Matthew 25:14-30
“It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them, ... then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.”
Well, I want to know who their financial advisers were because - wow - that’s a great return on investment! The investment return these days is so low that sometimes I think I would make more money if I buried my money in a hole in the ground! The market right now just seems way too risky to put anything in, and I can’t afford to lose anything.
Of course, it does raise the question, why is Jesus telling a parable about investing money? Shouldn’t he be telling a story about how the kingdom of heaven is as if a rich man went away and the slaves took all his money and gave it away to the poor? Wouldn’t that be more in keeping with Jesus’ basic principle that God is concerned for the poor and the oppressed? After all, it was in this very same Gospel where Jesus says to the rich young man, ”if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” So why, in this parable, is Jesus lifting up the first two slaves’ actions as models of what to do with a rich man’s money?
Well, it turns out that Jesus may have been alluding to how money was meant to be invested in the actual economy. You see, the Roman Empire at that time had this idea of what is called a “moral economy.” Now I know that today we might think of that as an oxymoron, but back then it was this idea that the circulation of money and resources was for the good of the whole community. People who were blessed by the gods with riches were morally obligated to put those riches into circulation: to take them to the market and spend them, to pay people for their labour, to have households, ekonomia to switch into Greek, where more than just the immediate family was taken care of.
Of course, this wasn’t just a Roman idea. The books of Torah and the story of Ruth make reference to this same idea: a landowner who is wealthy enough to have fields of grain is commanded not to reap every last stalk, but to leave the edges and to leave the grain that gets missed for the needy in the community (Leviticus 19:9, 23:22; Ruth 2:15-16). There is this idea that the entire community is meant to be blessed by the wealth of the individual - that God has created the entire system so that, as a whole, with proper distribution, everybody really does have enough. Those who are born into positions of privilege are morally obligated to share with those who aren’t. If you happened to be blessed enough to have 1 talent, or 5, or 10, then you are expected to put that back into the community, back into the economy, so that everyone can benefit from it. Burying the riches you have, hoarding it, holding onto it means keeping it from others who would benefit from it, and defying God who has given it to you to share.
Of course, since this is a parable, we know that Jesus was talking about more than just money. His audience were his disciples, who were perhaps not blessed with money, but were blessed with his presence among them. They had been entrusted with the riches of Jesus. Not money, but his words of love, his words of wisdom, his acts of healing and forgiveness. They had been given Jesus’ own power to cast out unclean spirits, to cure disease and sickness, to show people that the world was more than what it appeared.
And Jesus, who knew that he was about to leave them, was telling them that they were to take that love and wisdom, to take those acts of healing and forgiveness, and to invest them in the world. Not to limit them to their inner circle, not to share them only amongst others who followed Jesus like they did, amongst those who would pay it back, so to speak, but to go out, into the public market, as it were, and to invest it.
Which is, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, Jesus’ message for us, too. This parable is Jesus’ word to us, his followers today, that while he is away, we are to take the love and forgiveness that he has extended to us, loaned to us, and to extend it and give it to others. We are to take the Gospel and go out, into the public market, and to invest it.
Which sounds good, that’s why we’re all here, but i have a slight problem with investing, I’m afraid. And that’s that it’s risky. There is no such thing as an actual guaranteed return on investment. Not with the “moral economy” of Jesus’ time, and not today. We can put our “money” out there, and it might disappear. I think that’s what that last slave was afraid of, actually. I think he was afraid that he would invest that one talent that his master had entrusted to him and that it would be lost. That he would come back empty-handed. He was afraid of losing his master’s money, and so he hid it.
And I think we, too, are more like that last slave than we like to admit. We become afraid of wasting the message of love and wisdom and healing and forgiveness that Jesus has given to us to share. Or, at least, I am. I am afraid that if I love my enemies, they will use it against me. I am afraid that if I share Jesus’ words of wisdom, I will be exposed as a naive fool. I am afraid that if I reach out in healing and forgiveness, and am rejected, too many times, that if I do it the “seventy times seventy” that Jesus commands, that I will end up burned out. I am afraid that, in the end, Jesus’ love and wisdom and healing and forgiveness is simply not enough to supply the needs of the entire world, and so I want to hide that love and forgiveness, to bury it, so that at least there’s enough for me and the others who really deserve it.
But where I and that last slave are so mistaken is in our thinking that the master has limited resources. That our master can’t afford to lose in the public market. That our master doesn’t want us to waste what we have been given on those who will just throw it away. Where we are mistaken is in forgetting that what we consider risky, our master does not.
This is the Good News for today, as we continue to wait for the Son of Man to return in glory, as we continue to wait for the kingdom of God to manifest in all of its fullness, as we continue to wait for the economy of God to fill the hearts and bellies of everyone: the Good News is that God has more than enough to go around. The Good News is that it is impossible for us to waste Christ’s message of love and forgiveness because there is no end to that love and forgiveness. We do not need to be careful, we do not need to be afraid of losing what has been given to us to share, because there is more of that where it came from. Christ is not going to be mad if you share his forgiveness with someone who just takes advantage of it. Christ is not going to accuse you of wasting your time and energy when you proclaim his love to someone who refuses to change. Christ is not going to shame you when you proclaim his wisdom and get taken for a fool.
Instead, regardless of the return on investment you receive, Christ welcomes you into his joy. No matter how effectively, or ineffectively, you invest Christ’s words into the world, Christ is joyful and wants you to share in that joy. His joy––your joy––does not come from seeing the return on investment of sharing the Gospel, which may or may not turn a profit, but simply from the act of sharing. The effectiveness, after all, is not up to us, and whenever we think it is, we are sure to be miserable and afraid. Instead, we are free to put Christ’s message of love out into the world, wherever we like, to share it with whomever we like, like Oprah Winfrey giving away cars––”You get Christ’s love, and you get Christ’s love, and you get Christ’s love!” And that, sisters and brothers, is a joy.
As you wait for the master to return, as you wait to report to him on what you have done with his resources, have no fear. Our Lord does not jealously guard his resources, but shares indiscriminately from his abundance, and entrusts and empowers you to do the same. So, since it’s not yours to begin with, share Christ’s love, invest it, waste it, with the joy and abandon of God. God can afford to lose it, praise be to God. Amen.
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