November 15, 2020 – Matthew 25:14-30
Matthew 25:14-30
The Third Servant – Refusing to Play the Game
Lectionary 33A – November 15, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
A single talent was a massive amount of money.
It was the equivalent of about 75 pounds of gold – 75 pounds!
The third servant in the story would have had to have dug
a pretty big hole to put that amount of money in!
If it was in silver, then of course the hole would have had to have been even bigger.
It would have taken a labourer 15 to 20 years to earn this amount of money.
It is an outlandish sum.
And here’s the thing: when we read the story, we have to read “talent” to mean “money.”
It is unfortunate that in this story the translators almost universally translate the Greek word talanton with the English word “talent.”
The Greeks meant “money.”
We mean a gift or – usually – an inner quality or ability we possess.
Talanton did not mean that in Jesus’ day.
When Jesus talks about “talents” he’s not talking about your ability to twirl the baton or
go bar down – that interpretation of talanton didn’t emerge till the 13th century,
and obviously that is where the meaning of our English word comes from.
But Jesus is not talking about that:
he’s talking, rather, about money – vast, almost unimaginable amounts of money.
The possessor of 5 talents would be the equivalent of a multimillionaire in our day.
The story is well-known.
A very rich man gives his servants his money to look after while he goes away.
5 talents’ worth of money to one, 2 talents’ worth to another, and 1 to a third.
The one given 5 talents’ worth of money doubles the money and is commended by the master.
The one given 2 talents’ worth also doubles the money and is similarly commended.
However, the one given 1 talent does something different:
he refuses to play the game.
He goes, digs a hole – a big hole, obviously – and buries the money in the ground.
The master is furious and shows his true colours: true to the third servant’s description of him,
he treats the servant harshly and banishes him to the outer darkness where there is
weeping and gnashing of teeth – wherever that is. I don’t want to know.
Does this really sound like a parable of Jesus?
Well, we usually like to think that Jesus represents the “master” in the story,
but that just won’t work here.
The master is described as a person who
“reaps where he does not sow, and gathers where he does not scatter seed.”
In other words, a thief. A scoundrel. Maybe even a thug.
Here’s the thing: in the ancient world, most wealth was held in land.
Land produced food which is how you made your money.
More land equaled more wealth.
In the time in which Jesus lived, high taxes put on the people by the occupying Romans meant
many went into debt and ultimately were forced into selling their land.
And without their land, they were subject to poverty.
They might be forced to work with their hands, like, say, become a carpenter,
which was not necessarily an honourable profession – unless you were very skilled.
It generally just meant you were poor.
We can infer from this that Jesus likely came from a family that was forced to sell its land
due to debt and that Jesus was likely born into poverty.
There were those who preyed on people in this situation and
who therefore profited from others’ unfortunate circumstances.
This is pretty much the only way you could accumulate such a vast sum –
or, say, double your money in a relatively short time, like the first two servants did.
They had clearly learned well from their unscrupulous master.
The third servant, however, refused to play this game.
The third servant refused to participate in a system that
profited from those forced to go into debt.
And so, rather than entering into the “joy” of his master,
is relegated to joining those who weep and gnash their teeth in the joylessness of poverty.
Now who does Jesus sound like in the story?
As I say in the Devotion Moment this week, I have no problem with investing all your talents in
the mission and ministry of the church.
And I encourage you to do so regularly – your gifts, your abilities, your money.
I think that message is loud and clear in many other parts of the Bible.
It’s just that I don’t think that’s what this particular parable is about.
Wanting to understand the story only in the traditional way will distract us, perhaps,
from seeing what Jesus really wants us to take away from it.
I believe this parable is a sharp critique of those who were benefitting from the exploitation of
those below them in the socio-economic scale.
I believe that – as elsewhere – Jesus is criticizing those who show no concern for
the poor, who are, after all, their brothers and sisters.
I believe Jesus is criticizing an entire system of how wealth was accumulated and
his refusal to countenance it or participate in it.
I have mentioned many times that Jesus never has anything positive to say about money.
He doesn’t ever seem to carry any and refuses even to touch it.
He sees what greed does to people and the effect the greed of a few has on the lives of the many.
The accumulation of vast wealth in the parable he tells
cannot possibly be something commendable in his eyes.
What is commendable in Jesus’ eyes is whatever leads to love of neighbour – and
what is going on in the accumulation of wealth in the story clearly leads away from that.
The third servant goes to suffering and death – and so enters into the suffering and death
of all those who are also outside the economies of wealth.
The third servant’s actions means he suffers with the suffering.
If the concern is what to do when Jesus “goes away” – as he will shortly in real life –
then just keep reading.
For immediately after this story, Jesus tells another one,
in which he tells his disciples where they will be able to find him once he goes away –
and what they should be doing.
When they serve the suffering poor – when they feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and
give the thirsty something to drink – they will be serving him even if they can’t see him.
He actually doesn’t really go away – he is still here, in the suffering poor,
in victims of injustice and racism – as well as in the body of the church, of course.
That is how closely Jesus, the third servant, enters into the suffering of the suffering poor.
And immediately after Jesus tells that story, Jesus is arrested, tried, and condemned to death.
And buried in a hole, his grave – from which he will be raised to stand with all those who
endure hunger, and thirst and poverty.
We cannot love the harsh thug-like master in the story.
But we can love the third servant who criticizes the master,
refuses to participate in an exploitative system, and pays the price for it.
We can love Jesus, so like the third servant, and we can love Jesus best of all by
loving the vulnerable – where we will always find him.
Read this way, the parable does indeed lead to love of neighbour.
Read this way, this truly does sound like a parable of Jesus.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is all about announcing and inaugurating a new kind of kingdom,
a new reign in opposition to the Roman one and all it represents.
“Repent, turn around, have a new heart, change what you care about,” Jesus says at
the very beginning of his ministry in Matthew, “for the reign of God is at hand.”
For Jesus, that meant opposing any other reign where some suffer lack while others enjoy plenty.
There is certainly still evidence in our day of that kind of reign.
But there are signs, too, of the reign Jesus inaugurates.
And First Lutheran Church is one of those signs.
Our ministry prioritizes those whom Jesus loves, those whom Jesus is with,
the ones who share his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
I am so proud to be a member of this congregation,
through which God’s reign of love is breaking into the world.
Thank you for investing in this reign.
Thank you for investing in this story, one that we are writing together.
Thank you for joining the third servant and
refusing to accept that the way things are is the way they have to be.
Take heart and have hope – I know this is not the easiest of times to do, well, anything.
But it is a time to continue to focus on what we are called to do as a community,
and to find hope in that.
We are investing in the power of love against the powers of chaos and impoverishment.
We are investing in the power of community against the powers of isolation and loneliness.
We are all being reminded just now of just how devastating isolation can be –
at such a time it’s lovely to remember that our community endures,
that it continues the work of Jesus even in trying times,
and that it will be here on the other side.
In joy and in sorrow we are all connected by the love of God in Jesus.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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