Sermon, November 17, 2002
26 Pentecost -- Proper 28, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Gospel – Matthew 25:14-15, 19-29 Parable of the Talents 

I’ve just started a non-fiction book that I want to recommend to you – Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich. Maybe you’ve heard of it. A woman from Key West who is a successful writer decided to see what it’s like making a living like about 30% of the American workforce by doing hourly low-wage jobs. Taking the cheapest lodgings available, she moved about working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She had some advantages – she owned her own car and had no children to provide for. And, she’s really smart. She has a Ph.D. and superb social and communication skills, excellent health, and she doesn’t mind working very, very hard. She found, she couldn’t make it. Read the book.

There’s a powerful American myth. In this country of opportunity, if you are willing to work hard, anyone can rise up the economic ladder. Economic statistics show that that myth has been true. From just after World War II until around 1970, working hard could get you out of poverty. Since the ‘70's though, it has become harder and harder for the poor to climb the ladder. Real weekly wages in the U.S. rose until 1973 and have been declining since. And although manufacturing productivity increased 37% between ‘82 and ‘94, wages and benefits were flat. More and more, poverty in the U.S. is people working hard at jobs that don’t pay enough for them to get by. (Paul Krugman, For Richer, NY Times Magazine, 10/20/02)

But at the same time the very rich have been getting progressively very much richer. Right now in America, the 13,000 wealthiest people almost have as much income as the 20 million poorest. (Ibid) It’s more dramatic on the world stage. The world’s four-hundred seventy five billionaires together have income greater than the total income of half of the world’s population combined. The income of three billion of the poorest people is matched by the 475 richest people. (Centre for Social Justice, Toronto)

"A man...summoned his slaves...; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one..."

I need to confess a fault. When we read Jesus’ parables, I tend to spiritualize them. I often treat them as earthy stories with psychological or spiritual meanings. When I do that, I’m not being fair to you, and to the stories. When I’m willing to do the hard work of researching the sociocultural context of Jesus’ parables, I usually discover that they are rather wild and subversive – difficult to spiritualize.

This story about the "talents." It comes conveniently at Stewardship time, and I’ve preached nice sermons about our using our talents for God’s work like good and trustworthy stewards. That’s really not what this parable is about. Let’s listen to this story with 1^st century ears.

The context of a wealthy absentee patriarch entrusting his business to slaves was a familiar one. Great households were the closest thing in antiquity to the modern corporation. Often away, the patriarch’s business would have been handled by slaves, who could become very prominent; important slaves were called "stewards."

Jesus then gives us a clue we might miss if we don’t know the numbers. He’s using exaggerated numbers to make a point. A "talent" is about sixty-five pounds of silver. The five talents given to the first slave works out to about $12.5 million today. Jesus’ hearers would have been winking at each other when they heard those overstated numbers.

Another interpretive clue we might miss concerns 1^st century norms and morals. When we post-industrial moderns hear that they doubled their money, we say, "Well done; good business." First century hearers would have been disgusted. The highest legal interest rate was 12%; anything higher was regarded as avaricious Doubling an investment, 100% gain, would have been scandalous. Traditional Mediterranean society idealized stability, not self-advancement. They believed that accumulating inordinate wealth imperiled the equilibrium of society and so was dishonorable.

Jewish listeners, familiar with their scriptures, would have known Moses’ warnings against storing surplus (Ex. 16:16) and Biblical prohibitions to charging interest or taking advantage of the poor (Lev. 25:36ff & Ex. 22) and Isaiah’s condemnation of those who "join house to house, and who add field to field" in their real estate pursuits. (Is. 5:8) Scholars tell us that it would be impossible in that culture to double the master’s investments without resorting to such mercenary business dealings.

Jesus’ rural listeners would have understood. They were familiar with large landowners who gave loans to peasant farmers at a high interest rate speculating on future crops. Inevitably lean years and famine would force failure for the hard working small landowners, obliging foreclosure, seizure of the land, and indentured status as an even poorer tenant farmer.

So, the story proceeds. The greedy master returns to settle accounts. To the first two financiers, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; ...enter into the joy of your master." To conventional 21^st century ears, that sounds like a heavenly reward. But a more literal reading says, "You’ve received a promotion. But remember, you’re still a slave. It’s the master’s joy you’re getting a taste of, and now you are more captive than ever to this world controlled by the Master." Any sales person on commission who has ever had your quota increased after a successful year knows what that feels like.

But then there’s the third slave. He buried the money. How strange. But many of those listening to Jesus were farmers. There’s a wry peasant humor here. Farmers know, all true wealth comes from God – rain, sunshine, seed and soil. Silver talent when "sown" like the seed produces no fruit. Money can’t grow the natural way like seed, only unnaturally, through usury and swindling.

In this context the third slave sounds more like a prophet acting out the metaphor of planting the money as a way of revealing that money is not fertile. And he begins to sound like a prophet, truth telling: "I knew you were a harsh man." (The Greek word is the same one used to describe Pharaoh’s disease of hardheartedness.) "You reap where you did not sow, and gather where you did not scatter seed." This slave is a "whistle-blower." He unmasks and reveals that the master’s wealth is derived entirely from the toil of others, the backbreaking labor of those who work the land. This slave is unwilling to participate in this injustice, and in an act of rebellion, he takes the money out of circulation where it can no longer do evil, no longer be used to dispossess.

He is a dissenter; an agitator. With a simple, curt repudiation he says to the Master, "Here, take back what is yours." And he admits, "I was afraid." Rightly so, for he meets a prophet’s fate.

Note that the Master does what politicians and the powerful usually do. He doesn’t try to refute the claims of the whistle-blower’s critique of his world. He just labels him "evil and lazy." That’s what the rich always say about those who don’t play the game. Then the Master dispossesses him, giving the single talent to the obedient.

You can hear the Master speaking. "That’s the real world. That’s how it works. To those who have, more will be given – but for those who have not, even what they have will be taken away." And he’s right. Not many months after telling this story, Jesus himself stands before the powers, speaks the truth and takes the consequences – dispossessed, thrown outside the city gates, and crucified. Like the third slave who is tossed into the "outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Sounds like hell. Maybe so. Hell on earth. That’s the life of those rejected by the dominant culture. They live out there where the light of the rich never shines, on dirty streets outside the great households, with people like Lazarus.

But then, there’s the rest of the story. Or rather, the next story. Jesus then tells the famous parable of the last judgment, the sheep and the goats, implying a last word from God. It makes a powerful point. Though we didn’t know it, where we meet Christ in the world is in the feeding of the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned, the folks in the "outer darkness." So it seems the third slave, the whistle-blower, got kicked out of the rich man’s system, right into the lap of the true Lord who dwells with the poor and oppressed.

It’s worth thinking about the next time you hear politicians talk about taxes or minimum wages, or the next time you tip a waitress, or hotel maid, or say hi to a nursing home aide or a Wal-Mart sales person.

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