Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
1 Thessalonians 5:1-10
Matthew 25:14-15,19-29
Psalm 90 or 90:1-8,12
Church pastors and preachers everywhere rejoice when the parable of the talents comes around every year just in time for the stewardship campaign. Here's a great story about how you should give to the church or be cast out into the outer darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, right? Wahoo! Well, if you were expecting me to say that, I'm afraid you're in for a shock. (Nah, you didn't really expect me to say the usual thing, did you? You know me better than that!)
Sure enough, I think the moralizing interpretation of this story is horse hockey, as Colonel Potter used to say on M*A*S*H*. Let's just look at it for a minute, shall we? In the first place, the master in the story admits, right up front, that he is what the third slave says he is, a harsh man, one who "reaps where he did not sow, and gathers where he did not scatter"-in other words, who takes what does not belong to him, snatches food from the mouths of the people who worked hard to raise it. Does that sound to you like God? God-to whom everything belongs, who never takes, but always gives, and gives, and gives, "seed to the sower, and bread to the eater," as the prophet Isaiah says (55:10)? No, thanks, I'm not taking the master in this parable as representing God.
And as for the busy and diligent slaves who bring back five talents and two talents for the five and two they were given-let me ask you, if you have money invested, are you getting 100 per cent interest? What would you really have to do to double your money in a short time? Could you do it honestly? (We know something about dot-com companies and corporate scandals, and we know how the very rich get rich, and what happens to other people when they do.) Is Jesus telling us to be like Enron executives? I don't think so.
As a matter of fact, in the first century when this story was told there was essentially no way to get rich honestly, none at all. No wonder Jesus went around saying: "Woe to you who are rich!" The Jewish Law forbade taking interest, and required people to lend to the poor, asking nothing in return but the money they had lent in the first place. It was not a capitalist society. The only real source of wealth was land, on which you could raise crops and sell them. But to get rich you had to have a lot of land, and to work a lot of land you had to have slaves (because profit margins weren't very big), and to get lots of land and slaves in the first place you had to have political clout, and to get political clout you had to bribe public officials . . . well, you can see where this is going. "Good rich person" was sort of a first-century oxymoron-an expression like "square circle" in which the two parts contradict each other. And you can't say much for these two slaves who squeeze the poor in order to make themselves look good to their grasping master, either.
The fact is, there are no role models for us in this story at all. Even the third slave, although one writer has called him a "whistle-blower" who showed up the other slaves, is not someone we'd want to imitate. If he had really wanted to make the right point, he shouldn't have just buried the money he was given. He should have lent it, at no interest, to some poor person. Then when the master asked for it, he could have said: "As the Law requires, I lent your money to a poor person, and here you have it back again, the same amount." That would have left the master with egg on his face, because if he made a fuss, he would show that he didn't obey or respect the Law of God. But instead, this slave just did nothing, and that's why he is condemned by the story.
Because doing nothing is not an option. I have to tell you, it looks like the best choice an awful lot of the time: after Paul and Sheila's death, and the election, and with the war clouds gathering, there's nothing I'd like better than to get into bed, turn on the TV-but not to the news, please!-and just drift off into some fantasy world. The real one is too hard to take. But uh oh, too late: I said "yes" to being a deacon, and eventually a priest, in the church. I took the talent in trust, you might say. And when you all agreed to be a Total Ministry congregation, you took the talent in trust, too. We didn't acquire the world's riches, and our business is not to double our money. It's to double the particular treasure God has entrusted to us, the riches of God's mercy and care for the world. We can't bury them, or ourselves; we have to invest, invest our very lives, so that people can come "without money, without price" to the banquet of God's reign.
Because this parable is part of a whole series about the urgency of the Christian life, about living always with our faces toward the end of all things-coming soon, coming not so soon, who can know? We need to be ready. We need to keep our talent, our soul's capital, liquid, loose, ready to spend at any moment-not buried and "safe." Sure, this can be about giving-time, talent, treasure-but it's more about the "why" of giving: not to look good in the eyes of someone who is not God, no way God, but to make sure that everyone has oil in their lamps, everyone has a wedding garment, everyone is ready to meet the Lord who is coming. We need to invest ourselves in God's future, which is rushing at us, sweeping us along with it.
Even when it comes to time, talent, and treasure, we need to see them differently in light of the reign of God. What if we measured our social policies, economic and political institutions not only by whether they maximize wealth, but also-and even more-by whether they tend to produce loving and caring human beings, ethical and ecological consciousness, and a capacity to respond to the universe with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. What if that were the bottom line when the master comes to ask about how the talents entrusted to us have been invested? Would our society be able to hand over the return this Master expects? Would even our churches be able to do it?
The other readings talk about the day of the Lord that is coming, a day of wrath and terror-for those who aren't watching for it, who think they can protect themselves by piling up wealth, the kind of wealth the master and his loyal slaves in the story love. Not for us: we know what kind of capital we ought to be accumulating, the wages of love and justice and mercy, and we know that, as Paul tells us, "God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us." Let us, then, live as children of the light; let's invest our talents recklessly. Because remember what comes next in the story? Tune in next week and you will hear: "I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink . . . ." Those are the investments God desires, and the payoff is not "enter into the joy of your master," namely a master of slaves who takes and takes, but "inherit the kingdom," the kingdom of the God who is Father and Mother, who in our brother Jesus is truly one of us, the God who gives and gives and gives. Amen.