The Parable of the Third Slave
Pentecost 22 (A) – Proper 28 – for St. Francis’ Episcopal
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25: 14-30
The Rev. Jeri Gray-Reneberg
I know that many of us have been used to hearing the word,
“talent” in the Parable of the Talents, and have tended to think
about abilities and skills. But what it really meant to Matthew’s
community of early Christians was a huge amount of money.
One of the oldest definitions of a talent was, “the amount a good
man could carry.” What a laborer usually earned in a day was
one denarius, or one coin. In contrast, one talent was the
equivalent of about twenty years of wages, or in today’s terms,
about $850,000. So the man who received two talents received
about forty years’ wages, and the man who received five talents
got about a hundred years of an average man’s earnings. It’s a
little mind-boggling!
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When we understand a little of the background, the third slave in
Jesus’ parable of the talents doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.
There was a lot of money at stake – after all, even one talent was
more money than many people saw in a lifetime. According to
Biblical scholars, it was a prudent thing to do to bury your
money in the ground, and the rabbis would agree. It was
unlikely to be stolen, and at least it would be safe. He probably
took the additional precaution of burying it by the light of the
moon!
Bible scholar Hampton Keathley speculates about the
motivation of the third slave:
"He figured that if his master was going on a long journey, there
was a chance that he might never come back. Now, if the
servant put the money in the bank, he would have to register it
in his (master’s) name. Then, (if) his (master) did not come
back, his master’s heirs could claim it. He reasoned, however,
that if he buried it, there would be no record. If his master did
not come back, the servant would have it for himself. If he did
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come back, his master could not accuse him of dishonesty
because he could still produce the talent. It was a cunning that
was built upon uncertainty that the (master) was returning."
So we might describe this slave as prudent, greedy and
calculating. He describes himself as afraid. Afraid of this harsh
man who had saddled him with such a responsibility. And, if he
admitted it to himself, he might have been afraid that the master
would see in him a serious ambivalence. After all, he was
probably hoping that the master would never return to claim his
money!
But it is obvious that the master already saw some of this –
because he gave this ambivalent, fearful man only one talent,
instead of a greater amount. The text says that the master gave
to each “according to his ability.” The Greek word we translate
as “ability” is δυναμις, which can also mean “power,” and from
which we get the word, “dynamic.”
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So what are these “powers” that the men had in different
degrees?
The first is the ability to not let fear overcome them. Phyllis
Tickle speaks of this generous, powerful master whom many of
us see in this parable as God. She says, in defense of the third
slave, “To know God, as the moral slave knew, is to be afraid.
To know God, really know God to the limits of human
observation, is to concede that he does indeed make his rain to
fall upon the just and the unjust alike. To know God as far as
observation will take us is to acknowledge, as the fearful slave
acknowledged, that he’s a tough man, playing by rules we can
easily question and often find deplorable. Such knowledge…
would make almost any thinking person afraid, and thus it was
that the unprofitable slave took up the shield of playing it safe in
order to hold his fear at bay.”
The question then becomes, what about the other two? Weren’t
they also afraid of this man who seemed to play by different
rules? Yes, Phyllis Tickle says, undoubtedly – but they had two
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qualities that the other man did not. First, they were confident
that he WOULD return, because they KNEW him. And second,
they saw that as a good thing! They loved their master, and
yearned for his return. She says, “they positively glowed in the
light of him and his approval. They also yearned so completely
that they gambled with his goods in pure, blind faith that that
was really what he meant for them to do. They yearned so
completely, in other words, that they believed his intention – his
spirit, if you will – as they understood it, and they gambled
themselves on fulfilling it. They, in short, loved the master with
all their hearts and souls and minds, for this is the first and great
commandment, and all the others are secondary to it.”
But should we have no pity for the unprofitable slave? It may be
speculation, but we might see that one of the master’s actions
might have added to his self-consciousness and fear. When the
master first summoned the three to entrust his property to them,
they might have come together at the same time. And
obviously, the first would feel the confidence that his master had
in him by being given five talents. The second wouldn’t feel too
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bad, because he was still given two talents. And although the
third was also given an incredibly generous amount of money, in
comparison, it was the least. He might have felt the burden of
comparing himself with the others.
We live in a society that is much more public, and more critical,
than it was even ten years ago. Competitors on reality T.V.
shows boast of their superiority, all the while their bluster hides
a real vulnerability. They simply don’t know what they will do if
they don’t “win.” And when they are compared with others and
found lacking, they cover as best they can until they can get off
camera and cry and rage and rationalize why the judges were so
blind that they couldn’t recognize a true winner. They weep and
gnash their teeth, and some part of them – hope, maybe – dies.
They know that in a world where people are always measuring
themselves – their gifts, their money, their success – against
others, they will not win. Or they will win this time, but most
likely not the next time.
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In a contemporary psychological sense, the third slave has
suffered a deep wound that might seem healed on the surface,
but will always be vulnerable to infection or illness or other
conditions of low immunity.
As Frederick Buechner adds:
“It seems to me that the one-talent man represents… somebody
who buried the richest treasure he had… the most alive part of
himself – buried it in the ground. He was never able to become
who he might have been. I think the outer darkness the Master
casts him into is not to be thought of so much as a punishment,
as it is to be thought of as the inevitable consequence of what it
means to bury your life. If you bury your life, you don’t have
your life. You don’t meet other people who are alive. You are
alone; you are in the dark.” From the one who has nothing, even
what he or she has will be taken away. “Those are hard words.
That if the life is buried, if the pain is somehow covered over and
forgotten, instead of growing, you shrink. You become less; you
become diminished.” (PAUSE)
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So where is the good news for us in this parable? Where is the
encouragement to go on from day to day, knowing that although
we would like to imagine that we are the first or second slave, it
is much more likely that we are the poor third slave that we
somehow dread we are?
First, let us take comfort in the fact that we are not individual
Christians trying to save our own lives, to present the best false
front that we can summon for others, while we try to become
stronger, more intelligent, less foolish and fearful inside.
As James Howell comments, “…maybe what God needs is
people who will huddle up, shake their heads and confess, ‘We
just have no idea; the treasure is too big, too heavy.’ Maybe
then, and only then, we can dare something for God. God gives
the gospel not to ME, so my ability can be put to good use, but
to US, so our inability might be exposed and God thereby
glorified.”
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If there is anything we know of the gospel, of this unbelievable
story of God’s love for us, it’s that the risen Christ didn’t come
to individual Christians to get them to believe, or to “make a
choice for Christ.” In fact, as with the story of doubting Thomas,
when individual Christians try to make sense of this wildly
improbable good news, we often fail miserably. We need each
other. We need the Spirit that is among us whenever two or
three are gathered together. We baptize people not so that they
will be individual, “saved” Christians, but we baptize them into a
particular community. Our treasure is a corporate treasure, and
while we know that God loves each one of us, we know in our
hearts that “God so loved the WORLD…”
The third slave who became caught in his own doubt, greed and
fear lost sight of the larger community, so he buried the valuable
treasure. The first two, who KNEW the master, may have had
moments of doubt and fear, but they might have also had each
other. Maybe mutual cooperation and encouragement allowed
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them to keep alive the idea – ultimately good news – of the
master’s return.
As those of us who attended the diocesan convention were
reminded, and as we learn increasingly at St. Francis’, without
community in the Holy Spirit, we aren’t church. Without that
community, we fear and bury and weep and gnash our teeth.
Without the community who speaks gospel and truth and love to
us, we forget who we are, whose we are, and where we are being
called to invest all that we are and have – in God’s mission, all
around us.
Amen.
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