It was during the Sunday school hour discussion following the sermon by a representative of our denomination’s mutual aid organization, a sermon based on “the parable of the talents” in Matthew 25:14-30 and rife with typical “be generous and prudently risky stewards of the wealth God has given you and God will reward you” sagacity, that parishioner Betty spoke up.
“I have always found this parable troubling,” she said.
She recounted the traditional interpretation: Invest wisely and the master will reward you. Or, in other words, use your talents or love or whatever a lot (for the glory of God), and you’ll get back a lot (to the glory of God, of course)–or else the master (uh, God) will come find you out and send you straight to one heck of a place while any scraps you ever did have of love or talents or whatever get sent straight to the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woodses and Floyd Landises (err, not him) of the world.
A reading that has made more sense to her, she said, is one suggesting that Jesus was telling the story as a veiled statement that he understood and would identify for his audience their economic plight. Perhaps they were living in poverty–and perhaps their little had been taken from them by those who already had plenty. This parable, then, is a commentary about the economic usury machine that kept Jesus’ listeners from getting ahead because they were poor to start with.
Usually I’ve heard interpreters of the passage place themselves into the story as the servants, the slaves, with God as the rich master. But as another person in the discussion noted, maybe those of us who are wealthy are instead the rich masters, cheating the poor out of their little as we perpetuate an oppressive economic system that rewards wealth with more wealth and labels the system’s noncontributors as “wicked” and “lazy.”
I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guest speaker just then, since he’d said over and over in the sermon that God doesn’t want us to be fearful but essentially to make sound investments (in the mutual aid group’s services, of course, which include insurances and IRAs and other money-making-with-money products). According to his thinking, good stewardship equals sound investing equals nobly-gained profits equals faithful Christian living–and yet these congregants appeared to me very comfortable naming investment in the same sentences as cheating.
The preceding story in this parable’s Biblical chapteral context, also traditionally read as developing themes of “be ready for the end is near” (particularly in light of Matthew’s previous chapter) and indeed of “be good stewards,” can also be interpreted as a statement about economic gracelessness.
The wise virgins really were wise and ready–but where’s the sharing of lanterns, if not oil? Were lanterns one-user setups? Even so, if they were, the wise virgins probably could have shared their oil, too, since they say “there may not be enough for both us and you,” which is very different from, “Oh, gee, I’m pretty darn dry.” And besides, they’re just going to go inside to a banquet, where there are probably other lights anyway. Too bad that the “foolish” virgins couldn’t have gone out and bought oil stockpiling pottery ahead of time and instead had to head to the corner gas station for a more expensive yet more immediately affordable small replenishment, thereby missing the chance to see to the bridegroom’s every need.
The following parable, of the Son of Man separating the sheep and goats, builds on this commentary about Jesus’ world’s view of economic “stewardship” and displays his own upside-down-kingdom philosophy: true sharers of their wealth–those generous people who barely even recognize their own uncalculated, selfless actions that apparently lacked any premeditation of “wise stewardship” and holy profiteering–will be the ones to inherit eternal life.