Sunday 19th November 2023

11:00 Portsmouth Cathedral

The Parable of the Talents

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-end

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Matthew 25:14-30

“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.”

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

Our gospel reading this morning ends with these chilling words and in the next verse, goes on to say “As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It is a parable, a story that is kaleidoscopic in its interpretation. It sounds very much like a parable punishing laziness, and similarly so do the other passages that we have heard this morning. But are they? Are we listening closely enough?

Maybe you have heard the gospel story before, the story of the talents or perhaps this has been the first time hearing it. I wonder what your reactions are?

In a short retelling, a wealthy man prepares to leave his home and summons three of his slaves and entrusts them with his land and his fortune, his “talents”, each differing according to their ability. While he is away two of his slaves invest the money and make huge profits for their master. Meanwhile the third slave digs a hole and buries his single talent and returns his single talent to the master. On his return, the slaves who have turned a wealthy profit are rewarded, gifted more wealth, and are welcomed into the “joy of the master”. But the third slave is called ‘worthless’ and is cast into the darkness with warning of eternal peril. Of weeping and gnashing teeth.

Where is God here? How are we to interpret this parable?

Parables are designed to get us thinking. Jesus uses them as tools to reveal the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. Secrets, if only we look hard enough for them.

Rather than asking ourselves what parables mean, I wonder then whether we should be asking about what parables do. How are they equipping us to move from this place, in here, right now in this moment, through our eucharistic feast and into changed lives upon leaving this place. In reading this parable, what do we do with its disturbing tale? What does it do to us? In hearing it, who is this parable highlighting, and who is it erasing? Which voices are dominant, aggressive even, and whose are subdued, silenced even?

This parable, like many others as been one of the most abused within the arc of scripture. Collated in Matthew’s gospel in a chapter about judgement and the end times, the eschatology has long since been interpreted of a God, hand on hip, waiting at heaven’s gates for each one of us, asking aggressively what we did with the time given to us…Similarly, the other passages from the prophet Zephaniah and Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians heard this morning, read as stark warnings to an unruly humanity.

They have been used to present a punitive God. Within the parable God has often been read as the harsh master who desires His followers to be better stewards, to be financially lucrative, ideally for the church, to go into battle against sin, to be spiritually prosperous. This parable has often been used to punish Christian laziness, used to encourage harder working, longer hours, deeper praying.

Maybe, just maybe, the Kingdom of God is not this story.

Maybe the Kingdom of God isn’t about a God who asks of us to produce more, to work harder, to be economically affluent. Even to be a better Christian.

As I read this parable, I don’t recognise God as the master of the story.

Instead, God in Christ is the storyteller, encouraging us, and those first hearers of a better way.

I don’t recognise the God who offers more to those who have more, and less to those who have less.

And maybe that’s because of personal experience.

I have been the victim of abuse from those who only knew the concept of a punitive God. I have known the malign of maltreatment, side-lining and silence from the church that was there to protect me. I have known the plunge into darkness and in my own way the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And on this Safeguarding Sunday we recognise and repent of the ways in which abuse of all kinds happens within Church settings. We lament for those the Church has failed. Safeguarding Sunday, as Harriet outlined at the start of this service, aims to honour the great diversity of humanity made in the image of God, whilst reinforcing what it means to be part of a loving, faithful and safe church community.

How then do we see that parable in a different light.

Instead of seeing the master as a toxic representation of the divine, how might we see it as the story of faithfulness in the hidden places. Because Jesus’ other parables talk a lot about the small, the unseen, the one.

Jesus talks much about the one coin, the one pearl, the one seed. Jesus talks about the single grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying.

I don’t recognise the interpretation of God as the harsh manager who uses deception and exploitation to curry favour. I don’t recognise the God who reaps where he didn’t sow or gathers where he didn’t scatter seed.

See, Jesus uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

Maybe this parable tells us of the trading rules of the Kingdom of God, where the hard work is love. In the words of the letter to the Thessalonians ‘the work of encouraging one another and building one another up’.

The New Testament liberationist theologian William Herzog calls the third slave the ‘whistle-blower’. The last slave calls time on injustice. The one slave refuses to collude in the master’s exploitation. The last slave interrupts the silence. His one buried talent remains untouched and unharmed and is unearthed at his return.

See Jesus, in a few days’ time will know his own rejection as he is plunged into the darkness of crucifixion and torment and death, and then raised to life again.

Maybe then this parable is the refusal to be complicit in the systems of oppression and exploitation in the world. Maybe this parable is the refusal to be tempted to make more money, to work harder, to be the best Christian. Maybe this parable is the about surrendering our power.

And maybe this parable,

in the backwards, upside-down, inside-out ways of the Kingdom

is about our relinquishing our status,

and instead about caring for the one.

About the organic slow growth of faithfulness,

about the fruitful hard work of love,

about the persistence of building one another up.

About giving things to the ground and trusting God for the growth.

Because God has a habit of bringing life out of things buried.

Things long dead are no longer dead with Him.

And as we take the things of the earth,

the things formed in the secret places of the darkness,

as we take the wheat made bread and the grape made wine,

as we hold them up as Jesus did,

and as we taste them,

we see that our Lord, our master, is good, and faithful and just,

and calls us to be the same.

And we in turn will be welcomed with the words of the faithful One ‘well done good and trustworthy one, enter the joy of your master.’

Amen