Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 13, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So. Another parable of Jesus. Jesus taught in parables, which can be really annoying of him. Don’t you sometimes wish that he’d just come out and tell us directly what he means? Why do we have to dig meaning out of obscure parables? And why do those parables so often have things in them that so puzzle or even shock us? Well, whatever the reason, that’s what Jesus did. He told parables, and we have no choice but to try to figure them out.

Today we have the parable of the talents. A talent here isn’t an ability, it is a unit of money. A very large unit of money, like over $400,000 worth of money. In the parable a master gave talents to three of his slaves—think servants if the word slave makes you uncomfortable. It certainly does me, but that’s the word our translation uses. And here’s the shocking thing about this parable for me—the master is furious at the slave who kept his one talent safe and returned it to the master whole. The master says he should have invested the talent with “the bankers” so that it would have earned some interest. Today of course it would have earned a pittance in interest even if the bankers didn’t lose it all by putting it into some risky scheme in which they got rich while their investors lost everything, but I digress. In the parable the slave who was given one talent played it safe, and playing it safe earned him the wrath and the condemnation of his master.

And I at least want to ask why? What did the play-it-safe slave do wrong? He protected the money that belonged to his master, and he gave it all back. The master hadn’t told him to invest it. We all know that investment involves risk, and there was no FDIC in first century Galilee. Surely the slave reasonably believed that the master would punish him severely if he lost all or even a portion of the master’s money that had been entrusted to him in a failed investment. So what’s going on here?

A good place to start getting a handle on what’s going on here is the slave’s own explanation of why he hid the talent and didn’t invest it. He says to the 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….” This slave played it safe because he was afraid of a master he understood to be harsh and unjust. He acted fearfully in the face of a frightful master.

Then we move to the master’s response. He repeats what the slave has said to him: “You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?” He says that that’s why the slave should have invested his talent with the bankers. This is the part of the parable that has always bothered me. In Jesus’ parables involving masters and slaves or masters and workers the master usually represents God. So it sounds like this parable is saying that God is harsh, that God reaps and gathers unjustly, and that God condemns those who don’t do what God wants.

But is that what the parable actually says? Upon further review, as the football referees say (how about them Ducks!?), I don’t think that it is. The master says to the slave “you know, did you…” that I am harsh, etc. That statement by the master isn’t actually an admission by the master that what the slave said about him is correct. The master’s response focuses not on the master’s character but on the slave’s understanding. The slave thought that the master was harsh and unjust, and the slave was therefore afraid. The parable stresses the slave’s understanding, not the master’s actual character; and it is that understanding, not the master’s actual character, that gets him in trouble.

Of course, Jesus’ parables are never really about what they at first glance appear to be about. This one isn’t really about how slaves handle their masters’ money. If, as I think is true, the master in this parable represents God and the slaves represent us as God’s people, then this parable comes to be about what God calls us to do with the gifts God gives us in life, with our time, our talents, and yes, with our money. Those things, after all, aren’t really ours. They are assets that God has entrusted to us, just as the master in our parable entrusted his money to his slaves.

Understood that way this parable pretty clearly says that we are not to hide our gifts. Rather, we are to use them in the world to further the building the Kingdom of God on earth. That, parabolically speaking, is what the slaves entrusted with the five and with the two talents did; and the master, representing God, approves. The slave entrusted with one talent didn’t do that, and the master disapproves. That, by the way, is all that closing bit about the slave being thrown into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth is all about. It’s Matthew’s favorite phrase, and it appears only one other time in the Bible. It is Matthew’s metaphorical way of saying that God disapproves of or is unhappy about something or other.

Two of the master’s slaves did right with their talents, investing them and bringing a good return. One didn’t, and we know why not. He was afraid. He was afraid because he saw the master, the God figure in this parable, as frightful, as someone of whom we should all be afraid. There’s a real lesson in that part of the parable for us. A frightful God produces fearful people. When we see God as harsh, vengeful, and violent, as this one slave saw his master, we become fearful, we become afraid. When we are afraid we play it safe, we act timidly out of a fear of God, not boldly out of trust in God. I believe that what this parable is really saying to us is: Trust in God, and act boldly with what God has given you. Do not fear God and act timidly with what God has entrusted to you.

Yet so much of the time we act timidly out of fear. We do that as individuals, and we do it as the church. The Christian church has for so long taught a fearful God, a God just waiting to give us the eternal damnation that the church has said we all deserve. A God just waiting to damn us if we don’t do the right things or, even more so, don’t believe the right things about God and about Jesus. So Christians cower inside the church walls, saying the things the church tells them they have to say to be saved from God’s wrath. The church turns inward, burying its talents behind the church walls. The church’s message to the world becomes “you all need to come in here and cower in fear with us so you don’t spend eternity in hell.”

Yet in the parable of the talents what God condemns is precisely such fear and such fearful behavior, behavior rooted in an image of a frightful God. The parable tells us that God want us to take our talents into the world and to use them for building up God’s kingdom. The parable says that if we do that the reward will be great. It doesn’t directly say how the master would have responded if the investments the two slaves had made failed, but since the master approves of the investing we can (unlike the fearful slave) assume, I think, that he accepted the risk as well and wouldn’t have condemned a slave for making a reasonable investment that just didn’t turn out. He condemns not for risking our talents but precisely for not risking them.

So what are we going to do with our talents? Hide them inside the church or take them out into the world? Act timidly out of fear or boldly out of trust in God? What would taking our talents boldly out into the world look like? I’m not sure exactly what it would look like. Robin Meyers, whose latest book we are reading in our Sunday morning group, thinks it would look like the church taking a stand for God’s justice in the world and becoming a center of nonviolent resistance to the world’s violent ways. I think he’s right, and I am sure that engaging in a prayerful process of discernment and taking our talents into the world is what God call us to do. Do we dare do it? Do we dare not? Amen.