Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30
Lectionary Link
The parables of Jesus are wisdom allegories to teach in very indirect ways. They are not like a syllogism of logic that starts with premises and end with logical conclusions. Rather, they are units which evoke experiential musings. As stories they relate the inexactness of life situations and asks of listeners and reader to learn the intuitions of the art of living.
The parables are as instructive in what they leave out and they are open-ended in their meanings. They are teasers and koans to return to in continuous reflection and they take on different meanings which mirror the particular message that we might need at different times in our lives.
The well known parable of the talents is assigned in the fall when most parishes are conducting their stewardship campaigns in doing financial planning for the next year. Certainly many can and do use the parable of the talents to promote stewardship in the mission of the church.
Stewardship is not just for raising money for the parish, because it is a very basic message of Jesus. Life is a gift that is given but it is very undeveloped. Human lives must be developed, and done so in optimal ways. The epitaph that none of us wants on our tombstone would be: He had lots of potential. Imagine a gardener inviting you to his house to view his seed collection. Lots of seeds but no garden.
In the parable of the talents, the mostly absent boss hands out money to his servants to invest, in amounts of five, two, and one talents.
Those with five and two talents, invest their talents and when the boss returned they had doubled their talents, and were praised highly for their investment efforts. The servant who had been given one talent confessed that he was afraid of losing it, so in fear he buried it in the ground so that he would at least not present his boss with a loss of his asset. And so, his one talent was taken from him and given to the one who had doubled his five talents.
This parable bespeaks the law time and growth where change is inevitable and so the quest is to influence the outcomes in time. This parable is about the seeming cruel law of atrophy; use it or lose it. We must work in ways to influence positive outcomes in our lives and the belief of Jesus is that we as human beings have significant freedom to influence outcomes in our lives. Remember that this Gospel literature is being read by an oppressed community who might be intimidated by their circumstance. What freedom do we have in light of the Caesar's control of our lives and community?
But where is the strength of the realm or kingdom of God most poignantly to be active and influential? Within the borders of the epidermis of the human body. The kingdom of God needs have no rival within the epidermis of the human body. Don't let the outer environment intimidate or steal from the individual who resides at the volitional command center within the borders of the epidermis.
The parable of Jesus is meant to inspire human agency within the realm in which each person has volitional control, namely, within one's own person.
Rather than treat the parable of Jesus as being cruel in its punishment of the man with the uninvested talent, we should merely let the parable inform us about probabilities within the field of freedom in our lives.
One of the important lessons in life is not to let fear paralyze us from developing the gifts of our lives. Fear is being persuaded more about a negative outcome rather than a positive outcome. The opposite of fear is faith, and faith is acting toward hopeful outcomes.
This parable highlights one of the central transformations espoused in the Gospel: transforming the energy of fear into the energy of faith.
Fear is based upon the belief that we have no agency to develop better outcomes in our lives. Faith is being persuaded that we can continuously cooperate with events of grace to invest and invest and invest the gifts of our lives toward better outcomes.
I think the message of Jesus is about the discovery of the events of grace which provide the stimulating power to act persuasively toward better outcomes in our lives.
The message of the parable is an invitation for us to move on from the paralysis of fear to the grace activation of faith, whereby we choose to live celebrating our agency to be better today than yesterday, starting with the kingdom which is found within the borders of our epidermis. And if we can bring better outcomes within our interior lives, we can begin to effect positive changes in the exterior environments and communities of our lives.
May God help us to the graceful insight of faith as the ideal transformation of the negative energy of fear. Amen.
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