Checking Accounts

Matthew 25:14-30

Rev. Monte Marshall

Well, this morning we’re going to take a cue from our text and do some checking of accounts.  But before we do that, we need to get an interpretive handle on this challenging scripture passage known as the Parable of the Talents.

And frankly, I’m taking an unconventional and non-traditional approach to this text.  It’s an approach that I find intriguing and instructive, although I’m still mulling it over in my mind.  So if you’re game, let’s try it on for size this morning and see what we might learn from this fresh look at an ancient parable.

Commentators Bruce Molina and Richard Rohrbaugh have made a disturbing observation about how many of us may be inclined to interpret this morning’s scripture reading.  They write:  “The way capitalistic Westerners usually read this parable unconsciously assumes a society something like that in the United States.  Amassing wealth is seen as proper and the two servants who aid in the rich man’s scheme are the story’s heroes.  The ‘wicked’ servant, the laggard, is the one who makes no profit for the overlord.  Americans in particular love this understanding of the story because it seems to put a kind of homespun capitalism on the lips of Jesus.”[1]  

Pastor Caspar Green underscores the danger and difficulty of assuming this point of view by retelling Parable of the Talents, but with a contemporary spin.  He identifies the wealthy employer in the parable as none other than Bernie Madoff, the infamous financier who was convicted of perpetrating one of the largest financial frauds in U. S. history.  In Green’s version of the parable, it’s Madoff leaving on a trip.  So he “called his employees and entrusted them with his fortune”—most all of acquired through fraud.  “He gave one of them $81.5 million.  He gave another $32.6 million. And to a third he gave $16.3 million.  Then he left.

“The one with $81.5 million went off and invested it, and doubled the money.  The one with $32.6 million also invested it and doubled the money.  But the one with the $16.3 million took it home and stuffed it under his mattress.

“After a long while, Madoff came home and called them all in to audit their accounts. 
So the one who had started off with $81.5 million came in with $163 million and said, ‘Look, I’ve doubled your money.’  And Madoff said, “Well done!  Dang, you’re good!  Since you’ve done so well with this little bit, you’re getting a promotion!  And, by the way, you should come to my office New Year’s party.’

“Then the next employee, who started with $32.6 million came in and said, ‘Look, here’s your money doubled:  $65.2 million.’  And Madoff replied again, ‘Well done!  Dang, you’re good, too!  Since you’ve done so well with this little bit, you’re getting a promotion.  And, by the way, you should come to my office New Year’s Eve party.’

“So it was the third employee’s turn, the one who started with just $16.3 million.  He came in and said, ‘Boss, I know you’re a hard man, and you’re a robber baron, and you’re the worst kind of venture capitalist.  I was so afraid of losing any of your money, I kept the whole wad under my mattress, and here it is, safe and sound.’

“Madoff replied, ‘You lazy [good-for-nothing bum]!  If you knew that I’m the worst sort of venture capitalist and a robber baron you should have at least put the money into a CD so I could have had some interest on it.  You’re fired!  I’m reallocating your money to the guy with the $163 million.  It takes money to make money, but I’m going to wring every penny out of the little guys.  And send this no-good former employee to the slums where he can cry and worry himself to death.’”[2]

Now think about this.  If we use a traditional interpretation of the Parable of the Talents and treat it as an allegory, we’ve got problems.  Many people who interpret this parable as an allegory tend to associate God with the wealthy employer (the Bernie Madoff-type of guy), the disciples of Jesus with the employees, and the whole story is supposed to illustrate what the reign of God is like.  But does this story sound like the reign of God to us?  If the wealthy employer is a stand-in for God, just what kind of God is this?  An absentee boss, ruthless and hard-hearted, whose only concern is for the maximization of profit?

 And look at the values reflected in this parable.  As Eric DeBode and Chad Meyers note, this story “seems to promote ruthless business practices…and the cynical view that the rich will only get richer while the poor become destitute.”[3]

And there’s another problem.  In many traditional interpretations, this parable is judged to be about using our “talents” for God.  But the talents referenced in this parable have “nothing to do with our individual gifts and everything to do with economics.”[4]  You see, a “talent” in the Greco-Roman world of the first century was a monetary unit—and a large monetary unit at that.  It was silver coinage.  And the amounts used in the parable are phenomenal!

DeBode and Meyers make this observation:  “The original audience of this story would not have had to allegorize the parable to make sense of it.  Its portrait of a great household…was all too recognizable.  The powerful patriarch would often be away on economic or political business.  His affairs would be handled by slaves, who in Roman society often rose to prominent positions in the household hierarchy as ‘stewards’.”  In fact, “the manner of profiteering portrayed in the story would have been understood by the original audience as rapacious” an example of greed at work to defraud and extort “other members of the community through lucrative trading, tax collecting, and lending money at interest.”  And bear in mind that in antiquity, extracting interest “was understood…to be responsible for the destructive cycle of indebtedness and poverty, while profiting from commodity trading was explicitly condemned by no less a sage than Aristotle.”[5]

From this perspective, could it be that the affirmation offered by the wealthy employer to the two “good and faithful” employees simply celebrates their successful conformity to an unjust system and underscores their continued dependency upon their employer for their well-being?  Even the joy that they’re promised is not their joy, but their employer’s joy!

So here’s the shocking twist to the non-traditional interpretation of the Parable of the Talents:  The hero of the story is the third employee—the one talent guy—the employee who accuses his employer of “ruthlessness”:  “You…reap where you did not sow and gather where you did not scatter.”  By burying the talent in the ground, he refuses to play the game.  He rejects the exploitation of others to gain a profit for his boss. 

And he speaks truth to power.  As one commentator notes, he becomes the “whistle-blower.”[6]  In the words of DeBode and Meyers, he unmasks “the fact that the master’s wealth is derived entirely from the toil of others.”[7] 

The whistle-blower confesses his fear at kindling his employer’s wrath—and it’s a reasonable fear as the hero of the story is about to face “the prophet’s fate.”[8]  And then the employee gives the money back to his boss.

The boss then responds.  He doesn’t refute the third employee’s “analysis of his world.”  He simply does what the rich usually do in putting down those who don’t play their game, he accuses the employee of being a “worthless, lazy lout!”  He then lowers the boom.  He says, “You there!  Take the talent away from this bum and give it to the one with the ten talents.  Those who have will get more until they grow rich, while those who have not will lose even the little they have.  Throw this worthless one outside into the darkness, where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.”

DeBode and Meyers raise and interesting possibility.  Could it be that Jesus is here “spinning a thinly-veiled autobiographical tale…for he, too, will shortly stand before the powers, speak the truth, and take the consequences? 

As for the consequence of the third slave’s failure to meet his boss’s expectations, he’s banished to the ‘outer darkness.’  DeBode and Meyers note:  “We have presumed this to be ‘hell,’ and so perhaps it is—that is, the hell on earth experienced by those rejected by the dominant culture:  in the shadows where the light of the royal courts never shine, on the mean streets outside the great households. 

“But,” according to the two commentators, “the story that immediately follows [the Parable of the Talents in the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel]—the famous last-judgment parable of the sheep and the goats…may illuminate the nature of the dissident slave’s exile.  This singular judgment story in the Gospels suggests that we meet Christ mysteriously by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned….In other words, we meet Christ in places of pain and marginality; the ‘outer darkness.’  The whistle-blower’s punishment kicks him out of the rich man’s system, but brings him closer to the true Lord, who dwells with the poor and oppressed.”

DeBode and Meyers then conclude that to read this parable as “a divine endorsement of mercenary economics and the inevitable polarization of wealth is to miss the point completely—and to perpetuate both dysfunctional theology and complicit economics in our churches.”[9]

So in light of this unconventional and non-traditional interpretation of the Parable of the Talents, let’s turn to checking accounts:  To what extent are we still playing the wealthy employer’s game; profiting from the exploitation of others; benefiting from a system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer?  To what extent are we willing to follow Jesus, take a risk, and figure out ways to break free of the system for the sake of those who are suffering from it?  To what extent are we willing to speak the truth to power regardless of the consequences?  To what extent are we willing to seek Christ among the poor and the marginalized?

Given the work that Travis Park United Methodist Church is already doing with the poor and the homeless through Corazon Ministries, it seems to me that we are better positioned than most churches to go even farther in aligning ourselves with Christ and the surprising hero of this morning’s text.  So what’s holding us back?  Amen.