Pentecost 24 A: Believing and Seeing
Dear Partner in Preaching,
I will say at the outset that I don’t think I have much new to say about this parable that falls near the end of the church year and near the close of Matthew’s record of our Lord’s earthly ministry, though I did hear it in slightly a new way relative to these last few weeks. So here we go….
While often lifted up as a good stewardship text – whether of money, time, or (most predictably) talents – this parable, I believe, has been read and preached in way that seems more fitting to one of Aesop’s fables than one of Jesus’ kingdom parables. So rather than offer the “moral to the story” – use/invest your talents/wealth… or else! – I’d suggest being open to the reversal of expectations that Jesus’ parables usually invite: no matter what you may think, God believes in you, trusts you with incredible blessings, invites you into God’s own joy!
If we imagine that the short stories Jesus tells reveal something essential about the kingdom of God and invite us to practice kingdom-life here and now, then rather than focus on the final judgment leveled by the landowner, we might instead attend to the inability of the third servant, in sharp contrast to the first two, to receive grace and blessing and the crippling fear this servant has toward the landowner. Here are a few textual hints that point me in this direction:
1) The landowner entrusts each servant with an extraordinary sum of money. In today’s dollars, a single talent would approach a value of $1.5 million! One talent, five, or ten, that’s an incredible degree of trust.
2) After placing these extraordinary sums in the hands of his servants, the master goes on a “journey” – presumably making communication, let alone accountability, challenging – and does not come back for “a long time,” giving his servants tremendous leeway and a great deal of time to handle these sums.
3) Neither of the other two servants react to the landowners’ trust negatively. In fact, they are empowered to go out and “trade,” taking risks with the confidence of their master.
4) The third servant gives no evidence of the fraud – oops, sorry, I mean the harshness of the master – he charges, but rather just says “I knew….”)
5) The master neither confirms nor denies the servant’s assessment, but there is a subtle note of surprise, or perhaps annoyance, in his response: “You knew, did you?….”
The sticking point of this interpretation is… what do we do with the judgment at the end of the story? I’ve suggested before that perhaps this is less a new pronouncement and instead an affirmation, even confirmation, of the “outer darkness” of debilitating fear in which the servant is already living. Matthew tends to accentuate the eschatological element of judgment in his telling of Jesus’ parables, which invites some confidence that the pronouncements of “to those who have, more is given,” etc., and “cast him out” are not as extreme, at least to Matthew’s ears, as they seem to us.
We are quite familiar with the saying, “Seeing is believing,” but in this parable we’re invited, I think, to imagine that the reverse is even more true: believing is seeing. At this particular time, amid a surging pandemic, it might be worth inviting people to ask how they view God? And to reaffirm that God still trusts us, believes in us, and invites us into God’s own joy. Moreover, and wading through the aftermath of a polarized election, we might also suggest they ask themselves how they are viewing those in and beyond their congregation that voted differently than they have?
Note that God’s gracious trust and joy are gifts to all three of these servants. There is no mention in this parable of particular religious affiliation or observance. This is just an extraordinarily trusting and generous landowner and three, by contrast, ordinary servants. They are all treated the same. Just so, God loves us and accepts us for who we are, regardless of political or ideological or religious or ethnic identities. It’s not that these various elements of our identities don’t matter, but simply that no matter how important they are descriptively, they are not definitive. What is definitive is the identity conveyed upon us through grace by faith as a beloved child of God.
Do we believe that? What happens to us and our day to day lives when we do, or when we don’t? And why is it so hard to believe it in the first place? What are the daily forces and challenges that make it hard for us to accept that we are accepted and believe that God believes in us? Given all this, perhaps we can then remind each other once more – can you really hear it too often?! – that God loves us, accepts us, believes in us, trusts us, and invites us into joy that we, like the first two servants, might go out to live with courage, compassion, and confidence.
Like I said, Dear Partner, nothing new :), but I do hear and appreciate this parable anew and afresh given our present context. Blessings on your proclamation now and always. The office you occupy, the responsibilities you shoulder, and the words you offer all matter. And… God has entrusted all of this to you for good reason!
Yours in Christ,
David
A talent is apparently about 16 years’ wages for a labourer. If your $1.5 million is correct, your labourer is making $93,750 a year. If that’s right, why am I working as a pastor?
I love the idea of taking this story away from the “moral lesson” interpretation. Rather, moving the focus to where we might fit into the story ourselves. Sounds like a fresh approach. That’s what I needed.