Sunday
Though Jesus’s Parable of the Talents is often invoked when churches ask congregants for their yearly pledges, thanks to Amy Frykholm (in today’s Journey to Jesus), Diana Butler Bass, and Debie Thomas, I’m now reading it in an entirely different way. The master in the story should not be seen as God, she argues, but rather as a greedy master who wants his underlings to make as much money for him as possible.
In the story, two servants invest the money given them, earning the master’s praise when he demands a percentage, while the third buries it. Bass says that the story should be titled, “The Story of the Courageous Whistleblower,” commending the third servant for telling the truth. In doing so, “he’s cast out. He lost everything,” to which Bass adds, “But Jesus loves outcasts and the poor. It is among them where the Kingdom can be found.”
Here’s enough of the story for you to see her point:
Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
As Thomas observes,
Jesus asks nothing of us that he has not done himself. Just days after telling this parable, he was “cast into the outer darkness” of crucifixion, torment, and death. Like the third slave, he was deemed “worthless” and expendable by the people who wielded power and influence in his day. Like the third slave’s costly talent, he was buried in a rock-hewn tomb.
Apparently, there is a good kind of “worthless” in the economy of God. May we find the courage to embody it.
Frykholm, meanwhile, recounts how her minister gave each of the members of his congregation $20 and instructed them to follow the example of the first two servants. After agonizing for weeks, she finally just anonymously returned the money to the church, the equivalent of burying rather than investing it. While the third servant is relatively powerless in the system, Frykholm says that “when he does have an opportunity to call it out, he uses that opportunity to tell the truth and to pay the price.”
She then applies a Richard Rohr observation to her mental tumult:
If something goes to you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it is the choice of God. (The Universal Christ)
The fact that grace was not flowing, Frykholm writes, should have been her first clue. It returned when she opted out of the exercise entirely. She concludes her argument with a George Herbert account of free-flowing grace. Somewhat like Bob Dylan in “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Herbert stacks up nine metaphors to describe the process:
Come, My Way
By George HerbertCome, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a way as gives us breath;
Such a truth as ends all strife,
Such a life as killeth death.Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a light as shows a feast,
Such a feast as mends in length,
Such a strength as makes his guest.Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a joy as none can move,
Such a love as none can part,
Such a heart as joys in love.
If Jesus is the third servant, choosing a heart that loves over money games, then outer darkness does not get the last word.
