Jesus told his disciples this parable: “A man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another two; to a third, one–to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money.” (Matthew 25.14-18)
As a small boy, I was intrigued when my grandmother told me that she had buried money in mason jars in her yard. Crawling into her lap and looking into her face, I’d listen as she’d tell me how burying money was the surest and the safest way to keep it. Explaining how the banks had failed during the years of the Great Depression, resulting in people losing the money they had deposited in the bank, she said putting the money in jars in the ground was the smart way to go.
Even more interesting to me was learning that her practice of burying money in the ground had not stopped when she had moved from the farm into town, assuring me that she still put money in jars in the ground, at least on occasion, convinced that banks were not completely trustworthy even after President Roosevelt had implemented the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933.
Hearing her talk of the jars buried in her yard, I imagined mason jars planted all over the yard, although she was quick to say that she only had one or two and, more importantly, she always put them beneath a rose bush or another shrub so that she could easily find them. I have some vague memory of watching her unearth one of her jars on at least one occasion.
Knowing her to be absolute in her belief in Jesus, I wondered later in life how she squared her practice of burying money in the ground with the story that Rabbi Jesus told of the man who did the same thing and who, as a result, received a strong rebuke from his boss who called him both wicked and lazy. Perhaps I saw parallels where she didn’t. Whereas I saw Jesus as the master in the story, she probably saw FDR, a man she never trusted completely, probably because he was from the East Coast.
That story of the servant who squirreled away the master’s money by burying it underground is told to us again today. It would be a rare person who has not heard of the story, the parable regularly used by preachers and by teachers to instill the important lesson that we shouldn’t waste our god-given talents, but instead should use them to benefit ourselves and others.
With such familiarity, it is difficult to say anything new about the story. Not that a fresh take is necessarily important. The tried and true message of the story is still important, even if it is a little tired after having heard it so many times. Any shiny surprise in it has been rubbed off through repetition, resulting in no need for spoiler alerts.
This is not to say we can’t benefit from the story. Obviously, we can and should. But we may have to dig a little deeper or look a little closer, in this way not switching off our brains because we think we’ve heard it all before. Just because we heard our mother tell us a thousand times to look both directions before crossing a street doesn’t mean we should stop listening to her words of wisdom.
So, as we take a second look at the selection, we may want to put it into its context, both when Rabbi Jesus told it and when Matthew wrote it down. This story or parable is one of three that Rabbi Jesus told immediately before his arrest and execution at the hands of the religious leaders of Jerusalem. All three are variations on the same theme. The first tells of the lazy servant who wastes his time while the master is away, only to find himself unprepared when the head of the house returns. The second, as we heard last week, tells of the five foolish maidens who also were caught unaware when the bridegroom returned.
The same elements are in the third story. Here, we find three servants, each of whom has been entrusted with a certain amount of money that they are to use to benefit the master while he is away on a journey. When he returns, he finds that the first two servants have been industrious, earning him a nice return on his investment. However, the third, a man apparently ruled by his fears, does nothing to increase his master’s wealth, but instead buries the money in the ground.
Jesus likely told these stories near the end of his days to impress upon his followers that he now was entrusting them with his most valuable possession–his teachings and his way of life. He knows his end is near, smart enough to read the tea leaves rightly, the Pharisees and the scribes meticulously plotting his downfall. So, he, like the master in the story, leaves to his followers his words and ways.
But, as the story makes clear, they are expected to be hard workers, using what he has left them to grow the Kingdom of God upon the earth, increasing it in number, expanding it to the four corners of the world. Conversely, they should heed carefully the judgment cast upon the third servant who squandered what the master had left him, doing nothing with it, leaving it untouched beneath a mound of dirt.
Obviously, the central message Rabbi Jesus wants to teach is the impending judgment that awaits his followers, those who work diligently in the vineyard reaping praise and a welcome into God’s kingdom, while those who are lazy and do nothing finding a harsh judgment when their labor for the day is reviewed, in the end losing what had been given to them and losing a place in the Kingdom of God.
As for Matthew’s intentions in retelling the story, they are much the same as Rabbi Jesus, but he also highlights the message of preparedness for the master’s return. As we may recall, at the time of Matthew’s writing, the expected second coming of the Risen Lord had been long delayed, causing many of his followers to lose heart and to lose their steam, falling back on their promises and falling short on their commitment to the ways and words of Rabbi Jesus.
So, Matthew wants to emphasize to his listeners that they cannot become slackers, even if the Lord Jesus has not returned as soon as thought. As Matthew sees it, the Risen Lord indeed will return and, more likely than not, at a time unexpected, leaving little time to make amends or to change course. Better then to be prepared at all times, resulting in being called “good and faithful servants” and not risk being found asleep or slothful, resulting in being called “wicked and lazy servants.”
For our purposes today, I think it is important that we take a closer look at the third servant, since he is the one who gets it all wrong. What sets him apart from the other two who apparently get it right? After all, the purpose of the parable seems to be to tell us we don’t want to end up in the same shoes as the third servant, promising an uncomfortable fit if there ever was one.
Everything we know about the third servant comes from his own mouth. He tells on himself. When called before the master, he explains himself by saying, “Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.”
Those few lines tell us more than a few things. First, the servant admits his actions–or inactions–are a result of fear. He is afraid of his master and becomes immobilized. Interestingly, up to this point, we have no reason to believe that the master is a tyrant or terrifying. Quite the opposite. He entrusts each of his servants with a huge amount of his money, something we would not expect of a sinister figure. Furthermore, his response to the first two servants is anything but sinister. He praises each of them for their initiative and gives them more responsibilities.
So, in many ways, it appears that the servant’s fears are in his head, not in reality. Granted, we do get a glimpse of the master’s anger when he returns to get an accounting from the third servant. But, even then, the master’s reaction is justifiably provoked by the servant’s lack of action. Had he done something with the money, the master would have been gracious and would have heaped praise on him as he did on the other two servants.
Another thing. What in the world was the servant doing the whole while the master was away on his journey. He was doing nothing. Zilch. Zero. A zombie. Whereas his companions apparently were busy and bustling, building up the boss’s Benjamins, this guy was doing nothing. The only labor he seems to have done was to bury the money in the jar in the ground. After that, he stayed in bed. Or, perhaps, like the errant servant in the first parable of judgment, he “eats and drinks with drunkards.” In other words, he wastes away his life.
His sins, as defined by the master, were his wickedness and his laziness. Or, perhaps they were one and the same. His laziness was his wickedness. “You wicked, lazy servant!” he said to the man, “should you not have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?” It is clear that his failure to act is his principal fault.
In other words, he took the safer course, choosing to do nothing rather than to do something, convincing himself that if he did nothing, he would not open himself up to criticism from his master. Of course, the opposite proved to be the case, his inaction provoking harsh criticism from the one in charge, the one who had put his trust in him.
Years ago, a sports editor for “USA Today” sought to sum up the Los Angeles Lakers, a team he described as “so much talent, [but] so much inconsistency.” He wrote, “The Los Angeles Lakers have no chance to get to the NBA Finals because their All-Stars, aside from O’Neal, aren’t really All Stars, because no one besides O’Neal is a true go-to guy, because O’Neal is kind of a stay-away-from guy down the stretch because of his laughable foul shooting, because they’re not that interested in defense and rebounding and because, well, Bryant doesn’t seem like the next Michael Jordan yet.” He concluded, “Sometimes, this high-flying, high-scoring team is the closest thing in the NBA to a light show, all flash and flair.”
The parable that Rabbi Jesus tells his followers might be telling us the same thing. He’s asking his followers to be true go-to guys, not like basketball players who aren’t interested in defense and in rebounding, which, in the end, should be their job. So, hearing one more time the parable of the talents, we may want to ask ourselves why we are so afraid to do the job Rabbi Jesus has given us to do. In other words, what fears in our head are preventing us from getting the job done? Answer those questions and we might still have time to get into the game before the buzzer goes off.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 