Luke 19:11-27
As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’ When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, “Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.’ He said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.’ Then the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ He said to him, ‘And you, rule over five cities.’ Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.’ He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’
You likely recognize this parable as “the parable of the talents.” You may have heard it as the subject of a sermon, or read an article or blog post about it, or even heard it referenced in popular literature. But, trust me, it wasn’t this version of the parable, but instead the one that shows up in Matthew 25:14-20. Luke’s account, by comparison, is rarely referenced and doesn’t even appear in the lectionary and so is almost never preached.
There is some debate, in fact, about whether or not these two versions are even the same parable because of a number of different details in the story – a nobleman going to receive power rather than a landowner going away, ten servants instead of three, the third servant isn’t punished but rather kept from ruling, and the bloody ending to the story in Luke’s account. At the same time, Luke doesn’t offer a separate “parable of the talents,” and the response of the third slave is so similar in both versions that Luke and Matthew may very well have drawn from the same source. How, then, shall we make sense of these verses?
For what it’s worth, I tend to think a) that Luke and Matthew do indeed draw this scene and story from Jesus’ teaching from the same source, but b) that they do very different things with it. And that’s important to note. In Matthew’s far more familiar account, it is easier for us to construct a loose analogy between the absent landlord and God or, more accurately, the Son of Man who will come in due time. In this context, it is a parable about faithful waiting and how we should view God, particularly while we wait for Jesus’ return and the coming kingdom. (Along these lines, the third slave, in Matthew’s account, views God as harsh and therefore is afraid to invest while the other slaves, absent fear of God’s judgment, invest, work, and wait with confidence.)
If we read Luke’s version through the lens of our familiarity with Matthew, however, we end up very quickly with a quite problematic picture of Jesus going away to be invested with power and then returning not only to appoint his followers as leaders but also to slaughter those who opposed him. But here is where I suspect Luke had a very different agenda in mind.
The first clue comes in how Luke sets the stage for Jesus’ parable: “As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.” From this, it looks like the intent of the parable is to help people better understand the nature of God’s coming kingdom. Part of the issue is timing – some apparently believed the kingdom would be coming very soon, perhaps assuming that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to inaugurate the kingdom then and there.
But part of the issue may also be the very nature of the coming kingdom. Those who believed that Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem to usher in God’s kingdom likely assumed he would lay claim to his royal authority as Son of David and God’s Messiah by force. What other recourse would Jesus have? Herod wasn’t likely to surrender his claim to the Judean throne, and Caesar wasn’t likely to remove his Roman legions of his own free will. So obviously Jesus would have to fight, receiving his power from on high and vanquishing his enemies. Kind of like the ruler in the parable.
And yet that’s not what Jesus did at all. Rather, he went forward “like a lamb to the slaughter,” protesting the abuses of the Temple and empire and executed despite his innocence.
Which is precisely the point of this parable and, indeed, all of Jesus’ ministry to this point. The kingdom of God Jesus proclaims is different – we’ve seen that from the beginning of Jesus’ birth and ministry and right up to this passage. And the primary difference is that the kingdom Jesus proclaims is not based on power – at least power according to the world’s standards – but vulnerability. It is not based on judgment but on mercy. And it is not enforced by might but ushered in by love.
And as he draws so close to Jerusalem, Jesus wants his followers to understand that. And so he tells a story that actually rings quite close to a story many of his listeners would have been familiar with. After the death of Herod the Great, you see, there was a dispute between two of his sons about who would succeed him. Herod Archelaus eventually won the greater portion of the kingdom when he sailed to Caesar to plead his case. This is the same Archelaus who slaughtered a huge number of those Jews who opposed him (the first-century Jewish historian Josephus puts the number at 3000).
Given the similarity of these details and Jesus’ consistent message about God’s kingdom being not just another kingdom but an entirely different one, it seems likely that, in this parable, the nobleman is not a positive character but rather acts as a foil against which to see more clearly how different Jesus and his kingdom will be. Jesus, in other words, is not like Herod. Further, the two servants who so quickly reap such a huge return may have had to extort others to do so, and so while they are rewarded by this “king,” they serve as negative examples to Jesus’ followers who should be less interested in profit than they are in caring for the poor. Finally, it is the last slave who doesn’t misperceive God (as in Matthew’s account) but actually sees the nature of this ruler accurately and so protests by refusing to cooperate, understandably fearful of the outcome but nevertheless burying his sum in the ground rather than investing it for interest (which was against Jewish law).
We should also keep in mind that this parable follows immediately upon the heels of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus. In fact, Luke connects the two stories by introducing the parable by saying “as they were listening to this,” referencing Jesus’ pronouncement that Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham and that the Son of Man came to seek the lost. The contrast couldn’t be clearer – Zacchaues, though he works with the Romans, does so in order to give half of what he earns to the poor, whereas this ruler and his henchmen collaborate with Rome in order to enrich themselves and gather more power.
The choice, Jesus seems to say, is clear: there are two kingdoms available to us, and ultimately we will have to choose which one to give our allegiance.
Prayer: Dear God, encourage us always to take the side of the poor, to reach out to help those in need, and to resist oppression and injustice. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Post image: Herod Archelaus from Guillaume Rouillé‘s Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (16th century depiction).
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