A Sermon Preached at University Baptist Church, Columbus, Ohio
13 November 2011
I. Introduction
- First things first – I know what you are thinking – you are thinking, well, here is another stewardship sermon about using our gifts for God, about not burying our “talents” – you have heard heaven only knows how many sermons on this text in your lives, and I have preached some, in which that was the message – I do not want you to be too surprised, but I want you to forget all those sermons – as I studied and prayed about this text this week, I came to the conclusion that that interpretation misses the boat altogether – I have been wrong to preach the text as I have done
- Part of the problem is, as I have said many times during this year when the parables have come into our readings, that this is not an allegory – some parables work as allegories, but this one does not – but we want it to work that way – we want it so dearly that we ignore the difficult parts of the story – we want it, so we twist the rest of the story into the one we want it to be
- You know the allegorical elements – the master is God, who invests some servants with varying amounts of talents, which is an amount of money, and which we usually understand as both financial wealth and as natural abilities – two of the servants invest the money, or use their talents, wisely and when the master returns they present him with more than they had at the start – the third servant, usually thought of as foolish or unwise, knows that the master is a hard man and buries his money/ability in the ground rather than risking losing it – the fact that the master admits he is a hard man ought to be reason enough for us to realize that he does not represent God, but that is one of the bits we skip over – so the master berates the foolish servant and takes away the money/ability that he had and gives it to another of the servants, and then the master throws the worthless servant into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth
- You may remember another parable that I preached on that ended with the same saying, the parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22. 1-14) – that was another parable whose usual interpretation is as allegory and I tried to reinterpret it in a way that makes sense – I ended up by saying that the peasant who came to the wedding banquet without the proper attire and who got thrown out into the outer darkness actually represents Jesus’ usual audience – the one who is thrown out is in reality the one who is faithful to God, one of the ones with whom Jesus always allies himself in the gospels – in fact, if was want that parable to be allegory, then maybe the peasant represents Jesus, whose coming is so upsetting to the principalities and powers of the world
- In any case, I believe that the usual interpretation of today’s text misses the point once again, and we do well to put it out of our minds
- Another part of the problem is the numbering of the verses in the English versions of the Bible – you must remember that when the first writers wrote down the texts, they did not include chapters and verses – they just wrote the stories – the chapters and verses came much later, and, believe me, there is nothing inspired about them – too many times they break apart texts that should be together – this is one of those cases
- So, if you can, try to forget what you have heard this text say before today and try to hear it as if for the first time – after we are done, if you want to think of it in the way to which you are used, I will not stop you – but for the next few minutes, let us follow a different path
II. Reinterpreting the Parable
- Look at the story again – there is a man – he is wealthy and he is hard – he reaps where he does not sow, he gathers where he does not scatter seed – in short, he is little better than a thief – but he is a rich thief, for all that – he is going away on a journey and entrusts some of his property to his servants, according to the servants’ abilities to handle the property – to me, this says he looks at the servants in terms of their business acumen – to one the master gives five talents, a large sum of money – no one knows precisely how much a talent was worth in Jesus day – usually a talent is a unit of mass – an exact understanding of the value of a talent is not necessary to understand the story – five talents is a fabulous amount of money – to another servant the master gives two talents, again, a significant amount – to a third servant, he gives one talent, still no small thing – the two servants who are good people of business, they invest the money and double it, so that when the master returns he is pleased and rewards the two servants with increased responsibility in the master’s business
- The third servant remembers that the master is a hard man, a fact the master does not deny, and buries the large sum of money in his care, so that when the master returns, the servant has not lost any of it – it is all still there just as the master had left it – this third servant is not a good business person – he did not invest the money – he did not lend it out at interest – he did nothing with it at all, so the master takes the money away from him and throws him out of the household into the outer darkness
- This is not a pretty picture – this is not a story of grace and love – it is a story of the way the world is – the world is about profit, about getting ahead, about reaping where we do not sow and gathering where we do not scatter seed – Jesus is telling his disciples that this is the way of the world – but why does Jesus tell such a mean story at all?
III. The Faithful Servant
- As we search for a new understanding of the story, let us look first at the setting – it is another in a series of stories that Jesus uses to speak of the eschaton, of the end time – what does Jesus say about the end time here? – he says that for some, everything will be business as usual – there will be money to be made, and the people who can make money will make money – they do not have to be nice people – they have only to be willing to do what it takes to make money – as he is wont to do, the master in the story once again reaps where he has not sown – he did nothing to earn the money the servants made for him – in fact, we do not know that the servants did anything to earn it – it seems quite likely to me that in some way usury is involved in their making money – and God’s instruction specifically forbids usury among God’s people – it seems to me that it is likely that they were unfaithful to the covenant God made with God’s people
- In contrast to the two “good” servants stands the “wicked and lazy” servant, the “worthless” servant – this servant does nothing to advance the master’s wealth – this is the one the master singles out for particularly drastic punishment – but I think that this is the one Jesus wants to hold up to his followers as an example not of foolishness and worthlessness, but as an exemplar of faithfulness
- The two servants do exactly what their hard master expects of them – they act in completely conventional ways and reap completely conventional rewards – they make their own way in the world, even given the awful limitations of their status as servants – we might argue that the third servant essentially also does what the master expects – in the story, Jesus says that the servants received according to their abilities – the master did not expect much from the third servant, so why is he so angry that he acts unreasonably? – perhaps the master hoped that the servant would rise to the occasion, that he would grow beyond himself and join the master in reaping where he does not sow
- The servant, however, does not transcend himself, at least not as the master had hoped – he does not participate in business-as-usual – he stands alone against the prevailing tide of business – even with all his fear, he opposes the power over him, he opposes empire, and in his opposition he embodies faith in God – he goes out into the outer darkness of the world, but he goes with God
- This is what sometimes happens to followers of Jesus Messiah – they stand against the world, not with violence or anger, but with faith in the call and grace of God – the third servant is not worthless – the servant is a human being loved of God, and his stand is the stand of God’s faithful in the end time – some of the questions we have to face today is these: are we willing to stand with Jesus Messiah against the principalities and powers of the world? – are we willing to look for the movement of God on behalf of the poor and oppressed? – are we willing to be faithful servants of Jesus Messiah even if it means losing status and station in the eyes of the world?
IV. Conclusion
- There it is, the story of the faithful servant – I realize it may be a stretch for some of us, but I think looking at the text in a new way is worth the effort
- Go out into the world as faithful servants – go and be the people of God, the people of the Vision – stand with the good news – and know this: wherever we go and whatever we do, God stands with us in love, grace, mercy, and compassion
- Go, therefore, good and faithful servants, and enter into the joy of your true master
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Tags: Matthew 25.14-30
