Sunday, November 13, 2011
Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA
Ordinary 33A
Text: Matthew 25:14-30
You know how when you watch a movie, not in the theaters, but either on television or in some recorded format, before the actual start of the movie, a black screen comes up, and, in white letters so that it is clearly legible, a message is projected about the movie you are about to watch? If you are watching it on television, it usually has something to say about the movie having been formatted to fit the screen, and edited to run in the allotted time, or edited for content. If you are watching it on tape or DVD, the message has more to say about the rest of the material – the bonus features – that is on the DVD or the tape – about the views and opinions expressed in the interviews and commentaries not necessarily being those of the production and distribution companies, but that they are solely those of the participants – the actors and the production staff as individuals? Those are known as disclaimers. In a legal sense, they are messages letting you know in advance something specific about what is coming next.
I open the message this morning with a disclaimer, and it is this: The Parable of the Talents has, as long as I can remember, been at best unsettling to me. At worst, it has caused me to view my call to obedience and faithful service in a terribly negative light – I mean, seriously, who wants to be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? But is that enough of a reason to ENGAGE in that obedience and faithful service, out of FEAR of being cast into the outer darkness?
If we’ve spent any amount of time in our upbringing listening to hellfire and brimstone sermons, we immediately associate that phrase – weeping and gnashing of teeth – with judgment – and almost universally with the judgment of God. It would seem to tie in with the preceding passages that start back in chapter 24, as I mentioned last week.
These two chapters are considered by some scholars to be the last of five great discourses that Jesus gives in Matthew’s Gospel. If you remember, Matthew was specifically focused on highlighting Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament – to identify him as what the Hebrew people were looking for – the Messiah. It is a commonly held understanding that Matthew laid out these five discourses as a counterbalance to the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures; in some ways, a mirror in which the fulfillment of those ancient writings could be viewed.
To my best recollection, I have only heard this passage preached on in one interpretation: as an exhortation to Jesus' disciples to use their God-given gifts in the service of God, and to take risks for the sake of the Kingdom of God. These gifts have been seen to include personal abilities ("talents" in the everyday sense), as well as personal wealth. Failure to use one's gifts, the parable suggests, will result in judgment.
I can understand that. That is a clear interpretation and a sensible one as well, taking into account the surrounding parables, and the general tone of the discourse.
So let’s go with that interpretation first, and then look at a couple of other, less well-known ones.
It is fairly straightforward. The man is Jesus, and he has gone away and left his servants, that is, US, to tend to his business. He gives each of us varying amounts of things to tend to, and we are responsible for seeing that his business grows, that his wealth increases, that his kingdom grows, in other words. The first two servants take what he gives them and do amazing things with it. They invest it, they end up multiplying it like a well-connected Wall Street insider, who knows who to call, knows what to buy and when, knows the ins and outs of high finance, because we are talking about high finance here, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars being entrusted to the servants.
The interpretation works out something like this: the talents being discussed, rather than being a sum of money, are to be understood in OUR normal, run-of-the-mill use of the word: our skills, our abilities, our gifts. You have a knack for putting words together with music, you have a natural ability to be a welcoming presence to anyone who walks in the door, you are able to put people at ease in an otherwise tense situation, you can defuse an argument and bring the opposite sides to an agreement that is more than acceptable to those who would otherwise end up as enemies.
The message of the parable is this: use those talents, those skills and gifts for the furthering of the Kingdom of God. Yes, each of them involves risking something – personal time, energy, an investment of effort, of emotional capital that COULD potentially result in a negative outcome – there is a real possibility that the people you are investing IN will reject what you offer, will reject the welcome, will reject the proffered solution to the conflict, will not be moved by the song you wrote, and remain untouched by the Spirit. That risk comes with the territory. But that doesn’t keep you from risking anyway.
Or at least it didn’t keep the first two servants from taking the risk with what they’d been given.
That third servant though, he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the treasure he’d been given. Sure, it was a smaller amount than the other two had received, but it was still not an inconsiderable amount.
The lesson is: no matter what you’ve been given, no matter how insignificant it appears to you, God will still use it if you invest it – if you risk it for the sake of the Kingdom.
The consequences are too terrible to be ignored. See what happened to the servant who was given just the one talent and then turned around and HID it rather than RISKED it?
So this first interpretation lands on this conclusion: we’re reminded of it in our congregational benediction every time we share it: Risk something BIG for something GOOD, and that “good” thing is nothing less than the Kingdom of God.
And it is an especially timely understanding of the passage, since most churches across the country dedicate some portion of the fall of each year as Stewardship Emphasis time. It ties in with the question of how well we are stewarding what God has given us – both financially and in terms of time and skills and abilities and gifts – and makes for fairly easy dovetails into reviewing what the upcoming budget year looks like, what we hope to accomplish, and how. There is good evidence to suggest that this understanding of the parable of the talents is, in fact, the reason we THINK of gifts and skills and abilities AS talents – the meaning of the word was changed through this interpretation of THIS parable.
So that is the first and most common interpretation.
The second is not really that different from the first. The only shift is in whom the parable is focused on. It’s still about wasting what you’ve been entrusted with, and the end result is still the same, but the subjects of criticism are not the listeners. This is not a warning to each individual hearing the story to do what they can with what God has given them for the sake of the Kingdom, rather it is a criticism of the Religious Leaders of the time for squandering that with which they had been entrusted by God – namely, the word of God and the care of God’s people – and simply maintained their place in society. They’d lost sight of the commission that God included in the covenant with the people of Israel to be a blessing to the nations of the world; basically, to spread the just and righteous precepts of God across the world. They had opted instead to bury their treasure and keep it to themselves, not spread it and double it’s size while he was away.
There is plenty of room to understand the parable in this sense. After all, Jesus spent a lot of time calling a spade a spade when talking – to not say arguing – with the religious leadership that he kept running afoul of.
Before I get into the third interpretation, I need to review something with you. There are different types of parables found in the Gospels. Some of them are Kingdom Parables – usually they are easy to identify, because they start out with the words “The Kingdom of God (or Heaven) is like …”. These parables are usually presented as an image of what the Reign of God will look like, or will speak to God’s action that brings that reign into more of a reality through Jesus’ followers. There are also Wisdom Parables, which are teachings that are just that – words of wisdom – knowledge to be retained for future reference. Here is the interpretation of the parable of the talents as a wisdom parable, and I am freely borrowing from David Ewart, a minister of the United Church of Canada, who says,
How might this parable have sounded to the peasants who were Jesus' followers?
First, they would not see themselves as any of the characters in the story. They certainly were not "masters," nor were they even the slaves of a master.
Second, they would have been well aware that it was against the law of Moses to charge interest. And, they would remember that when the twelve tribes entered the Promised Land, the "promise" was that every family would receive and hold a share of that land - FOREVER. Therefore, those who had gotten rich, did so by stealing land that rightly belonged to others. This understanding of the rich is shown in Verse 26:
I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter.
In other words, the rich get rich by stealing what belongs to others.
Third, for the followers of Jesus, the slave who buried the talent was doing the honourable thing. He was not using the wealth to steal even more. He was protecting his master's wealth in the safest way possible.
Fourth, notice that this parable does NOT begin, "the Kingdom of heaven is like..." In fact, the opening two words in Verse 14 are variously translated:
"For it is as if" (New Revised Standard Version)
"Again, it will be like" (New International Version)
"It's also like" (The Message)
But what exactly is the "it" that the following parable is like? Does the "it" refer to the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. referring to the subject in Verse 1); or does the "it" refer to the delay of the coming of the Kingdom (i.e., referring to the subject in Verse 13)?
In Luke 19, this story is told following the story of Zacchaeus - a rich man who changes his evil ways! Surely this is a sign that the Kingdom is eminently at hand? Verse 11 then gives this introduction to the parable:
(Jesus) went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the Kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
I take it that Luke intends us to hear this parable NOT as a teaching about the Kingdom, but as a caution against thinking that the Kingdom was coming immediately.
And so, similarly, the "it" in Matthew 25:14 refers to the subject in the previous verse 13:
Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour (when the Kingdom of Heaven will arrive).
The parable of the talents then is NOT intended to be an introductory lesson on how the Kingdom of Heaven is like modern Western capitalism - extolling using wealth to make even more wealth.
As George Hermanson puts it in his sermon, A Kingdom of Surprises, the servant who buries the talents acts as a whistle-blower. He takes a very public action that draws attention to the injustice that has come to be taken as "business as usual."
Burying the talents is a classic piece of non-violent resistance: the servant does nothing to harm anyone, but he makes a public act of refusing to participate in the unjust system of acquiring wealth for the few by impoverishing the many.
The master's wrath is the response of an elite who has been publicly shamed by one of lower status.
It is highly ironic - to say the least - that the master's words to the servant have been taken by the church to be Jesus' words, and have been used to continue to support the very practices that the parable condemns.
David Ewart believes this is NOT a "Kingdom" parable; he believes it is a “Wisdom” parable teaching us about the perils and difficulties of the ways of the world until the Kingdom comes. It warns us to continue to expect the rich to steal from the poor; and for the followers of Jesus to expect to be punished by the rich for behaving honorably. (And in passing says ‘So much for all the stewardship sermons I have preached using this text!’)
So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
A Sunday morning message is not supposed to be a lecture on biblical interpretation. It is supposed to be an encounter with the living word of God. I would invite you to reflect on each of these interpretations of this passage and consider which brings it most to life – which resonates with you the most at this time in your life and in this place in your life, because that is the way the living word works. That is how the Spirit prompts and moves and nudges us into a deeper knowledge of who Christ is and of how God wants to be in relationship with us.
Whether you resonate with a given interpretation or not – you may even have an understanding that is unique to you – know that God is working through your understanding to bring to full fruition God’s Kingdom in your life. It is that specific, that individual, even as God is working to make the Kingdom a reality on the macro level – across the world.
And so we move into the response time of the service of worship. Whether you identified with the servant entrusted with five talents, two talents, one talent, or as none of the above; whether you took this parable to be a word of admonition for the religious leaders around you – including me – or whether it clicked for you as a warning about how things might continue to be until the Kingdom of God is truly and completely established here on earth as it is in heaven, I invite you to live out that reality in your life this afternoon, this evening, this week.
Let’s pray.
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