Too Small for Anything but Love

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Matthew 25:14-30

Ah, another tough parable, with one more to come next Sunday. This is the way the lectionary structures things, with the gospel texts during the final Sundays before Advent drawn from the time right before Jesus’ arrest. These are urgent texts, crisis texts, cautionary texts; parables told to the disciples by Jesus, as he prepares them for his impending death. That’s important context to keep in view.

It is also important to keep in view the point Rachel made last Sunday when she preached on the parable of the bridesmaids. While it is tempting to try to turn such parables into straight-up allegories in which all of the characters and images are meant to line up with very specific things or people, leaving the reader the job of cracking a hidden code, the parables of Jesus only very rarely function like that. Rather, parables like these ones from late in the Gospel according to Matthew are meant to startle, press, and awaken the listener or reader, precisely by awakening our imaginations.

So let me dig in here just a little bit. Jesus begins the parable with, “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” The first two—the more capable two—take what they have been entrusted with and go to work trading; in both cases they double the amount they’ve been given. And here pause for a minute and consider the reflections of the New Testament scholar Carla Works: “The master’s willingness to earn money at the expense of others challenges any allegorical interpretation of the parable that would directly correlate him with Jesus, who never acts in a manner to seek personal gain.” Or put differently in Frank Beare’s commentary, “As in several other parables, a person by no means admirable can serve as a point of comparison for the purposes of a lesson (the unjust judge, the dishonest steward).”

The master in the parable really earns the status as one who is not particularly admirable just a little deeper into the story, but we’ll get there in a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, his response to the first two slaves is, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” Well done my boy, you’ve really earned my trust here. What you’ve been dealing with thus far is a pittance compared to what you’ll soon be managing… welcome to the firm, son! “Trustworthy in a few things” is the phrase used in the text, but if this master thinks that two talents or five talents is small change, then he’s working at the level of a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet. A “talent” was a lot of money, roughly equivalent to fifteen years wages for a daily worker. Let’s play with that for a moment. Minimum wage here in Manitoba is currently $11.90 an hour. We’ll imagine someone working full-time for that amount, working 50 weeks a year and then receiving the 4% vacation pay to accommodate two weeks of unpaid vacation. That’s gross earnings of $24,752 per year, so a “talent” would be fifteen times that, for a total of $371,280. That means that the fellow who was entrusted with five talents was given $1,856,400 to work with… and that’s characterized as being “a few things”?

Then we come to the third slave, who’d opted to bury his one talent in the ground, which was apparently not an unknown way to conceal things of value in that world. Listen again to that portion of the story:

Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.

Brief pause. The Hebrew scriptures are very cautious about the taking of interest, and in fact forbid it when it meant you were benefitting at the expense of someone who was poor or vulnerable. Sure, go to the bankers, and just hope that they’ve not got any loans out to people who are crushed by the debt or just desperately trying to feed their families… not likely, I’m afraid. And does that even begin to square with Jesus own teaching? “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:41-42)

So again, we’re best to not see this master as somehow an allegorical image for Jesus, because it just doesn’t square. Oh, and it gets even more tense:

So 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 slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Set aside for a moment the matter of the outer darkness and the gnashing of teeth, the phrase that most stymies me is, “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.” How utterly different is this from Jesus’ teaching earlier in this same gospel: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” That’s a teaching that caps off the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, in which the labourers who worked all day were paid precisely the same amount as those who had worked just one hour: a day’s wage. When those full day workers grouse about it, the vineyard owner replies simply, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” That parable marks such a decisive halt to imagery of God as a divine bookkeeper, doling out rewards according to our hard and righteous work. No, that parable protests, God does not give a fig about such accounting, because God is wildly, prodigiously, madly and graciously generous.

“To those who have, more will be given… but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”? I dragged down six commentaries from my bookshelves and consulted four more online, and of those ten only two directly addressed this particular verse; one suggested Jesus was making a hard comment on the nature of human life—as in “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer”—the other saying that the line was probably a gloss added by Matthew himself, perhaps because Matthew didn’t quite understand the force of the parable! Neither are particularly helpful comments, I have to say, and maybe at some point I just have to shrug my shoulders and say I can’t quite wrap my head around it, and certainly not as a sort of proverb or maxim that can apply generally across all circumstances!

But here is what I do see, when I keep firmly in mind that this was told to the disciples as a story to wake them up as to what lay ahead. Put more prosaically, maybe the message is something like this: Fellas, listen up. You all have gifts and abilities; I’ve seen it over these past few years since I first called you. We’re coming closer and closer to a crisis, and the time is coming when you’re going to have to carry this good news and good work for me. There are a lot of lost people and hungry people and sick people who will need you. This is serious, guys, but I really believe you can do it if you put yourselves to it. Listen, Thaddeus, I know you’re not so sure that you quite “get it” the way that Peter, James and John do, but don’t mind that. And Matthew, you pay special attention here, because I think there’s a particular piece of work that you’ll need to do. Trust that I trust you, and will only ask of you what you’ve got the capacity to do and be. But you’ve got to put your all into it and do what you can, okay? It is going to be that important. Hey, let me tell you one of my stories, which might help you remember this all a little better.

Oh, and as he finishes up his story of the master, the slaves, and the talents, he gives them that final line about the darkness and gnashing of teeth, and here I’ll just offer you some words from N.T. Wright:

[We must] insist that the parable and others like it do not give a complete picture of the creator God, the maker and lover of the world, the God who sent Jesus as the personal expression of his love. Remember where this parable occurs. It comes near the end of the story which is about to reach its great climax; and that climax comes when the son of man ‘gives up his life as a ransom for many.’ When Jesus speaks of someone being thrown into the darkness outside, where people weep and grind their teeth, we must never forget that he was himself on the way into the darkness, where even he would sense himself abandoned by God.

And by going there, he took the first step toward kicking open the door to resurrection life; to the defeat of death and any ultimate claim it might have upon us. Trust that, and then consider this: are you taking what you have been entrusted with—however big, however small—and finding ways to put it to work? We’ve got medical people and front-line care givers in this congregation, who are setting aside their fears and anxieties to do all they can to enact the good news in the midst of a pandemic, but not all of us are entrusted with those abilities, that training, that calling. Yet each and every one watching this has a device, and that device is a point of contact to others. Even if you’re stuck at home, you can reach out to someone, share a conversation or an email, pray for them or with them. If you’ve got a pen, some paper, an envelope and a stamp, you can send someone a letter and let them know you’re thinking of them. In times such as this, talents both large and small are what is needed. For as we say in the closing blessing every Sunday, the world is too small for anything but love. Maybe more now than ever before.