Of course, Matthew 25:14-30 is the well-known parable story of the talents. Jesus tells the parable to His disciples on the Mount of Olives. In the biblical passage that precedes the talents parable, Christ has just compared the kingdom of heaven with ten virgins who went out to meet a bridegroom.
Jesus goes on in this parable to compare the Kingdom to a man who gave his servants talents. Talents are a unit of money roughly equal to a year’s wages of an average, on-the-grind blue-collar person. Jesus says that the Kingdom is like a man who leaves and gives three servants, five, two, and one talent respectively.
They all put their money to work and double it, except for the third one who buried his talent.
When the man returns, everybody settles their accounts with the man. Servants one and two return the man’s talents with interest. He tells them “well, done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will put you in charge over many.”
But the third servant, returned the one talent and tells the man why he does so. “You’re a hard man who reaps what he doesn’t sow. Here’s your talent.” The man of course calls the servant lazy and kicks him out into the darkness.
Now most clergy, particularly the "prosperity" gospel set, exeget the passage and make the first two servants the protagonists of the parable. And, at first glance, it's not an unwise hermeneutic as a general proposition. The first two servants did what they were asked, presumably, and returned the master's money with interest. Sounds good, right?
I’m not saying that that interpretation of the Scripture is wrong, but what if the hero of the story is not the first servant or the second servant who doubled the talents, but what if the third servant was the hero?
Indulge me for a minute. To understand how and why Jesus wanted the third servant to be the hero of the parable, we have to understand a bit about the culture in first century Roman Empire.
There was an economic system in place that was very much like share cropping, slavery, payday loans or rent-to-own stores. Rich landlords owned thousands of acres of land and had a chosen few servants from the masses of people to work the land.
These servants would get land from the landlord and resources with steep interest rates (60% to 200%). To turn a profit, the servants had to exploit their fellow poor brethren to do so and pass goods off at higher rates.
The people hearing Jesus’ parable would have run into people like the three servants everyday and would not have liked them very much.
We also know that the man—the rich man was not a parallel to God at all, he was a wicked man. He divided the servants mentally from the outset. First, simply by choosing them from the gentry created a distinction between them and the people not chosen to work the land. The land owner then gave them talents according to their abilities. That, is a further division. Jesus was one who believed in equality and giving equal shares to everybody.
Next, in order for the servants to double their money they would have had to put it in the same economic system that exploited the same people they loved and cared about. The first two servants do do in fact carry out this system of usury, however the third servant does the admirable thing and takes the money out of circulation from the system. The scriptures certainly speaks against the kind of usury.
The rich man comes back and he collects his money with interest. “Well done, good and faithful servant…” this he says to create further separation and division between them and between them and the rest of the citizens.
And when the third servant talks, it is an indictment on and for the land owner. The third servant is in essence, a whistle blower. He calls the land owner greedy for taking things he hasn’t worked for. The third servant even calls him hard and harsh. He calls out the corrupt system knowing what the consequences might be for doing so. The third servant would have been seen as the sober prudent individual, the one that stay the course and was the protagonist. He shames the land owner and the land owner, acknowledging all of his own bad traits, banishes the servant.
Perhaps we can use our talents to call out oppression and marginalization as well.
Wow! I've got to think about this. I always thought that one of the things the parable was saying was that even if one has a really faulty idea of God, one should work with it. There's also a certain inferiority when one has only one talent and one sees other folks having so much. One feels that one might not do as well with one's puny gift. Plus there is the whole timidity factor. Best to lose while trying than not lose at all. Thanks for the post.
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