A sermon[1] preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, March 4, 2018, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30
Copyright © 2018 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
The parables of Jesus can be divided into two general categories:
- parables that attempt to unmask and critique the way things really are (think about the “there was a certain rich man … and a certain beggar …” parable in Luke 16:19-31); and
- parables that offer a vision of the way the world could be (think about the ones that start “the kingdom of God is like …” and others that use “kingdom of God” or kingdom of heaven” language, for instance in Matthew 18).
Jesus used recognizable scenarios in plain language; he didn’t talk over the heads of the illiterate peasants who were his primary audience. His parables use farming, shepherding, being in debt, doing hard labor, banquets, being excluded from banquets, rich homes, and poor people. That doesn’t mean the parables were easy to understand.
I had a professor in seminary who said that interpreting parables (and he was mostly talking about the parables of Jesus) is challenging at best. He suggested that perhaps they should best be understood as a cross between a riddle and a zen koan, a cross between a joke, a puzzle, and a pool of wisdom.
The thing that makes the parables like riddles is the surprising twist at their endings. He used things like miraculous harvests, enemies being friends, and unexpected vindication. The thing that makes the parables puzzles is how challenging it is to figure out the wisdom Jesus is trying to impart.
In our quest for the wisdom of the parables, we often interpret them as morality tales, as moral fables, and in the process, we obscure the real wisdom they have to offer. This happens much too easily when we forget or simply ignore the socio-cultural context in which the parable was originally told. When this happens, we often end up recontextualizing the story in our own unconscious socio-cultural assumptions. And within our unconscious socio-cultural assumptions, the parable ends up domesticated.
And that does the parables of Jesus a disservice. They are much too wild to be domesticated.
The parable told in today’s reading is a wonderful example of this. In the King James Version of the Bible, the story begins, “For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants …” The only problem is that there is no mention of the kingdom of heaven in verse 14. There is back in verse 1, to open up the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, but the line that opens up today’s parable does not mention the kingdom of heaven.
King James
Why did King James’ translators add these words? In the best case, they were trying to help make the parable understandable and, contextualizing the story in their own unconscious socio-cultural assumptions, stuck those words in. They assumed that this was a parable about heaven or about the last judgment, so they added these words. In the worst case, they purposefully tried to weaken the power of the parable (given that they worked for a king). In either case, this addition wreaks havoc on an accurate understanding of the parable.
When we assume (or are told) that this parable is about “the kingdom of heaven,” we too easily allegorize the story. When we do this, the Master in the story ends up representing God, and a pretty darn ugly picture of God at that. This God is an absentee landlord who cares only about profit maximization. This God is hard-hearted and ruthless. This God is nothing like the God I hear Jesus talking about elsewhere in the gospels.
Despite these concerns, pastors (no doubt myself included) read this story and preach on how we Christians should gainfully employ our “talents” for God. But “talents” in this story have nothing to do with individual gifts and everything to do with economics. I don’t think the original audience would not have allegorized this parable to make sense of it.
They would have heard and immediately recognized Jesus describing a great household, a huge household – the closest thing in his day to the corporation in our day. It was quite common for the patriarch of a great household to be away on business, be it economic or political business. His affairs would have been handled by slaves, who in Roman society often rose to highly responsible positions in the household hierarchy as “stewards” – though they were still clearly slaves.
We know we’re talking about a great household because of the sums of money used in the story. A “talent” was one of the largest values of money in the Hellenistic world. “A silver coinage, it weighed between fifty-seven and seventy-four pounds. One talent was equal to 6,000 denarii.”[2] One denarius was a subsistence wage for a day’s labor, the wage a peasant would earn for a full day’s labor if he were lucky enough to find employment. That means that a peasant might earn one talent 16 or 17 years – if they don’t take any Sabbath days of rest.
If you worked 8 hours a day for 365 days a year (no Sabbath days of rest) at California’s current minimum wage,[3] for 16½ years, you’d earn something over half a million dollars. That means the eight talents in the story represent over $4 million. And this is just the money he wants these three slaves to take care of while he’s gone. This story is about a man with a lot of money!
The first two slaves double their master’s money. A domesticated interpretation of this parable lauds these slaves, though this feat would have elicited disgust from Jesus’ first century audience. They knew all too well how the Imperial economy works, and who suffers as a result. The parable doesn’t say how long the master is away, but with compounded interest it would take 6 years to double the money at 12%. I’ve read[4] that in Jesus’ day, 12% was the highest legal interest rate and I wasn’t able to confirm if interest was compounded or not.
More likely than expecting his audience to know the rule of 72[5] to calculate how long it takes to double an investment, Jesus knew that they knew the story of how the rich get so rich in the Empire’s economy. The large landowners made loans to peasant small landowners based on speculation about future crop production. With high interest rates and possibilities of poor weather conditions, farmers were often unable to make their payments and faced foreclosure. Once in control of the land, the new owner could continue raking in the money by hiring laborers to farm cash crops. (This process of economic exploitation and wealth accumulation is all too recognizable in today’s global economy.)
In the parable, the first two of the master’s slaves do this profitable dirty work all too well. In the Empire’s economy, people who make money like these first two slaves are extolled. These slaves are seen as “good stewards” of the master’s resources. The third slave is seen as “unproductive” and a failure.
But in God’s economy, there is such a thing as too much and too little. It is an economy based on abundance and self-restraint, not scarcity and greed. When we only gather up what we need and share the rest, there really is enough for everyone. God’s economy recognizes this.
When you look at the parable through the lens of Sabbath economics, the third slave is, in fact, the hero.
When the master returns to settle accounts, he says the same thing to the first two slaves: “Well done, good and trustworthy slave … enter into the joy of your master.” When we hear the parable allegorically, we hear an invitation to enter heavenly bliss. But rub that hearing out of your ears and hear it how I think it would have been heard by people around Jesus. These two slaves get promotions (“I will put you in charge of many thing”), but at the same time they’re reminded that they are still slaves. They are still stuck in a system that uses the have-nots so the haves can have more.
Then we turn to the third slave. Jesus’ audience knows what’s going to happen to a slave that doesn’t play the game. But before he has to face the music, he gets to be a whistle-blower. “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” He unmasks the fact that the master’s wealth is entirely derived from the toil of others. The master profits from the backbreaking labor of those who work the land.
Unwilling to participate in this exploitation, the third slave took the money out of circulation where it could no longer be used to dispossess another family farmer. He repudiates the system, giving the talent back to his master with a curt, “Here, you have what is yours.”
I wonder how many people heard Jesus tell this story and thought, “I wish I could do that. I wish I could speak truth to power.” And they would have understood this third slave’s fear. He’s about to meet the prophet’s fate.
I find it interesting that the master does not refute the third slave’s analysis of his world. The master simply castigates him as “evil and lazy,” the favorite slur of the rich toward those who don’t play the game. In suggesting that the slave could have at least gotten the market rate by investing it, the master reveals that he’s not interested in “what is my own.” He appreciates only appreciation.
He then turns to make an example of the third slave, dispossessing him and giving the spoils to his obedient colleague, in order to illustrate how the “real” world works: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”
The consequence of the third slave’s noncooperation with the Empire’s economy is banishment to the “outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Traditionally, we assume that means he’s sent to hell. And so perhaps he is. Just not a hell that comes after this life. No, he is sent to the hell that so many on earth experience, rejected by the dominant culture, exploited and rejected by the economy of the Empire.
Today’s parable is followed immediately by the famous story of judgment that suggests that we meet the Christ 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, in the places where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The whistle-blower’s punishment may dispossess him of material things, but it brings him closer to Christ.
When I posted this story[6] from The Washington Post on Facebook Friday night, I didn’t realize I was thinking about today’s sermon. By Saturday morning, I did. The headline does a good job of summarizing the story. Greta Lindecrantz, a 67-year-old white woman, is in jail for contempt of court. Her contempt? She refuses to testify in a criminal appeal.
She refuses to testify because the State of Colorado is seeking to kill the defendant. The case is an appeal of a death sentence, and the prosecution wants Lindecrantz to testify on their behalf, to testify supporting their efforts to have the death sentence stand. Lindecrantz, a Mennonite, is refusing to testify because she refuses to help the state kill the defendant. Mennonites, a small denomination in Christianity, have opposed the death penalty since their founding in the 1500s.
Some are interpreting the court’s decision to jail Lindecrantz as an attempt to break her will, to make her violate her conscience, to make her abandon her faith.
The case raises some interesting questions for me. These questions have nothing to do with the specifics of the case. The questions are about me. The chief question is this: Am I willing to go to jail for refusing to participate in a system that I believe violates the gospel of Jesus Christ?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been preaching on how the Imperial economy is not the Sabbath economy God’s desires for us. I have insinuated that the economy of the United States is closer to an Imperial economy than a Sabbath economy. Like ancient Imperial economics, ours was built on slavery. And while we may no longer have legal slavery, minimum wage is not a living wage, and the racism that justified slavery is still at work, disenfranchising people of color and imprisoning people of color at staggeringly disproportionate rates.
The Imperial economies of the ancient world put huge portions of wealth in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population. Here in the United States, the wealthiest one percent of the population owns 40% of the country’s wealth.[7] That’s more wealth than the bottom 90% own.
The wealthiest 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90%.
Under Sabbath economics (in pietopia, as the Washington Post calls it), if you have a community of 100 people, everyone gets a slice of pie. But in the United States, the wealthiest 20% of the population get 4½ slices of pie each. And the poorest 20% of the population owe a slice of pie to the people at the top. The average net worth for the bottom 40% of the population is negative. They owe money.
I know all this. Still, I participate in the system. I participate in it because I haven’t figured out how to resist it without being cast out to where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And I don’t want to go and live this hell.
Still, the moral conviction of Greta Lindecrantz haunts me.
And I am thinking that it’s time to confront the system with the moral power of our faith.
So, the question our gospel lesson and the news pushes me to wrestle with is this: Am I willing to go to jail for refusing to participate in a system that I believe violates the gospel of Jesus Christ?
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[1] This sermon is based on Ched Myers, The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics (Washington, D.C.: Tell the Word, 2001), 38-45.
[2] Brandon Scott, quoted by Ched Myers, The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics (Washington, D.C.: Tell the Word, 2001), 41-42.
[3] California’s minimum wage for corporations with 26 or more employees is currently $11/hour. See http://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/mw-2017.pdf.
[4] See Richard Rohrbaugh, “A Peasant Reading of the Parable of the Talents/Pounds,” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 23:1, Spring 1993, pp 32ff; cited by Ched Myers, op cit.
[5] See http://financialplan.about.com/od/personalfinance/qt/Ruleof72.htm.
[6] Meagan Flynn, “Mennonite woman jailed for refusing on religious grounds to testify in death-penalty case,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/01/mennonite-woman-jailed-for-refusing-on-religious-grounds-to-testify-in-death-penalty-case/ (posted 1 March 2018; accessed 2 March 2018).
[7] The following statistics are from Christopher Ingraham, “The richest 1 percent now owns more of the country’s wealth than at any time in the past 50 years,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/ (posted 6 December 2017; accessed 2 March 2018).
As you hold the cup, take notice of the space within the cup. That space is designed to hold something. Imagine that space holding something that brings you joy or comfort or peace.
