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Rev. Bill Pederson
Biblical Text: Matthew 25: 14-30
The main theme of Jesus’s Parable of the Talents goes something like this: You can take a risk or not. If you choose not to risk, you will lose. If you choose to take a risk, you may lose, BUT you can win. Jesus’s point is that you have to take risks in order to win.
Now let’s be careful how we unpack this theme. Jesus is not a certified financial planner or investment banker. Though Jesus uses marketplace imagery to further his main point in the Parable of the Talents, the parable is not about commerce and finance – it is about faithful Christian discipleship when it comes to living and spreading the gospel.
The theme “taking risks in order to win” is a common theme in our lives. Perhaps you saw this week New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s piece entitled “Brain-dead bailout want fix this flat.” The flat is the U.S. auto industry and its executives and unions and lobbyist whom Friedman has been preaching for years are bankrupt when it comes to innovation and creativity and embracing the next generation of fuel efficient, green energy consuming vehicles. Friedman argued in his column that Washington would be out of its mind if it hands Detroit auto makers a $25 billion blank check without expecting from the domestic auto industry risk, the winning risk of creativity and innovation and deep change. And this is Jesus’s point exactly when it comes to Christian discipleship – we cannot spread the gospel unless we are willing to take creative and innovative risks.
It would not have been unusual in first century Palestine for wealthy landowners to be absent from their estates, for weeks, even months and sometimes years at a time, leaving trusted slaves to care for the estate and its assets. As we enter the Parable of the Talents today we find a very wealthy aristocratic landowner going on a journey and leaving three of his slaves in charge of his estate and assets. Such an absence was a great opportunity for slaves to prove their worth and fidelity to their master by maintaining the estate and furthering the assets. When the landowner returned, the faithful slaves might receive a promotion of responsibilities within the household, or perhaps, even, their freedom.
Here we find a key to the interpretation of this parable. An authoritative figure is absent, he is away, his return is certain but not imminent. Naturally the household would be speculating as to when the master would return and what would be the master’s expectation of the household in his absence. Clearly the gospel writer Matthew has placed Jesus’s Parable of the Talents at a place in the narrative flow of his gospel where the whole issue at stake is Jesus’s absence – in this case, the resurrected Jesus who is physically absent from the church but has promised to return. What does Jesus’s physical absence but promised return mean for the church? Matthew says it means faithfulness, prepardness, and the willingness to risk the church’s resources to spread the gospel.
Back to the parable, I cannot help but find myself focused on the third slave. In a world where being first is everything and being second is acceptable, third is okay, but really just okay. And the landowner certainly does nothing to enhance the standing of the third slave. Jesus says the master gave to each slave “according to his ability.” The first slave is given five talents, the second slave is given two talents, and the third slave is given one talent.
Jesus says that the first and second slaves take their entrusted funds and go out and “trade with them,” the modern equivalent of investing in the stock market. You can bet the first slave is a smooth operator. I picture the first slave as a very shrewd yet risky investor, a man of steel willing to balance huge risk against huge gain. The first slave got right out there and invested in hedge funds, BEFORE THE CRASH, and before even he knew it, the first slave has taken five talents and turned them into five more.
The second slave is a little more prudent and a bit more careful than the first, though willing to take risk for gain. Hedge funds were out of the question for the second slave – too risky. So, he studied the stock market a little more carefully and while taking his time to study, the market tanked, precipitously, but this shrewd investor still had his cash and he began to look for opportunity and promise even in the valley of the shadow of death which led him to speculate that in an economic downturn shoppers will be looking for bargains and thus retail discounters like Wal Mart and Family Dollar might be good risks to take. He buys the stocks. The result, before he knew it, he had taken his master’s two talents and turned them into two more – even in a hibernating bear market.
Ah, the third slave, the slave with not five, not two, but with one talent entrusted to him by the master – he takes the one talent and buries that talent in the ground. Now under the present circumstances, such a move is not a bad one. After all, the third slave has no stomach for the ups and downs of the stock market turmoil. The third slave is completely risk adverse. He takes absolutely no risks, even to the point of not putting the money in a bank. After all, we might hear the third slave surmising, banks are failing right and left, there is hardly any interest to be earned in money markets, why risk a run on the banks or robbery of the vault? If I bury the master’s money, at least I have it when he returns.
Now I don’t know about you, but I like the third slave. Maybe it’s because I like the underdog, and the one-talent slave is the underdog in this story. Somehow we knew from the beginning of the parable we just knew that the one-talent, third slave was doomed for failure in this parable. But why? I like this one-talent, third slave. He is not the smooth operator we all love to hate. He is not the careful, prudent overachiever who makes few if any mistakes. The one-talent, third slave, strikes me as a regular guy – a guy you can count on. He is not unscrupulous nor untrustworthy. He is not profligate nor unbridled. He would never be susceptible to fraud or scandal or embezzlement or ruin. He’s a straight up, dependable, one-talent, third slave kind of guy.
Unfortunately, he is damned by Jesus in this parable. That’s right, damned. Make no mistake about it, the parable ends on a nasty note. It’s bad enough that the returned master calls the one-talent, third slave “wicked and lazy.” But then it goes from bad to worse as the master pronounces an eternal benediction on the one-talent, third slave: “As for the worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Here is a painfully vivid reminder to the church that faithful discipleship carries eternal significance. It matters what we do, now. It matters who we are, now. It matters how we conduct ourselves, now. It matters now, immensely, because according to Jesus it matters then – when Jesus returns and we are summoned forward to settle accounts.
If there is any grace at all in this harsh parable, any good news at all, it is that the master gave at least one talent to the third slave. The grace in this parable, as I see it, is that the master was willing to give at least one talent to the third slave. In other words the master recognized that the third slave was not capable of the first slave’s five talents, nor the second slave’s two talents. But, the master saw some potential in the third slave and the master was willing to entrust the third slave with at least a little something.
This means that the third slave had the least to lose and the most to gain – that is the grace in this parable, the master saw to it that the third slave had the least to lose and the most to gain. And yet, the one-talent third slave buried that grace. He sat on it. In fear of the master and concern for his skin, the one-talent third slave took the offered grace and opted for security with no risk. The result was disastrous.
The New Testament is certain that Christians are gifted by God. The gifts vary, but all Christians by virtue of our baptisms in Christ are gifted by God for discipleship and mission in the world. From Romans we hear of the gifts of prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, compassionate serving (Romans 12:6-8); from 1 Corinthians we hear of the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, healing, working of miracles, discernment of spirits and tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-11); from Ephesians we hear of the gifts of being apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11-12); in Galatians we hear that the fruit of the Spirit’s gift is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22). None of these lists of God’s gifts to believers is meant to be exhaustive, simply indicative, that God gives gifts to those baptized in Christ for the purpose of faithful discipleship and spreading the gospel.
Jesus’s Parable of the Talents reminds us that the gifts are given by God to be used, to be spread around, to be circulated and risked, boldly, for the sake of Jesus Christ. As one commentator has noted, “…what God has given us – our selves, our lives, our faith, our abilities, our gifts, our possessions – is given in order to be spent and put into circulation. Our lives are to be expended in God’s service, becoming thereby the source of further blessings for others and for ourselves.” (Richard Bauckham in The Lectionary Commentary, The Third Readings: The Gospels, page 149)
Security and survival are not what Christ calls us to as disciples. Even one-talent, third slaves have a chance – if they will just risk grace.
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