The Parable of the Talents

Matthew 25: 14-30 (November 19, 2023)

If there was one thing that stuck with me from my class in biblical Greek at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, it was the insight that biblical translation is an art and not a science. And even though I remember almost no Greek, I will never forget this valuable insight. A lot of preachers consider today’s gospel a very tough nut to crack, and so I want to draw back the curtain a bit to show you how this sermon unfolded for me. I think that might be as interesting and helpful for you as the conclusions I eventually came to.

First, though, I want to share one aspect of what New Testament scholars think about the writing of the gospels. The four canonical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were all composed within the Roman Empire roughly between the years 70 and 110 of the common era. It’s believed that Mark was written around the year 70. Paul’s letters were written earlier than this. But the earliest Gospel wasn’t written down until about 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Matthew and Luke were written even later, and both include material that came from Mark. But both also include other material that they share but which is not in Mark’s gospel, and so scholars have speculated that there was an additional written source that we’ve not yet discovered that must have been circulating at the time. That source is referred to as “Q”, which stands for the German word quelle, which means “source.”

The earliest copies of the Gospels we have discovered date to about 100 years after they were written. And those documents show various edits, additions, and some disagreements. We have absolutely no access to the original Gospel documents. Everything that we have comes from secondary versions at best. I think every Christian should know this.

When I approach the texts for a given Sunday, I first read through them in my study bible with good footnotes about each passage. I’ll do some searching online to see what other writers have had to say about a text. And then I refer to the volumes of the New Interpreter’s Bible that are in my office; that’s a set of books where a different scholar has written a commentary on every book in the bible. I also continuously ask God to give me insights while I reflect on the text from both theological and psychological perspectives to see how it might guide us in our faith journeys today.

One of the first things worth noting about this parable is that it also appears in a slightly different form in the gospel of Luke but it’s not in Mark. So this story probably originated in that “Q” material. In Luke, Jesus tells this story before he enters Jerusalem specifically to let his followers know that the kingdom was not going to come immediately when they got to Jerusalem. Matthew places the story after Jesus had entered Jerusalem, and so these teachings also acknowledge a delay in Jesus’s expected return.

Today’s parable is set in a series of three that are again about the coming messianic age and the kingdom of God. But this story is quite harsh, painting a picture of a master who comes down very hard on a slave seemingly only because he was fearful and ultra conservative in his financial decisions. In my research, I came across two primary interpretations of this passage, and they are very different. The first group of writers I read took what many consider to be the classic approach: In this reading, the master is Jesus, the talents represent the gifts we’ve been given, and the lesson is that we should be willing to use our talents and our resources for the greatest gain and be willing to be held accountable for how we do.

But then I discovered another batch of writers who take a historical-cultural approach, pointing out that usury, or making interest on money, was not allowed in the Judaism of the time, and that unlike our consumerist culture, Jesus’ culture was an honor-shame culture. In an honor-shame culture, to amass great wealth would have been considered shameful because it took away resources from others. So the hoarding of wealth would have been frowned upon.

In this approach, the interpreters were adamant that the master can in no way refer to God or to the kingdom of God. One blogger at the Student Christian Movement writes, “Why are we so keen to equate the rich man with God? What does it say about our theology if we assume that a rich and tyrannical figure must represent God?” The unnamed author then points out that Jesus typically sides with the poor and marginalized peoples, and then asks, “What if Jesus intended the third servant to be the hero of the story? He tells the rich man the truth about himself and refuses to collude with his unrighteous moneymaking.” These are very good points.

But now I was in a quandary. Some aspects of the first interpretation ring true with me, but it isn’t entirely satisfactory. And while I can appreciate the cultural insights of the second, it just didn’t sit right with me that in this whole section of Matthew focused on the messianic age, the return of Jesus, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and where this parable is bookended by two others that are clearly about the kingdom, that this story stuck in the middle is suddenly an unrelated commentary on the evils of wealth and corrupt power.

So, I went back to the text. You may remember that before Reformation Sunday, we looked at the story in Matthew about paying taxes, but then we jumped to a reading from John before coming back to Matthew and the beatitudes. Between the beatitudes and the parable of the bridesmaids we read last week is a significant chunk of text that our lectionary skipped over. In that section are 37 verses where Jesus basically gives the scribes and pharisees a dressing down.

After having told us who would be blessed in the beatitudes, Jesus tells these religious power brokers how woeful their lives will be because of their hypocrisy. He tells them how they have focused on their own power and privilege at the expense of the people of God, and how they’ve judged others over small, unimportant details of observance while neglecting justice, mercy, and faith. He links them to their ancestors that killed the prophets. He then tells his disciples how the Temple will be destroyed and warns of all the chaos that will precede the coming of God’s kingdom and how they should be wary of those who would lead them astray. And from the perspective of Matthew writing’s community decades after Jesus’s resurrection, they had witnessed that very destruction of the Temple which happened in the year 70.

And then I found what I think is the interpretive key of today’s passage. Let me read you Matthew 24:45-51:

Who, then, is the faithful and wise slave whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that wicked slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. He will cut him in pieces[b] and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (NRSVUE)

Now think about all the stories we’ve been reading since October. In so many, there are people who are put in charge of something given them by a master, or king, and they’re expected to either return a good harvest from the vineyard, or to come to the wedding feast, or in this case to take care of the other slaves, or in today’s reading, to grow the resources given as talents. I’ve read that one talent was the equivalent of about 15 years’ wages, and so what was put in their care was ridiculously valuable. And that’s what God thinks of us. We are that valuable.

In the cases of the vineyard and the wedding, the ones being judged were the religious leaders, the ones who’ve been given the task of caring for the people of God. And in every story, it’s because of their hypocrisy, selfishness, and hunger for power that they are punished, killed, or thrown into the outer darkness of suffering. But who is the faithful one, the one who is blessed, and who enters into the joy and celebration of the king or master? It’s the one who grows and advances God’s kingdom, who works on behalf of the people of God.

It’s the same in today’s story of the talents. In Luke’s version, the man who goes away and puts his slaves in charge of his wealth is despised by some who want to prevent him from being given royal power. Jeffrey Curtis Poor wonders if the third slave in Matthew’s version wasn’t also one who despised the master. He writes, “The real problem isn’t that this guy is afraid of his master. Rather, he hates him. The truth is, he was betting that the master was not coming back. So he hid the money so that he could dig it up later and use it for himself. He isn’t afraid, he’s selfish. And the king knows what he’s really after.”

This seems like a good characterization of the way Matthew’s community viewed the religious leaders of their time who were persecuting them and had basically thrown them out of the synagogue. Those leaders certainly seemed to despise Jesus, and Matthew’s community obviously thought they did little for the people but hoarded their power and prestige for their own gain rather than being focused on growing the kingdom for God’s glory.

The only people Jesus ever calls hypocrites are the religious leaders, and we see in the story of the faithful and unfaithful slave that the unfaithful one experiences weeping and gnashing of teeth with the other hypocrites. The third slave in today’s story is sentenced to the weeping and gnashing of teeth, and that’s why I think we can say he is a hypocrite and represents the religious leaders also. I think Matthew is contrasting his own community of “faithful slaves” who are working to bring about the kingdom with their persecutors who they see as unfaithful hypocrites. The first two slaves are the faithful communities.

Now while it is certainly of value to think about how we can individually use our gifts for the greater glory of God, and even about how we might be called to live adventurously, taking creative risks to enjoy greater abundance, I don’t think this parable is pointing to us as individuals. I think it’s pointing to us as communities of faith, of people called to not hide our light under bushels, or bury our talents in the ground. We are called to act not as if we despise God or as if God doesn’t love and care about us, but to use the gifts we’ve been entrusted with faithfully to light the way toward union with God, just like the bridesmaids with their lamps. We must be willing to devote ourselves to that outcome.

In this passage, Matthew is telling his community that they shouldn’t just hunker down and bury their talents while they fearfully wait for a bridegroom they’re not sure about, but that they should live in bold assurance and take risks to grow the kingdom’s harvest.

Bruce Epperly, a theologian I know well, writes about this parable that “Often congregations are too conservative with their resources, preferring a gradual slip into irrelevance and oblivion to taking the risks necessary for growth and faithfulness in their particular situation. Adventure is risky, and it is also rewarding, opening to us new gifts and horizons of possibility.”

If we here at Redeemer Lutheran Church love God, and if we want to faithfully follow the way of Jesus, then let us not bury all that God has given us out of fear for our future, but instead find new ways of using our gifts to grow God’s kingdom here on earth, right in the middle of west Bradenton.