So this parable we just heard teaches
us that hard work brings success. We are meant to work, and people
who don't work deserve what they get. So this parable teaches us
that God always gives us what we need when he asks us to do
something. So this parable teaches us that we are not all equal;
some have more talents, wisdom, knowledge, money – you name it –
than others. That's just the way it is in God's world. So this
parable teaches us that we work for the master, not for our own
selfish purposes. So this parable shows that we will all be held
accountable. But let me tell you a story.
There was this unscrupulous
businessman who was one of the richest people in the world. Much of
his wealth came from exploiting poor people, having an army of
lawyers to find all the tax loopholes, and raping the landscape. He
had several congressmen in his back pocket.
He had three accountants. One day he
gave one of them five million dollars, another two million, and the
third one million. And then he went on an extended business trip
combined with a vacation.
The first two imitated the
businessman; they played the stock market, bought property and fixed
it up and sold it again for twice the price, raised the rent on
apartment buildings they had purchased, forcing some of the tenants
out into the street – but you get the idea. They even hired their
own lawyers and accountants to manage and grow the money.
The third took his million dollars and
buried it in the ground. He didn't want anything to do with the kind
of activities that his colleagues were carrying out. He knew that
when you got rich, most of the time it meant someone else became
poorer; and besides, his Jewish religion told him that charging
interest was sinful, and that people who were well off had a
responsibility to lift up the poor, the wiodow, the orphan – not
deprive them of shelter and food.
When the businessman returned, the
first accountant said, “You know that five million dollars you gave
me? Well, here is five million more!” And the businessman said,
“Great! I knew I could count on you. I'm offering you a
partnership in my business. The second accountant did likewise and
he too was offered a partnership. But the third said “I know how
you make money. I can't be part of a system that allows that. Here
is your million dollars back.”
The businessman fumed and threatened
and finally fired the third accountant, telling him he would see to
it that he never worked as an accountant again. And he gave the
million dollars to the first servant, knowing that that was the best
shot at making even more money. And the third accountant eventually
managed to eke out a living as a day laborer.
When you read the parable of the
talents, your first reaction is that the master is Jesus. But he's
not merciful, he is a “hard man who reaps what he did not sew and
gathers grain from fields that he did not plant”. In fact, in
Jesus' day if you were not royalty the best way to become very
wealthy was to loan money to people at very high interest rates, and
then when they couldn't pay, you would foreclose on their land or
their homes. You might then offer a farmer a job as a tenant farmer
on the land he previously owned, adding insult to injury. And of
course it's hard imagining Jesus throwing his servant into outer
darkness. A second point. Most of the time we hear this parable and
think about talents we are born with and decide this is about people
wasting their God-given talents instead of putting them to good use.
But to Matthew and his audience, a talent was a huge sum of money.
We don't know quite how much, but if you google it, a million dollars
seems in the ball park. A common man could not expect to earn a
talent in twenty years of labor. Third, when Jesus tells his
stories, he often has us focus on the unexpected one – the Prodigal
son who returns to the Father; the Samaritan who stops and helps when
the priest and the levite don't; the publican who recognizes his
sinfulness as opposed to the Pharisee who revels in his
righteousness; the widow who won't stop bothering the unjust judge.
Here, although the first two servants are commended by their master,
we focus on the third.
So the master is not God and the
talents are ungodly sums of money, and the master made his fortune by
dishonest means, which would mean by abusing other people in some way
or another. The first two servants find worldly success by imitating
the master; but the third servant can't bring himself to participate
in that way of life and takes the consequences. And maybe Jesus is
telling his followers that in this world those who have little will
have even that taken away from them. Maybe the parable is given as a
kind of warning – if you refuse to participate in a system which
destroys lives and causes poverty and increasing inequality, there
will be unpleasant consequences.. But somewhere else Jesus said “What
would it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his
soul?”
Shadrach, Mesach and Abednigo chose to
opt out of the system even if it cost them their lives. Saint
Francis of Assisi spent his whole life choosing to turn his back on
the way his world worked. Countless martyrs chose to die rather than
compromise with unjust power.
Maybe this isn't a parable. Maybe
Jesus is telling of an event that really happened in order to make
his point. Maybe we need to ask ourselves whether we are
unconsciously participating in an unjust system and whether we can do
something about it.
