MP3 File
For many years I have read the Parable of the Talents the way most people do: God is the CEO, Jesus is commending the first two assistants for their risk-taking, and the third assistant is punished for being too cautious and failing to act appropriately on what he knew about the CEO; namely, that “you are a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.”
That is a reasonable interpretation and there are some good lessons in it. But some pastors and scholars have taken a second look at the story because it is offensive to imagine God behaving like the CEO. Most commentators go to great lengths to allegorize the parable to explain how God could behave like the CEO. I learned way back in seminary that usually we shouldn’t allegorize a parable. When we take a hard look at the behavior of the master we realize that he's an absentee landlord who doesn't do any work himself, but lives off of the labor of his slaves. Furthermore, this master wants his slaves to make profit in a way that would be seen in Jesus' culture as of necessity coming at the expense of other more honest people; it would be seen as greedy and grasping rather than smart or virtuous. Even if we say the third servant sees a harsh master and so gets what he expects, the master still plays along with it. The third slave is punished precisely for refusing to break God's commandment against usury – loaning money out at interest (Matthew 25:27). Both the Hebrew bible and the New Testament consistently condemned usury. So we have to ask ourselves: is the behavior of the master in the parable something that God would commend, let alone imitate? Is this the God we see in Jesus Christ? And is this kind of behavior what Jesus expects of God's people? Does God give us the treatment we expect and bring upon ourselves?
If we are dissatisfied with that view of God we must consider if it is possible that Jesus isn’t identifying the God he calls Abba with the CEO. What if we instead hear Jesus making a comment on standard human economics, in which "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer?" If we read the parable of the talents in the context of the next passage – the parable of the sheep & the goats – we learn that the kingdom of heaven is found among those who suffer from such economics – the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner. Might these two stories be an invitation to follow the third servant into the outer darkness and become her servant because that is where we will find Jesus - with those left out when the rich get richer?
This suggests a very different idea of what God is like and what it means to “follow Jesus.” The master is like a God, but a god of this world, a violent uncaring deity. The kingdom of heaven is what it is like when that which is given as currency by the gods of this age is not invested in the kingdom of this world in a way that takes advantage of others. The final servant is the one who “knows” correctly and refuses to invest what cultural gods have given her, even though she knows that this choice will cost her dearly. She is not afraid because she is afraid of losing the money; she is afraid because she knows that she will not please the master, the “hard” one. She is cast into outer darkness–a place where servants of God who refuses to participate in the economy of the principalities and powers of this world wind up.
Now the parable reads as a story about the interaction of the reign of God with the dying reign of this world. What action is the parable calling us to? The answer is given in the next story – the parable of the sheep and the goats. The way we respond to someone like the third servant is the way we respond to Jesus. If Jesus identifies with the third servant as s/he is banished from the successful of this world, then to follow Jesus is to leave places of worldly success and find the outcasts. As we minister to them we are acting like sheep rather than goats. A Christian songwriter I knew some years back named Bryan Sirchio says it well in a song he wrote about following Jesus. The song’s essential message is:
“Jesus said 87 times, ‘Follow me.’ Maybe that's the bottom line of what ‘Christian’ means. But if I'm a follower of Jesus, then why am I such a good life insurance risk? And why, when I do my giving, do I still keep so much when so much hunger exists? And if I follow Jesus, then why do I have so many friends among the affluent, and so few among the poor? And if I follow Jesus, why do missiles and guns make me feel more secure? God save us from the Christs we create in our image: the Jesus who's as left wing or right wing as we; who always seems to favor our side against the enemy.”So, pleasing God means following Jesus into the outer darkness rather than pleasing the master in the parable by getting a great return on his investments. We shouldn't try to please the master in the parable because the world in which people like that come out on top is passing away. Maybe the question for us is whether we can really believe that – if we really can trust God enough to risk living as Jesus taught us rather than according to the demands of those who try to set themselves up in Jesus' place as lord, who try to enslave us to worldly standards by telling us that our security lies in acquiring resources for ourselves, striking out at our enemies.
I need two things in order to take that risk. First I need to see signs that God’s new world is really coming, that in fact it is already present in some ways. Second, I need to see some concrete ways to follow Jesus today. It is always dangerous to identify today’s political realities with God’s new world. Yet it is also dangerous not to.
Another rabbi, Leonard Beerman, rabbi emeritus of Leo Baeck Temple, preached the following words last month on Yom Kippur: “Lest you think that Yom Kippur doesn’t have political implications, let me say to you what I’ve said before. A religion must be political. A religion divorced from politics is a religion divorced from life, and a religion divorced from people. I am not talking about partisan politics in the synagogue. No, religion must be political because this world is political, for this world has to do with the decisions we make, the decisions that determine who shall live and who shall die, and how we live and how we die. A religion that does not help us, cajole us, nudge us, to confront the moral issues present in all of this, is a religion that is just another anti-depressant, a religion that is another anti-anxiety medication, a religion that at best is a subordinate amusement. It is a religion that does not denounce, it adapts. It does not move the heart it hardens the heart. It does not stir the conscience it blunts the conscience. Those who want a religion which blunts the conscience would rob Judaism of what I believe is its moral grandeur.” (Leonard Beerman, “A SERMON FOR YOM KIPPUR MORNING,” October 9, 2008)
And so, I think we must dare to say that the election of Barack Obama is a sign of God’s new world. We know it’s not a perfect sign. As early as the morning after the election I was marching in downtown among people who were already targeting Obama with their shouted slogans: “Listen, Obama, the people are in the struggle.” Yet we cannot deny that by electing Barack Obama Americans said “No” to many evils. Anna Quindlen has written, “There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look [the] old evil [of racism] in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.” (“Living History,” Newsweek, November 17, 2008)
I believe we must also see a sign of that new world in the limited progress toward the end of poverty that has been made on what are called the United Nations Millennial Goals. They were to be accomplished by 2015. In the report made in September by the secretary general he expresses hope: “Looking ahead to 2015 and beyond, there is no question that we can achieve the overarching goal: we can put an end to poverty.” The report gives examples of goals that are on track: primary school enrollment around the world is 90% in all but two regions; gender parity in primary education is up; deaths from measles and AIDS fell; malaria prevention is expanding; the incidence of tuberculosis is expected to decline by 2015; 1.6 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water.” Then the Secretary-General says what we must do: experience has demonstrated the validity of earlier agreements on the way forward; we know what to do. But it requires an unswerving, collective, long-term effort. Time has been lost. We’ve wasted opportunities and face additional challenges, making the task ahead more difficult. It is now our responsibility to make up lost ground – and to put all countries, together, firmly on track towards a more prosperous, sustainable and equitable world.”
So there are signs of God’s new world. But there is much to do. Following Jesus means that we – not just others, but we – will be the ones who do some of that. A Celtic theologian named Herbert O’Driscoll says, “I suspect that being saintly is connected with handing over one’s self-will to a greater will…” He recalls George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan. He said, “there is a moment in that play when Joan of Arc is trying desperately to get Charles, the insipid, spineless dauphin, to show some initiative. In her exasperation she shouts at Charles that there is one thing he has never learned. Intrigued, he asks her what that is. Joan of Arc says, “Charlie, you have never learned that we are put on this earth not to do our own business but to do God’s business.’ And that realization, O’Driscoll argues, is at least the beginning of being a saint.” To know that you and I are here not to do our own business but to do God’s. (Herbert O’Driscoll, “The Community In Time,” A Year of the Lord, p. 133)
The Bible doesn’t leave us in the dark about what God’s business is. It’s loving God and loving neighbor. God’s definition of neighbor is not limited to those who live in your zip code, though it better include those. Your neighbor is anyone who has been beaten and is lying in the ditch of life. Your neighbor is anyone who needs you to be neighbor to them. Your neighbor is a child in America underserved by our society. Your neighbor is a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay without due process. Your neighbor is a civilian in Fallouja who is suffering from illegally dropped white phosphorous incendiary bombs. Your neighbor is someone in Darfur who is living in a refugee camp fearful of no food, fearful of being raped tonight. (Ed Bacon, sermon 110908)
We can’t literally follow Jesus into all those places. But we can work to improve their lives. As we prepare for the presidency of Barack Obama we would do well to remember a story Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. told about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In one situation, a group came to President Roosevelt urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: I agree with you, I want to do that, now you go out and make me do it. Schlesinger said he understood that a President does not rule by fiat and unilateral commands to a nation. A president must build the political support that makes his decisions acceptable to the voters. FDR read the public opinion polls not to define who he was but to determine where the country was – and then to strategize how he could move the country to the objectives he thought had to be carried out. (William J. vanden Heuvel, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Man of the Century,” an address by to the Monthly Meeting of The Century Association, Apr-4-2002, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.)
We can help President-elect Obama close Guantanamo and say that torture is unacceptable. This morning’s bulletin tells about an event next Sunday where you can learn more about that. Many have been demonstrating for the right of people to marry the person they love. Some are attempting to raise children to understand what it means to follow Jesus into situations like this. Bringing food for Thanksgiving gift baskets is a concrete way to do this.
John Bell from the Iona Community in Scotland helps us picture the new reality: “Heaven shall not wait for the poor to lose their patience. Christ has championed the unwanted; so injustice confronts its timely end.” Will you follow Jesus into the outer darkness where injustice is confronting its timely end? That is the question this parable leaves us with.
No comments:
Post a Comment