“A Harsh God?”

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

September 18^th, 2005

 

The Parable of Money in Trust

Matthew 25:14-28

Luke 19:12-24

Source Q

 

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;

to one he gave five talents,

to another two,

to another one,

to each according to his ability.

Then he went away.

 

The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents.

In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.

But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

 

After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.

 

Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying,

“Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.”

 

His master said to him,

“Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.”

 

And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying,

“Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.”

 

His master said to him,

“Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.”

 

Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying,

“Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”

 

But his master replied,

“You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.”

 

 

The parables of Jesus are invitations.

They invite us to look at life in a different way.

 

Through his parables, Jesus challenged what people thought was true.

His parables revealed a different kind of truth.

Flannery O’Connor got it when she quipped,

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

Jesus’ parables are odd.

They are upsetting.

They are puzzling.

 

They are so odd and puzzling, that since the time Jesus uttered them,

they have been changed.

They have been moralized.

They have been interpreted and reinterpreted.

They have been watered down.

They have been made more palatable.

They have been made to fit our understanding of life of Jesus and of God.

 

The Gospel writers changed his parables to better fit their story of Jesus.

 

Both Matthew and Luke place this parable in their

narratives as an allegory for the return of the Son of Man.

The Gospel writers say in effect,

“Jesus is coming back, so use your talents wisely or else face the judgment.”

 

This parable has had a long history of interpretation.

It has been used as the Gospel for Capitalism.

Who is rewarded?

The ones who go out and trade and make money.

 

Perhaps the most common interpretation of this parable has to do with defining talent as skill, gift or ability.

 

It is because of this parable that in English the word “talent” came to mean ability.

The most common interpretation of this parable has been for the past 800 years,

that we have been given abilities, gifts, skills—that is talents--

So, don’t “bury” them, instead, use them.

 

I think that the parable says more than that.

 

Let us look at the parable at face value.

A wealthy man, a landlord leaves town.

He entrusts his money to his slaves.

It is a lot of money.

 

The Greek word “talenton” was a unit of measure.

One talenton is precisely 20.4 kg of silver.

One talenton in Palestine during the first century was estimated to be the wages of a day laborer for 15 years.

 

To one slave he entrusts ten talents, 150 years of wages.

To another, five, 75 years of wages.

To the third, one, 15 years of wages.

 

The landlord does not tell them what to do with the money.

He entrusts it to them.

What would you do?

 

The most horrible thing that could happen would be to lose it, right?

This is what I would do.

I would bury it and guard it.

 

The first two slaves do a dangerous thing.

They risk losing the money entrusted to them by trading with it.

They are crazy.

They are irresponsible.

The obvious question to ask is, “What would the master have done had one of the servants traded with and then subsequently lost the money?”

 

It is important for this parable to work to know that the third slave does the right thing.

He buries it to guard it and to preserve it. He keeps it safe.

 

Ask your elders on session.

If someone gives the church $50,000, are they going to invest it in the market?

Of course not.

They are going to bury it.

They are going to keep it safe with the most secure investment possible.

They certainly aren’t going to take any risks with it.

They are going to take the safest course possible, so the money is not lost.

 

Yet as the parable unfolds, we discover, that the third slave,

by doing the safe thing, does the wrong thing.

He is punished for doing the responsible thing.

The people hearing this parable would say,

“This isn’t right. The landlord is harsh.”

 

Thus, the scandal.

 

Jesus, in telling this parable, was not talking ultimately about money or landlords or slaves.

I think he was using this parable to tell us the mysteries of the divine domain.

He is addressing a question that we all ask in many different ways:

What is required to be O.K. before God?

 

The religious authorities in Jesus’ time are not unlike the religious authorities in our time.

They taught that the Law, the gift of God to humankind, was to be carefully observed.

How do you observe it?

You bury it, which means that you keep it, you preserve it, and you obey it.

Faith is something to be kept.

You obey the authorities who have been entrusted to tell you how to think.

You pass this thinking on unblemished to the next generation.

If you do that, you will be rewarded.

 

We hear this today.

Go to church, get saved, be good, have the right beliefs,

do the religious stuff, and you will get rewarded.

Those who have strayed will be punished.

Novelty is bad.

Freethinking is bad.

 

I see in this parable a commentary on how we are to respond to our faith tradition.

Jesus is challenging our common assumptions about what it means to please God.

Through this parable, Jesus tells his hearers that everything they have been told about what is required to please God, is wrong.

According to the parable, the wrong people are rewarded.

The risk takers are rewarded.

Those who have put the tradition in danger by playing with it in the open market of ideas are rewarded.

 

Jesus is saying to his hearers that whatever they think that they are doing in order to make it to heaven or to please God, is wrong.

They have been misled.

 

The original hearers were scandalized when they heard it.

So scandalized that the church has consistently softened the parable,

and has turned it into a parable about stewardship.

Sure, it makes the parable more palatable, but it misses the scandal.

 

The scandal, in my opinion, is that for Jesus, there are no extrinsic rewards.

The point of the parable is not that you will be rewarded for taking risks, either.

Jesus is challenging the assumption that God will reward or punish our behavior altogether.

Through the device of telling a parable in which the rewards and punishments are reversed, Jesus in effect tells us that rewards are not external, but internal.

 

This, I think, is the scandal.

 

There is no heaven. There is no hell.

If you live your life in order to get to heaven, or to avoid hell,

no one cares, least of all, God.

 

No wonder Jesus was executed.

The religious types couldn’t handle it.

The religious authorities had a good deal going.

They still do.

Control the people by fear,

and you can get them to do what you want.

 

Jesus turns that whole thing on its head by telling a parable of a guy who does the right thing and is not rewarded,

and the people who do the crazy thing are rewarded.

 

Jesus, through this parable, invites us to look at God and at life differently.

 

Think about this for a minute.

What if, in the end, there are no rewards or punishments?

Or to put it another way, what if in the end, everyone, without exception, goes to heaven?

So it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, you make it anyway.

How, then, would you live?

That is the scandal of this parable.

 

John Lennon wrote the greatest song in the last half of the twentieth century, in my opinion. It is called “Imagine.”

 

To refresh the memory, here are the lyrics:

 

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there are no countries, it isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

 

John Lennon, if you remember, scandalized the religious community with that song.

“If there is no heaven and no hell, how can people possibly do the right things?

They need to be controlled.

They need to know that God will punish the wicked and reward the righteous,” they said.

 

I think that John Lennon’s song resonated with the message of Jesus.

That message was that rewards and punishments are not extrinsic, but intrinsic.

Simply put, if you want to do the right thing, do it because it is the right thing. Period.

 

If we allow the third slave to be the typical religious person,

then he was right and he was wrong.

He was right in that he did what his religion taught him.

He was wrong in that he believed his religion taught him the right thing.

He thought that the landlord, or to put it allegorically, God, was harsh.

 

That is what much of religion has basically taught us.

Much of religion, including Christianity, has taught us that God is harsh.

Of course the tradition has never said that.

It says that God is love.

Yet at the same time this loving God supposedly sends the non-believers to eternal torment.

That, I do not think, is true.

Nor do I believe that Jesus taught or believed in that kind of God.

 

The question that this parable invites us to consider is this:

If there is no heaven and no hell,

if there are no external rewards or punishments,

then why be a Christian?

 

If you can answer that and remain a Christian, then you understand the message of Jesus.

 

Jesus, in my view, taught that trust in God was to live life for life itself.

It was a message of freedom.

 

We can make whatever choices we wish to in life.

We can decide that the purpose of life is to grab as much stuff as we can,

and find happiness in that.

No divine punishment, no divine reward.

 

We can decide that the purpose of life is to live altruistically,

and find happiness in that.

No punishment, no reward.

 

The choice is ours.

There is no big daddy or big mommy to tell us what to do.

No one will give us spankings or lollipops.

Any reward is within.

 

What do you do with that kind of freedom?

 

A person who lived that freedom is one of my great heroes of faith,

Albert Schweitzer.

He wrote a book entitled, “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.”

After he had done his research, he concluded this regarding Jesus:

“He comes to us as one unknown.”

Then he closed his book.

He got a degree in medicine and moved to Africa.

There he worked a ministry of healing.

 

I entered the religious profession because I wanted to find Truth.

Not long ago I heard on NPR a wonderful sentence that has put it in perspective for me.

“The search for truth is deconstructed in the searching.”

 

In other words, the search itself is the reward.

 

As I reflect on my ministry,

I have discovered the intrinsic reward for me.

Others who have responded to my preaching and teaching have articulated it.

They have said, to paraphrase:

 

“Thank you for giving me permission to discontinue my belief in a tyrannical God.”

 

Or to put it positively,

 

“Thank you for introducing me to a God of freedom.”

 

That is what makes it worth it.

 

I have not been one who goes head over heals for creeds.

Yet this parable has prompted me to declare some truths.

I will close with what I consider to be the message of Jesus.

This message is condensed in five simple statements.

I have decided to call these statements my five fundamentals.

 

1. Consider your life and your limited number of days.

2. Articulate a purpose for your life.

3. Accept that the rewards for following your purpose will be intrinsic.

4. Live your purpose.

5. Allow others the freedom to do the same.