Posts Tagged ‘talents’

Talents an investment, or exploitation – is the third slave the one most like Jesus?

November 18, 2023

Pentecost 25 – 2023

Matthew 25:14-30

Marian Free

In the name of God to whom we must one day give an account of our lives. Amen.

When you think of God what images come to mind?  Are you drawn to images of a vengeful, harsh, and unforgiving God, or are the first images that come to you of a baby in a manger or a broken body on a cross? Do you subscribe to a God who condemns the foolish and the timid to an eternity of hellfire or to a God, who on the cross forgives someone who will never be able to make redress for his crimes?

These are important questions when it comes to reading the parables of Matthew 25 – the ten virgins and the landowner who entrusted slaves with his (not insignificant) property. Also, at issue in the interpretation of these two passages is how we try to make sense of parables. If we fall into the trap of making them into allegories, we are faced with the task of trying to work out who the various characters in the stories stand for. That is, who do the foolish virgins represent? Who is the slave who buries money? And perhaps most significantly who is the extremely wealthy man who chooses to entrust over 14 million dollars to three of his slaves –   and why would he do that? And why would the landowner distinguish between the slaves, giving one 5 talents, another two and third only one?

There are other questions. Does the parable of the virgins really condone the selfish behaviour of the wise virgins? If the bridegroom represents Jesus, does the one who forgave a criminal from the cross really lock people out forever? And most disturbingly of all is the temptation to associate the landowner with God. If Jesus means us to understand the landowner as God that would mean that Jesus is comparing God: “to a harsh man, who reaps where he does not sow, and gathers where he does not scatter seed” (which is the accusation that the third slave makes and which the master affirms in his reply.) 

Is God then an exploitative businessman, determined to make a profit at whatever the cost to others?

Trying to come up with a literal interpretation of a parable rarely works, because the intention of a parable is not so much to make sense, as to raise questions and to force us to think differently. 

A traditional interpretation of the parable (which relies on a conflation of both Matthew’s and Luke’s retelling) is that the landowner is God, and that we are the slaves who have been given talents (abilities) to use until Jesus’ return. The expectation is that we will put our talents to good use – so that they increase in value or make a contribution to society or to the church.  If we don’t use them, we can expect to be “justly” punished by a demanding and unforgiving God.

There are a number of problems with this version. One is the assumption that the landowner is God, the second is that “talents” refers to gifts and abilities, when in fact it refers to cold, hard cash (and lots of it) and a third is that the last slave deserved his condemnation because he didn’t make the best use of his money. Finally, this interpretation contradicts what Jesus says and how Jesus behaves. Jesus consistently eats with tax- collectors and prostitutes and he informs the self-righteous that sinners will enter the kingdom of heaven before them. Jesus condemns the rich who do not share their riches and applauds the widow who gives her last penny. Throughout his ministry, Jesus lives out the unconditional love of God and on the cross, demonstrates the extent of that love, even for the undeserving. Never, in the course of his ministry does Jesus take advantage of others or use them for his personal gain.

So, I want to put it to you that there is another way to view the parable, a way that gives back to the parable its intention to confront, to shock and to challenge. 

In the first century, a vast number of the population lived on or below the poverty line and that included people with a trade like Paul. The wealthy 1% of the population had made or increased their wealth at the expense of others. Our landowner (and remember he is fictitious). would almost certainly have been given land – land that belonged to others – in recognition of his military service. Instead of using the land to grow staples like wheat that would have fed the local citizens, he would have planted grapes or another crop that he could sell and make a profit. This would leave the population not only impoverished, but also hungry.  This landowner has done sufficiently well that he has something like $14m lying around to invest. 

He entrusts the money to three of his slaves, who in their turn, are free to take some of the profits for themselves – possibly by lending it to the less fortunate and charging exorbitant interest.

What if, in this scenario, the third slave was not in fact lazy or wicked, but rather the only one of the three who had the courage to resist the corruption and greed that had allowed the landowner to amass such a vast amount of wealth? What if, the third slave was making a stand by refusing to be a party to the landowner’s exploitative, oppressive, grasping desire to enrich himself? What if the third slave, the one who risks his own life so that others might live, is the one whose behaviour we are to model, the one whose behaviour is most like that of Jesus? –  who, need I remind you, was himself cast into the outer darkness because he dared to confront the self-seeking, corrupt officials of his own time.

Now, that really does overturn our past ways of thinking. 

What if, in the time between now and Jesus’ return, we were to challenge the unjust systems that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and which allow 46 million people to live below the poverty line? What if, in the time between now and Jesus’ return, we were to confront the forces that lead to war, persecution, and human rights violations that have led to 108.4 million people being displaced. What if, in the time between now and Jesus’ return, we were to tackle the issue of homelessness and the housing crisis in our own backyard?

What if we, like the third slave, were to resist the temptation to conform, and instead stood against injustice and oppression?

If, just if,  we, and all God’s people, would indeed see what the kingdom of heaven will be like. (Mt. 25:1) 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Matthew | Comments Off on Talents an investment, or exploitation – is the third slave the one most like Jesus?

Open to God’s abundant love

November 14, 2020

Pentecost 24-2020

Matthew 25:14-30 (notes from Stradbroke Island)

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generous love is poured out on all who would receive it. Amen.

Gallery owner, international art dealer and philanthropist Tim Olsen has this week released his memoir – Son of a Brush. Tim is the son of one of Australia’s most well-known and respected artists John Olsen. As he tells it, Tim had a chaotic and emotionally deprived childhood. The family spent Tim’s early years in Europe before moving to an artist’s commune to the north of Melbourne. Dunmoochin was, Tim writes, ‘a bacchanalian free love cult’. Sexual experimentation was encouraged. Tim witnessed scenes that no seven year old should be exposed to and he was very aware of the distress that his father’s sexual adventures caused his mother. But it was not just life at home that was unsettling. Tim was bullied and abused by the local children. On one occasion a group of eight children, including a young girl, knocked him to the ground and urinated on his face. Tim credits this heinous act as the reason why, throughout his life, he has struggled to trust friendships and intimacy.

His turmoil didn’t end when the family left Dumoochin for Sydney two years later. Tim was sent to boarding school. When he graduated at 18 his parent’s marriage had reached breaking point and his father left his mother for the woman with whom he’d been having an affair. (Tim heard about the subsequent marriage through a friend who had been invited to the wedding – though he had not. When John married his fourth wife, Tim and his sister were banned from visiting.) Tim went on to be a hugely successful art dealer, corporate advisor and consultant, but nothing could fill the deep void inside. His first marriage failed and despite a second marriage and the birth of his son, Tim’s private life spiraled into a self-destructive pattern of over-eating and alcohol abuse. At one point he even considered taking his life.

Tim is on the way onto recovery thanks to his wife and to friends who kept him strong, but his story is a reminder that abuse and neglect leave people traumatized and untrusting, unable to form intimate relationships and often trapped in negative and destructive behaviour which reinforces their belief that they are not good enough or that there is nothing about them that is loveable.

That rather long introduction is an attempt to answer the question as to why the third slave in today’s parable hides the money that is entrusted to him. His experience of life has left him fearful untrusting and lacking in any self-confidence. His primary concern on being given the vast amount of money is to keep it safe. He does what He does what most people did to keep valuables safe from thieves and invaders – he buries it. After all, he has been given no instructions, perhaps it’s a trick x yet another ruse to expose his inadequacies. (‘Better be safe’, he might have thought.)

As I have said before, Matthew’s version of this parable often gets conflated with Luke’s version and both no doubt have been changed in the retelling. At the heart of the parable is generosity. The amounts given to each servant are impossibly large – millions of dollars. Instead of focusing on the punishment of the third servant perhaps our focus should be on the generosity of the giver and our willingness (or inability) to be gracious recipients of that generosity.

If we have not known unconditional love and trust, it can be almost impossible to feel loved and trusted, impossible to love and trust others. Some people (presumably illustrated by the third servant) close in on themselves fearing that if they open themselves to ‘love’ they will only be hurt and abused. Unable to accept that they might be loveable, they cannot even see God as a God who loves without condition. They feel that they must constantly be on the alert for abuse and that they must try to please others (including God). They feel that love, if love is to be had at all, has to be earned and that others (including God) are always on the lookout to find reasons not to love them.

The parable is not so much a parable about a harsh and unforgiving God, but about a God who pours out abundant love, and it tries to explain why not everyone is able to receive that love. It is written for those of us who know God’s love, whose lives have not been barren and filled with disappointment and is a reminder to always trust God and to be open to God’s love. Those who through trauma and fear lock themselves out of God’ love will never know the rewards and blessings of same. I believe though, that the gospels as a whole (think the lost sheep, the prodigal son) tell us that God will leave no one behind and that those who have been traumatized and denigrated and unloved, will one day open their wounds to the ministrations of God’s love and will be made whole. Then they too will see that the gifts of God (the talents) will grow in ways that they can not begin to conceive.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Matthew | Comments Off on Open to God’s abundant love

Embracing the present

November 15, 2014

Pentecost 23
Matthew 25:14-30
Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us out of fear and timidity into a life that is full, fulfilling and rich. Amen.

During the week Gail Kelly resigned from her position as CEO of the Westpac Bank. This event not only made the newspapers, but was a matter of some discussion in the wider community. Kelly’s career has been of interest since she was appointed to the position in 2008. She broke the glass ceiling in the corporate world, but more than that, during her time with the bank, she achieved what many of her peers had not. That is, she successfully steered the bank through the global financial crisis and, in what was a critical time for many financial institutions, she significantly strengthened the bank’s position.

In August, at the launch of the St George Foundation, Kelly outlined seven lessons that she had learned along the way. I think that they are worth sharing. In brief, she said: “Choose to be positive; do what you love, love what you do; be bold, dig deep; right people on the bus, wrong people off; have a vision of what you’d like to achieve; practice generosity of spirit (desire to see others flourish) and live a full (whole) life.” Two things caught my attention. First of all, Kelly’s words were not those of a cut-throat, aggressive power-hungry person, but of a pragmatic, sensible, balanced person who has taken risks. Secondly, I was intrigued by Kelly’s advice to be bold and courageous. It is easy for us to imagine that successful people are confident and self-assured at all times. Kelly says that for all her life she has had a sense of: “Gosh, I’m not good enough, I’m not adequate, I’m not going to do this well. I might fail, what happens if I fail?”

A great many of us would relate to these feelings of self-doubt and of the anxiety that doing something new and challenging can cause. Kelly suggests that in such cases we should: “pause, dig deep, take our courage into our hands and actively say: ‘I’m going to back myself.'” Self doubt hasn’t prevented Kelly from taking risks. At such times she has actively said: “there are others out there who are going to support me, there are others out there who want me to win.”

As I reflected on these words, it seemed to me that they helped to make sense of today’s parable about the talents.

It has been usual to confuse the expression ‘talenta’ which refers to a sum of money, with a person’s ability. More often than not, the parable is interpreted as meaning that we have to make the best use of our talents (abilities/gifts). However, if we understand that a “talent” represents something like fifteen years wages of an ordinary worker, we begin to see the huge responsibility that has been given even to the slave who receives only one talent. It is a responsibility that the master expects will be taken seriously. That is he believes that the money will be put to good use.

According to the parable, the first two slaves invest the money. When the man returns, they are able to return to him double what he gave them. The third slave however does not have any confidence in himself. He is afraid of his master and doesn’t fully grasp the master’s confidence in him. (He might only have been given one talent compared to the other’s five and two), but even one talent (fifteen year’s wages) is indicative of the master’s confidence in his ability to manage a huge sum of money. The responsibility paralyses the third slave such that he is too afraid to do anything. He is so fearful of taking a risk that he doesn’t even give the money to the money-lenders which would ensure some form of return. Burying money was regarded as the best form of security against theft. What is more, according to the customs of the time, it was also a way of ensuring that the slave would not be held liable if the money was stolen. The slave presumably believes that he has done what is necessary to protect himself – the money will be safe until the master’s return and even if it is not, he cannot be held responsible for its disappearance.

Unfortunately, he has misread his master’s intention in entrusting him with the money. The master was expecting boldness not timidity. By giving the slave the money, he had demonstrated his trust and his belief in each of the slaves by only giving them only what he believed they could manage. Only one slave has not lived up to that trust. It is his failure to recognise and respond to that trust that earns him the master’s wrath.

The parable of the talents confronts those who, in the present are lazy or fearful who do not understand God’s confidence in them and who do not embrace life to the full, use every opportunity that is put before them and take risks. God does not want us to live in fear of the future, but to live in and be fully engaged in the present.

God has placed His trust in us. Do we honour that trust by being fearful or by stepping out in faith confident in God’s confidence in us?

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Matthew, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Embracing the present

Embracing the present

November 15, 2014

strong>Pentecost 23
Matthew 25:14-30
Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us out of fear and timidity into a life that is full, fulfilling and rich. Amen.

During the week Gail Kelly resigned from her position as CEO of the Westpac Bank. This event not only made the newspapers, but was a matter of some discussion in the wider community. Kelly’s career has been of interest since she was appointed to the position in 2008. She broke the glass ceiling in the corporate world, but more than that, during her time with the bank, she achieved what many of her peers had not. That is, she successfully steered the bank through the global financial crisis and, in what was a critical time for many financial institutions, she significantly strengthened the bank’s position.

In August, at the launch of the St George Foundation, Kelly outlined seven lessons that she had learned along the way. I think that they are worth sharing. In brief, she said: “Choose to be positive; do what you love, love what you do; be bold, dig deep; right people on the bus, wrong people off; have a vision of what you’d like to achieve; practice generosity of spirit (desire to see others flourish) and live a full (whole) life.” Two things caught my attention. First of all, Kelly’s words were not those of a cut-throat, aggressive power-hungry person, but of a pragmatic, sensible, balanced person who has taken risks. Secondly, I was intrigued by Kelly’s advice to be bold and courageous. It is easy for us to imagine that successful people are confident and self-assured at all times. Kelly says that for all her life she has had a sense of: “Gosh, I’m not good enough, I’m not adequate, I’m not going to do this well. I might fail, what happens if I fail?”

A great many of us would relate to these feelings of self-doubt and of the anxiety that doing something new and challenging can cause. Kelly suggests that in such cases we should: “pause, dig deep, take our courage into our hands and actively say: ‘I’m going to back myself.'” Self doubt hasn’t prevented Kelly from taking risks. At such times she has actively said: “there are others out there who are going to support me, there are others out there who want me to win.”

As I reflected on these words, it seemed to me that they helped to make sense of today’s parable about the talents.

It has been usual to confuse the expression ‘talenta’ which refers to a sum of money, with a person’s ability. More often than not, the parable is interpreted as meaning that we have to make the best use of our talents (abilities/gifts). However, if we understand that a “talent” represents something like fifteen years wages of an ordinary worker, we begin to see the huge responsibility that has been given even to the slave who receives only one talent. It is a responsibility that the master expects will be taken seriously. That is he believes that the money will be put to good use.

According to the parable, the first two slaves invest the money. When the man returns, they are able to return to him double what he gave them. The third slave however does not have any confidence in himself. He is afraid of his master and doesn’t fully grasp the master’s confidence in him. (He might only have been given one talent compared to the other’s five and two), but even one talent (fifteen year’s wages) is indicative of the master’s confidence in his ability to manage a huge sum of money. The responsibility paralyses the third slave such that he is too afraid to do anything. He is so fearful of taking a risk that he doesn’t even give the money to the money-lenders which would ensure some form of return. Burying money was regarded as the best form of security against theft. What is more, according to the customs of the time, it was also a way of ensuring that the slave would not be held liable if the money was stolen. The slave presumably believes that he has done what is necessary to protect himself – the money will be safe until the master’s return and even if it is not, he cannot be held responsible for its disappearance.

Unfortunately, he has misread his master’s intention in entrusting him with the money. The master was expecting boldness not timidity. By giving the slave the money, he had demonstrated his trust and his belief in each of the slaves by only giving them only what he believed they could manage. Only one slave has not lived up to that trust. It is his failure to recognise and respond to that trust that earns him the master’s wrath.

The parable of the talents confronts those who, in the present are lazy or fearful who do not understand God’s confidence in them and who do not embrace life to the full, use every opportunity that is put before them and take risks. God does not want us to live in fear of the future, but to live in and be fully engaged in the present.

God has placed His trust in us. Do we honour that trust by being fearful or by stepping out in faith confident in God’s confidence in us?

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Matthew | Comments Off on Embracing the present