Bearing Fruit for the Kingdom

Texts: 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11; Matthew 25.14-30

Here are some thoughts about a parable of Jesus by which many are puzzled and even bewildered, the parable of the 'talents'.  I will begin with some observations about the historical and theological background of the parable, and then make one or two suggestions about what the parable is trying to communicate.

Let us begin by being quite clear about what a parable is, and why Jesus told parables.  According to the biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, a parable is a story which seeks to question and subvert the very fabric of reality as it is commonly understood by its hearers.  To everyone who smugly assumes that they know what is real and understand how life really works, the parable says: “Is life really like that?  Are you sure?  What if you are wrong?  How would you change your life if you were wrong?”  This explains why parables are often rather difficult to understand.   Parables only begin to make sense when the hearers are prepared to entertain the possibility that reality may not work as it seems to work.  Clearly, that is a very difficult thing for many of us to do.  Most of us would prefer to assume that we are right about the world, that there are some objective truths out there that we all have in common, that the meaning of life comes down to a certain amount of common-sense.    To people who think like that, parables are rather troubling, for if we take them seriously, they have the potential to shake the very foundations on which we have built our lives.

Jesus, it seems, was particularly fond of the parabolic form of story-telling.  He was not the first to use parables, nor was he the last.  But it is generally agreed that he remains the master of the genre.  In reading the gospels, it is clear that Jesus used parables for a particular reason:  he wanted to show his contemporaries that the world they experienced every day was not the most real world, and that many of the values they lived by were not, in the end, of much lasting consequence.  For Jesus believed that a yet more real reality was arriving in the world, a reality he called ‘the kingdom of heaven’.  All the parables Jesus told are about the kingdom of heaven, and about the way in which its arrival will not only change things, but turn almost everything his hearers assumed as common-sense upside-down.  The parable we are focussing on this morning, the parable of the ‘talents’, is no exception.

Right from the very beginning of the story it is clear that we are not dealing with reality as it would have been commonly understood by the Jewish people of Jesus’ contemporaries.  For no master with any sense would leave such incredibly large amounts of money in the care of his slaves, no matter how well they had served him.  Do you understand how much a ‘talent’ was in the Roman money?  Most recent scholarship agrees that a talent was the equivalent of fifteen year’s wages for the average farm-labourer.  In today’s Australian money, that would be about $405 000.  So when the master leaves five talents to one of his slaves, two talents to another, and one talent to a third, we are clearly talking about a master who is certainly NOT like any master known to first century Jews!  NO master would trust a mere slave with such massive amounts of cash.  ANY such master would be widely regarded as either mad or morally impaired. 

A second indication that we are dealing, here, not with reality as it was commonly understood, but with some kind of alternative reality, is the behaviour of the first two slaves upon receiving the cash.  Without any precise permission or instruction from their Master whatsoever, they immediately take the money out into the market place and invest it.  They pour the money into ventures that, precisely because they have the potential to create more wealth, are also incredibly risky.  Now, in the normal scheme of things, any first century Jew would have been deeply shocked at the very prospect.  There would first be the question as to why a slave might take such risks.  For, under Roman law, a slave could in no way expect that they, themselves, would be enriched by such speculations.  Slaves had no rights whatsoever.  They received no wages and had no personal control over their futures.  If a master became displeased with them, whether the reason be fair or unfair, they could be sold or even executed without any recourse whatsoever.  So what could possibly motivate a slave to take such enormous, and potentially catastrophic, risks with his master’s money—especially when the master had given no such instruction to that effect?  The answer is “nothing at all”!  In Roman-occupied Judea such a thing would never happen.  Never.  The more common-sense thing would be to act as the third slave does.  Out of a well-founded fear for his life, any sensible slave would simply hide the money away in a very safe place so that there could be no risk of loss.

And there is yet a third indication that we are dealing here with a very uncommon vision of reality.  When the master returns he does exactly the opposite of what any decent, sensible master ought to have done.  For while the first two slaves might have used their skills to make the master more wealthy, that wealth could in no way be seen as justification for the incredible risks taken in generating that wealth.  According to the values of Jesus’ hearers, a ‘good’ master should have received the cash, put it in the bank, but then punished the two slaves for their incredible irresponsibility.  But that is not what our parabolic master does.  No, just the opposite, and to a positively outrageous extent!  Not only does he reward the slaves with his thanks, but he also invites them to share in their master’s joy—which is a first-century way of saying ‘you are now shareholders and co-owners of my estate’!  Contrast that with way the third slave is treated, the common-sensical one who behaved most responsibly.  Even the money he safely preserved is removed from him and he is summarily thrown out into the street to become the very refuse of his society. 

So you see, this is a story that would have been deeply confronting for Jesus’ first hearers.  To them, it would have made no sense—no common sense—whatsoever.  So why did Jesus tell the story?  Well, as becomes clear from the context in which the parables occurs in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tell the parable because he wants his hearers to know that there is a revolution on its way called ‘the kingdom of heaven’.  He wants them to know that when that kingdom arrives on the earth, things are going to be very different, so they had better get ready for that kingdom’s arrival by beginning to live and behave as though the kingdom was already here.  Allow me to summarise what I believe the central message of the parable was for Matthew’s first audience.

Matthew used the parable to tell his hearers what God was like.  ‘The God of Jesus Christ is not like the God that most of you believe in’, said Matthew to his people.  ‘God is not a tyrant who wants to keep us enslaved, maintaining watchful control over everything we do.  Neither is God a landlord who exploits our labour in order to enrich himself alone.  No, God is infinitely generous.  All that we have, God has given us, whether skills, talents, personal resources or money.  All are given as genuine gifts, that is, they are given to us to use as we wish.  And while God would clearly like us to invest our gifts wisely—that is, according to the strange wisdom of the kingdom of God in which wisdom is often mistaken for foolishness—God is not a puppet-master who would run the whole show from behind the scenes.  No, with every free gift, we are also given genuine responsibility.  We are free to use our gifts either for good or for ill.  In this God has made himself rather vulnerable.  He has invested in us, and what we do with God’s investment really matters.  If we use what we are given for good, we and God will share together in the joy that we have created together.  If, on the other hand, we use God’s investment only for ill—only for keeping ourselves ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ in the world (as the world would understand safety and security)—it is not only ourselves and our neighbours, but also God who suffers the consequences of our lack in both imagination and generosity.  For God invests in us out of a spirit of very risky generosity.  If we hide that investment in the ground, if we do not re-invest what we are given according to that same spirit of generosity, then the whole world is impoverished.  Not only we ourselves, but also our neighbours, and God himself.’

All parables have a 'sting' in their tale. So let's be clear that the sting in the tail of this parable has both an ancient and a modern iteration.  The ancient iteration, as I've already made clear, is the idea that a wealthy landowner would share his profitable investments with slaves.  The other side of this particular coin is the idea that a slave might be justly punished for NOT taking unauthorized risks with his or her master's money.  Either suggestion would have been most offensive to a first century audience. One should note, however, that the parable is not actually concerned with money, first of all, but with faithfulness in the kingdom of heaven.  In the context of the gospel of Matthew, the servants who make risky investments and share in their master's plenty are like those who are called to be salt and light, whose righteousness 'far exceeds' that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law (5.13-16, 20). They are also like those who store up 'treasures in heaven' (6.19-21), who are 'shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves' (10.16).  The good they invest is like the gospel itself which, when sown in good soil, produces a crop 'yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown' (13.23) or like the mustard seed, which 'though the smallest of all seeds, grows to become the largest of garden plants' (13.31).  Again, the goods these servant invest are like the five loaves and the two fishes that Jesus multiplies to feed several thousand people (14.18-21) or like the expensive jar of perfume which is poured out liberally to anoint Jesus for burial (26.6-13) but which is multiplied a hundredfold in the resurrection.  The common theological theme here, as I noted above, is that grace multiplies itself, like the money left to the servants, who then share in the 'joy' of their master.

The servant who hid his money in the ground, however, is like the Scribes and Pharisees who are not interested in grace and its multiplication, but only in an uncreative and deeply conservative keeping of what they have already received in tradition (9.16, 17; 12.1-14 ) and, because of their lack of creatively iterative faith, are 'thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth' (8.12; cf 13.50 and 22.13).  The point here is that the servant who buries what he is given in the ground clearly represents, for Matthew, those of Jesus' hearers who fail to produce fruit for the kingdom, especially the religious authorities who seek to cast aside the invitation at every turn (21.43-46).

Turning, then, to the ways in which the parable might sting a modern audience, I would risk the following.  Many moderns have reduced the meaning of the love of God to a form of middle-class niceness that asks, for example, 'How could God be so cruel as to punish an uncreative servant who conservatively preserves what he is given in the ground?'  In fact, however, the the punishment of the uncreative servant is consistent with the punishments envisaged throughout Matthew's gospel for those who receive God's grace but do nothing gracious (read 'excessive or risky') with it.  Grace is like the manna given Israel in the desert: if you bury it in the ground or try to hold on to it for a rainy day, it will go rotten, it will cease to be grace (Ex 16). If grace is not received as grace, as that which must constantly be given again, reinvested in other lives, then those who receive completely misunderstand the God who gives it.  They mistake God, as the uncreative servant does, for someone who is a bullying magistrate who wants us to follow the mere letter of the 'law', very often in the politically correct form it is received in our own particular culture and society.  Here the kingdom of heaven, and its radical values, are functionally replaced with the conservative mores and norms of middle-class society.  But God is a God of generosity and freedom, who gives us the gift of life that it may be ever more given in the spirit of generosity in which it was originally given.  Those who bury this gift in the ground clearly punish themselves as well as others - they cut off the ever-multiplying potential of the life God has given. But the freedom in which the gift was given also guarantees that their choice to hoard rather than risk will be honoured by God.  They shall indeed be cast, as they cast themselves, 'out into the darkness' where the hoarders go to hide their lights under a bushell.  In this sense, if one actually believes in the word of Scripture (rather than standing over it in the guise of a middle-class judge) one must also conclude that such a one who 'does not have, even what he has shall be taken from him'.

Sharing in God's Gift

Philippians 3.4b-14; Matthew 21.33-46 

Ministry is not, of course, for so-called ‘ministers’ alone.  We are all called to share in Christ’s ministry by the commissioning we received at our baptism, albeit in different ways.  In recognition of the fact that the particular shape of that ministerial offering can change from time to time, it is a good idea for congregations to annually call upon its members to prayerfully consider how they might contribute to the ministry of the church in the year to come.  There are two main ways to contribute:  (1) by serving on a group that carries out Christ’s ministry—either locally, or in the wider community; or (2) by providing the church with the financial support it needs to carry out this ministry.  One hopes, of course, that every member will contribute in both these ways!  Still, I recognise that the circumstances of life sometimes make it impossible to do as much as you would like to do.  Ill-health or poverty, in particular, have an impact on what one may contribute.  I  know that, the church knows that, and God knows that.  So please don’t hear anything that follows as some kind of law that you have to obey in order to obtain the favour of God.  If you are sick or short of money, you have burdens that are difficult to carry.  In those circumstances it is the rest of us who are called to help carry those burdens.  For the church is, most of all, a community in which the concerns and difficulties of the one become the concerns and difficulties of the many.

As many of you will know, the proper resourcing of the church’s ministry is guided by the ancient Jewish concept of stewardship.  Stewardship, in a nutshell, is a use of resources which understands that those resources do not belong to oneself alone, but are given by another for a particular purpose.  Stewardship is sharing in another’s resources in a way that honours the spirit in which they are given.  You can see the stewardship principle at work in the story we heard just now from Matthew’s gospel.  Here Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who invests heavily to set up a working vineyard.  He then invites some people to run the vineyard on his behalf.  Together they form a covenant in which both parties will reap the fruit that the vineyard produces because both parties have contributed to the resourcing of the vineyard.  The managers agree to act as stewards for the landowner, to run the place so that it will produce a bountiful harvest in which both parties can share together.  For Jesus and for Matthew, the parable is a picture of the relationship God has formed with his people.  God is like a landowner who has entered freely into a covenant with human beings, a covenant that will bear abundant fruit for us all so long as the land is managed wisely, according to the landowner’s intentions that is.

By analogy, the Christian tradition has always gone on to say this:  that nothing that you own and no skill or talent that you possess belongs to yourself alone.  It belongs to God as well.  God is the co-owner of what you have because God is both its creator and enabler. What you have was given you according to a particular covenant or agreement:  that you take what you are given and use it only to bear the fruit of faith, hope and love in the world.  So, while we are free to be as creative as we like with what we are given, in the end our gifts will only bear truly good fruit if they are managed according to the Maker’s instructions.  If they are not, or if we get greedy and deny the Maker his share in what we produce, then things will eventually go bad for us.  According to our parable, the Maker will one day call us to account for what we have done with his gifts.  Why?  Because the nature of the gift is this:  it can never be possessed and hoarded for one’s own benefit alone.  Like the manna God gave in the desert, if you take more than your fair share, the gift will go off and disappear.  Gifts are given so that they will remain gifts, freely given over and over again, so that the whole community can benefit and not just those who are strongest or brightest.

In turning to the writings of Paul, we find that all the gifts and talents we are given can be summed up in a single word:  Christ.  For Paul, Christ is the gift that reveals what all God’s gifts are ultimately for—our transformation from people who feel we must compete with one another into people who accept ourselves and one another.  Let’s look at the psycho-theology of this for a moment.  In the passage we read from Philippians, Paul contrast his former life with that he now lives, albeit incompletely, with Christ.  His former life was lived according to ‘the flesh’, which means that he built his sense of being worthwhile in the world upon the social and cultural expectations of his time.  As a Jew of Palestine in the first century, there was a particular way to get ahead, to become a winner.  First, one had to have been born a Jew.  A non-Jew didn’t have a chance.  Second, one needed to join the Pharisees, a political and religious party that wielded great influence and power on the basis of its claim to truly understand what was right and wrong.  Third, one needed to be zealous in making life difficult for anyone who didn’t share one’s views of what was right and wrong.  In Paul’s case, this meant persecuting the earliest Christians. 

At the time when Paul writes this letter he has, however, become a Christian.  Now he considers all those pursuits, all those ways of establishing one’s worthiness in the world, to be nothing more than ‘rubbish’ (in the Greek it is more like ‘excrement’).  Why?  Because at some point he came to realise that no matter how hard he worked on the matter, he would never establish, completely and unassailably, that he was a good and acceptable fellow in the eyes of his fellow-Jews.  There would always be someone whom he both respected and envied who could look at him as an inferior, a person who was not yet what they were.  There would always be—if I may translate into a more contemporary idiom—more fashionable, more wealthy, more laudable people about, who could make him look and feel unworthy by comparison.  For that is what this phrase ‘the flesh’ means for Paul: a social and cultural system of written and unwritten laws which is designed to make us all failures. 

Now what the gift of Christ did for Paul is what it can do for all of us as well:  release us from our bondage to any social and cultural assessment of our worthiness or unworthiness.  How?  By declaring that God loves and accepts us just as we are.  By untethering our sense of worthiness or unworthiness from what other people may or may not think.  By measuring our ‘rightness’ not according to the winds of social, or even religious, fashion but according to the love and forgiveness of God made manifest in the gift Christ made of his very life.  Paul promises that if we are prepared to die with Christ to the basic principles of this world—its pecking order, it fascination with wealth and status, its tendency to make us all unworthy—then we can also be raised with Christ into a world in which everything is a gift, and therefore no-one can claim to have worked their way to the top via some kind of meritocracy. 

The prize Paul strains towards is therefore a rather funny kind of prize.  It is not the prize that our society and culture values—the prize of houses and cars and superannuated luxury.  It is the prize of being freed from the compulsion to own and possess everything we see.  It is the prize of knowing that everything one has is a gift, and can therefore be given again.  It is the prize of detachment from the values and material acquisitiveness of one’s society, because Christ has already given us the only thing that it truly valuable:  God’s love and forgiveness. 

In this perspective, perhaps you can see that the responsibility to consider, prayerfully, how you will serve Christ’s ministry on an annual basis has little to do with any law or expectation.  On the contrary, I would encourage you to see your reflection on such matters as an opportunity to give tangible form to nothing other than God’s amazing grace.  Freely you have received from Christ all that you need and more.  You are free now to give what you have received, without in any way losing anything that is truly valuable.  For in Christian perspective, it is the giving itself that is also our freedom.  If we cannot give what we have away, we are still in chains.  It is not we who possess the thing, whatever it is, but the thing that possesses us.  By giving we are released from this possession.   And we receive into ourselves the gift of Christ’s very self, a self that is the pure gift of God’s acceptance—never measurable according to the scales of our world, never quantifiable according to our usual measure of success of substantiality.  And yet . . .  is there anything more real and valuable in all the world?  I think not.