Worthless as a Slave; Faithful as a Disciple: Sermon for Proper 28A

I had a relative who had lost everything in a bank failure in the Great Depression. He emerged with a lifelong hatred of banks. Instead, he placed his money all around his house, and out in the barn,  in the most unlikely of places. This served him well, since he lived most of his life in a time before credit cards, in a small town where people knew his quirks—especially the bank president, who stayed out of his way. 

And then he passed away. Thankfully, his relatives who were left to clean out his house KNEW the old man’s system—although they did not know his actual hidey-holes. Therefore, every single thing that was going to be given away or sold was examined before it was given up.

And they found cash in the CRAZIEST of places. In an envelope taped to the back of drawers. In between the pages of his favorite books—even the Bible. In his rolled up old tattered socks. In his pillowcases. In plastic bags frozen into blocks of ice in the stand alone freezer in the garage, among all the filets of catfish. The tale was that he has even buried hordes of coins in jars in his backyard. The problem was, his backyard was over two acres, and he hadn’t left a map. Needless to say, the mailman delivered several metal detectors to his kin ordered from the Sears catalogue in the weeks after his death.

Burying your money is generally frowned upon as an investment strategy—but to Uncle’s mind, it also meant that he knew exactly where his money was, and “wasn’t no low-down SOB banker gonna take it and lose it lending it to some damn fool,” as he put it.

Today, we are confronted with a puzzling parable that also involves the strategy of burying one’s treasure rather than investing it—and that is how it is usually read. But I want to suggest a different angle today. We're going to engage in an act of imagination-- which is of course what all the gospel writers were doing in order to adapt the teaching of Jesus to the needs of their own communities.

I want us to try to hear this parable as Jesus’s followers did—to try to understand this parable through the lens of the economic systems that dominated 1st century Palestine. It was a system in which extremely wealthy absentee landowners sucked every bit of profit they could out of the poor that were on the land, especially by lending them tiny sums of money at huge rates of interest --between 60 and 400% annually --until eventually the poor lost their land and the landowner, who already was fabulously wealthy beyond the imagination of 99% of the people around him, would swoop in and take it in payment of the debt. Historically this is similar to the system of sharecropping that developed in especially the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. More recently, it is also similar to the system of payday loans which bedevil the poor, even to this day. (1)

Jesus is telling this parable to those who were listed as blessed in the Beatitudes—those who were driven to the brink by people like the landowner. What if we view this parable from their standpoint? The characters in the parable would then be interpreted this way: the wealthy landowner is exactly that—an incredibly wealthy landowner who makes his money off the backs of the poor by charging them sky high interest. He could do this because there were no banks; and the system was set up for the lender to take their debtors’ possessions- their land, usually-- when they can't pay. The three servants to which he gives his talents –a single talent was equivalent to 20 years’ wages --are his middlemen or agents, much like the tax collectors who collaborated with the Roman Empire.

As we saw in the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13), the servant acting as agent was allowed to try to extract as much or as little money to settle the debt as he wanted --it was all a part of managing the master's affairs, business as usual, the art of the deal. In that parable, what we saw was that, knowing he was about to be fired, in order to both get some of the money back and to curry favor with the people who were going to be his neighbors once he lost his job, the unjust steward cut the amount of money owed. He was then praised for his boldness—and his shrewdness. What was more common in the time of Jesus, however, was that the agent for the wealthy lender would claim that the debtor owed even more than they actually did, and would pocket the difference for himself.

Here's how the system worked: the agents of the wealthy elite or of the Empire were allowed to make a little something on the side for themselves if they could get away with it. That's one of the reasons why tax collectors were so hated as we see in scripture--they were allowed to engage in practices which we would consider to be corrupt with our nice neat understandings of bureaucracy and tendency to see graft as a crime. They would claim a sum larger than what was owed—and keep the difference for themselves, kind of like collection agencies do when they buy up debt.

So say that a tenant, in desperation, had borrowed two days wages-- 2 denarii. That's a huge sum of money to a poor person, especially -- but worse is the interest rates that he would be charged. In no time at all this desperately poor tenant farmer owes the landlord 8 denarii-- in other words 8 days’ wages. But it was common for the agent to take advantage of the fact that the poor often had no way of knowing how to calculate interest, and then claim that the debtor actually owed 10 denarii. The agent would then keep two of the denarii for his own pocket. And often, the debtor would pay it off only by borrowing from others.

This system was accepted even by the wealthy elite --who didn't mind what we would consider to be corruption, as long as the money kept rolling in for themselves.

Tax collectors would do the same thing, as much as they could get away with. And always, always it was the poor who ended up having every little bit of value sucked out of their lives-- staying enslaved by debt that they could never escape, being paid wage is so pitiful they could barely keep body and soul together, and often failed. They were basically enslaved to their creditors for their entire lives. Their lives were nasty, brutish, and short, as Thomas Hobbes once remarked. And, sure, the sums of money being extracted from each individual family was small -- but given how vast a number of people were poor, great sums of wealth were nonetheless being extracted based on economies of scale.

So let's turn back to our parable. It's at this point I want to ask you if you can to get out your Bibles and turn to Matthew 25.

Looking at this parable from the context of the economic system in Jesus’s time, what if Jesus is actually condemning the landowner and the first two servants? The landowner and the first two servants once again are extracting wealth from the backs of the poor, regardless of the consequences and devastation left in their wake. Those talents --huge sums of money already --double as the result of probably hundreds or even thousands of transactions with impoverished families. Those profits—a 100% return on investment!-- represent the destruction of thousands of families’ lives—the loss of their land, and their utter fall from bare subsistence to the uncertain future of day labor that we have seen elsewhere in Jesus’s parables this year. (2)

The third servant now becomes a conscientious objector to this system of wealth extraction from the most vulnerable when he buries his talent in the ground. He refuses to participate in the oppression of people living on the very edge of maintaining their lives. And yet he makes sure he doesn't lose the Master’s money, knowing that he is a cruel and heartless man. Of course he is a cruel and heartless man—he’s a loan shark, and they’re not known for being cuddly and forgiving. No profit in that in his line of work.

Therefore, the Master comes to the third servant expecting to see the immense profit he saw with the first two --but instead sees only that his money has been sitting there in a hole in the ground, not getting any bigger, sure, but not getting any smaller. Technically, he hasn't lost anything --but too much is never enough for people like this. Therefore he throws the third servant out into the darkness, where he can live among the very poor from whom he up until this point has extracted the lifeblood of their living. He can share their fate. The third servant is thrown out where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth --in the midst of the most desperate poor --but at least he has begun to regain his integrity and has denounced the corrupt merry-go-round of oppression that governed Jesus’s time. That third servant has refused to play—but has regained his rightful concern for the effect his actions have on others, rather than merely on his own profit.

Wait a minute, you might say. Up until this point the phrase “outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” has been used five times in Matthew to be understood as those who are cast out of God's Kingdom. What justification do we have to turn that understanding upside down now?

This is where getting out your Bible might be helpful. What is the very next story that comes immediately adjacent to this difficult, confusing one? Let's read on. Right on the heels of the words “wailing and gnashing of teeth” comes the section entitled “The Judgment of the Nations,” and it's a familiar passage-- but one we do not often set up against our parable for today. When we do that the results are interesting. Please follow along with me in your Bibles:

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.” 

Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 

Wow. What if the third servant is a representative of the values of the sheep in the passage that immediately follows our parable today? What if we understand him as refusing to participate in the death-dealing economy-- one that exists as much today and it did then, and all over the world-- that seeks to keep the poor as helpless as possible in order to keep them as captive, cheap labor for the enrichment of those who already have more than they know what to do with?

Instead of viewing the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the criminal, the homeless as being a sign of the system working as it should, producing a very few winners and a very large multitude of losers in order to get people to cooperate because they have no choice, the third servant instead throws a wrench into the works. He doesn't lose his master anything. But he also doesn't enrich him, either, by destroying the lives of hundreds or even thousands of people.

What are we to make of this as being instructive for ourselves, living in our time in context? Perhaps we're being asked to re-examine our acceptance of systems that create so much suffering and poverty in the world. That sounds like a very “Jesus-y” thing to do, especially in light of the judgment that follows this parable for accepting things the way they are while believing that your own personal salvation should be enough to get you across the finish line with Jesus.

Living in our time and place, we have to be careful about the interpretation of the last two verses in our parable especially. The ones that saw that those who have will get more and those that have nothing will never get anything. In my childhood, I have heard these verses twisted into a support for the oppression of the poor, claiming that somehow they have done something to deserve their poverty and that therefore being poor—and being rich—is merely a judgment of God. Nothing could fly more in the face of Jesus’s life and work and choice of companions than that.

It is important to remember that Jesus is not only talking money or political power. He’s talking about living in a way that is free from using fear and might as a weapon against the weak. He’s talking about using the tools of the world for the glory and growth of God’s kingdom here on earth for everybody. He is also talking about the slaves’ stewardship of something they did not earn, something they were given without merit. Some have used these verses in a straightforward materialistic way, condoning the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because that is what they each deserve. Instead, to put it simply: We need to pay attention to what we do with what we’ve got, and use what we’ve got to do the greatest good we can.

The word “economics” is funny. It originates in the Greek word oikonomos, which means “the management of the home.” The word was NEVER meant to be divorced from the values of love, compassion, and generosity that Christ urges us to live by. When it comes to economics as we understand it today, though, we are being led to recover that original meaning—and to see our household as including everyone around us—that is, after all, what an economy is all about nowadays.

Jesus is calling us as Christians to get our houses in order. To take care of our family’s needs, absolutely, and save for the future if we can—and hopefully to do that by investing in things that benefit us all—and also putting our blessings to work for a greater cause than mere material comfort.

I wonder if what Jesus is suggesting here is that our society’s tendency to view wealth as an insulator, rather than as a great and grave responsibility, as a plaything to be admired rather than as a tool to benefit everyone within the economy, although perhaps by carrying degrees, is part of our modern obstacle to completely turning our hearts over to the kingdom values Jesus keep throwing in front of us, again and again and challenging us to live by.

What we treasure can either help us or hinder us. It can help us if our treasures and our talents are put to the use of creating security and hope for all. Our treasures can hinder us if they become not just a means to a living, but a thing we worship in place of God. What we do with our money and what we invested in can have great benefit or great harm. This is an acknowledged fact behind the drive over the last few decades toward ethical investing--of investing in companies for instance that work on solutions to pollution, or clean energy, or cures for orphan diseases that normally would not get attention. of divesting from industries that support war or create products that cause cancer or other illnesses.

The question at the heart of this parable is “What is my responsibility as a faithful disciple living faithfully for Jesus? What is demanded of me as a Christian?” This parable implies that it is not as simple as knocking on doors and pressing pamphlets into often unwelcoming hands. The answer lies in HOW we live in every aspect of our lives and making that our greatest testimony. The answer lies in taking the gifts we have been given, and using them not to assuage our own fears, but to support the mission of God in reconciling all the world to Godself. And the first gift is the gift and challenge of living by love and putting what we have to work for love.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, broadcast on FaceBook Live, in time of rising COVID19 cases.

Readings:

Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123 
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Sources:

1) I am indebted to Debie Thomas for her essay on our gospel today, "The Good Kind of Worthless," at Journey with Jesus, and for reminding me of the work of William Herzog, whom I studied in seminary.

2) See William Herzog, “The Vulnerability of the Whistleblower: The Parable of the Talents,” chapter 9 in Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, pp. 187-208.