely overly taxed by both the Temple and the Romans.   The money lent for seed was at the cost of a very high interest rate, anything from 60% to 200%, and if the farmer defaulted, the land could be seized by the lender, making the master and his household even richer.

So, at this point, one has to start questioning why Jesus, Palestinian peasant for all Palestinian peasants, should be using the successful and manifestly unfair lending practices of the elite ruling class to teach his peasant listeners about the right way to behave as they wait for the appearance of the Son of Man?

And if that isn’t enough to make you start wondering if you haven’t wandered into quicksand, let me add another confusing thread to this story.  There was another version of this parable, found in the apocryphal Gospel of the Nazoreans and discussed by the third century historian and biblical scholar Eusebius.  In this version of the story, the first servant squandered his talents on harlots and flute girls and is cast into prison by the returning master; the second multiplied his gain and, wait for it, is merely rebuked; and the third, who hid the talent, is accepted with joy!

From a peasant’s point of view, the servant who refused to participate in standard practices of robbing the poor by burying the talent, is clearly the hero of the story.  Although it has been argued that it would have been even better if instead of burying the talent, the servant had come up with a just scheme, perhaps of micro-lending where the farmers could have benefitted as well

I mentioned the book written by William Herzog before, let me now give you its title:  “Parables as Subversive Speech”.  And having gone that far, you can also have the title of the chapter about our parable of the talents:  ‘The Vulnerability of the Whistle Blower’.  Herzog suggests that the reason why the third servant is thrown into the outer darkness is because he exposes the heartless and cruel master and the unjustness of the system.

So now where are you in your understanding of what Jesus was trying to teach in this parable?  I hope that that your curiosity is aroused, and that you will keep thinking about it!  You might have thought it was an easy one:  I don’t think it is.  I’ve done quite a lot of the legwork for you: now it’s your turn.  See what happens if you keep thinking about it!  We can carry on talking about it in coffee hour.

You can take it home with you!I leave you with some lines written by the Swiss philosopher, Henri-Frederic Amiel in 1885:  in the face of the end times, whenever and however they happen, and whatever they are, they seem appropriate:

Life is short and we do not have much time

to gladden the hearts of those who are

traveling the dark way with us.

Oh, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

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