33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year
A. Matthew
25:14-30.
AIM: To help the hearers overcome fear, and develop
and deepen trust.
It seems terribly unfair, doesn’t it?
The first two servants are praised for taking chances. The third is condemned
for being prudent. There were no safe deposit boxes in Jesus’ day. Burying
treasure in the ground was an accepted form of safekeeping. Jesus’ original
hearers would have been shocked to find someone who had done his duty being
condemned. Let’s look at the story more closely.
The sums entrusted to each servant
were huge. Our version speaks of “talents”:
five, two, and one. Biblical
commentators tell us that one talent was equivalent to the subsistence wage of
an ordinary worker for fifteen years. The sums involved were clearly enormous.
Jesus’ hearers recognized that at once, even if we do not.
This tells us something crucial about
the story’s central character: the man going on a journey. He is not a bean counter.
Generous in extending his trust, he is no less generous in reward. On his
return from a long absence, he praises the first two servants for doubling the
sums entrusted to them. The words he speaks twice over, “You were faithful in
small matters,” are ironic: the sums entrusted to each, and now doubled, were
not small. They were huge. The master backs up his praise of the first two
servants by inviting each to “share your master’s joy,” words which clearly
imply a handsome financial reward.
The people hearing the story now
expect that the third servant will also receive generous treatment. By
returning to his master the smaller but still enormous sum entrusted to him he
has faithfully discharged his responsibility as custodian. True, he has not
increased the sum entrusted to him, like the first two servants. But he has
also avoided the risk of loss which they incurred by what today would rank as
speculation.
How shocking, therefore, for Jesus’
hearers to find this third servant not praised but rebuked as a “wicked, lazy
servant.” In place of the reward which the first two servants received, this
man, who has acted prudently according to the standards of the day, goes away
empty-handed, banished into “outer darkness” to “wail and grind his teeth” in
disappointed rage at his unjust treatment. The master, who up to this point in
the story has seemed so generous, turns out to be no better than the greedy
absentee landlords Jesus’ hearers knew so well, squeezing the inhabitants of
the land for every penny they could get out of them. The third servant’s
description of the master seems to be all too accurate: “I knew you were a
demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you
did not scatter.” With someone so grasping and unreasonable, prudence was the
only safe policy. “Out of fear,” the third servant explains, “I went off and
buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.”
How can we make sense of the story? Is
the central figure, the master, simply arbitrary: generous with the first two
servants, cruel to the third? So it would seem. The master’s final action
confirms this view. Taking the money which the third servant has faithfully
preserved, he gives it to the first servant as an additional reward for the
enormous risks he has taken in doubling the sum entrusted to him — an example
of arbitrary injustice if there ever was one.
To make sense of the story we must ask
about motives: not those of the master, but the motives of the three servants.
The first two servants acted out of trust.
A man who had entrusted them with so much, they reasoned, was clearly generous.
He could be trusted. The third servant was motivated by fear. He says so himself:
“Out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.” It is this fear which the parable
condemns.
How often Jesus tells his followers,
“Do not be afraid.” The master in Jesus’ parable rewards the first two servants
not for the money they gained, but for their trust. He rebukes and banishes the
third servant for lack of trust. The third servant did nothing bad. As we have
seen, he fulfilled his responsibility. Like those at the king’s left hand in
the parable of the sheep and goats, which follows at once in Matthew’s gospel, the third servant is rejected not
for anything he did, but for what he failed
to do. Fear paralyzed him into inactivity.
The parable is about the one thing
necessary: trust in the Lord who gives us his gifts not according to our
deserving but according to his boundless generosity.
Refusing to
trust, the third servant concentrates on security above all, and loses
all. Jesus is challenging us to be bold.
For most of us that is difficult. Boldness is not our long suit. Like the third
servant, we prefer to play it safe. The boldness of his two colleagues came not
from themselves, but from their trust in the master’s generosity. Burying our
gift to keep it safe is like opting for a low-risk spiritual life, avoiding sin
as far as possible but not loving much because of the risk involved: the risk
of not loving wisely, the risk of having love betrayed, or not returned, and so
being hurt.
Do you want to be certain that your
feelings will never be hurt, that your heart will never be wounded as you
journey through life? Then be sure to guard your heart carefully. Never give it
away, and certainly never wear your heart on your sleeve. If you do that,
however, your heart will shrink. The capacity to love is not diminished through
use. It grows. What mother ever ran out of love because she had too many children?
From the beginning of time loving mothers have found that with the birth of
each child their ability to love is increased.
“Out of fear ... I buried your
talent,” the third servant in the story tells his master. Jesus came to cast out fear.
God did not
send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be
saved through him. Whoever believes in
him avoids condemnation, but who whoever does not believe is already condemned
for not believing in the name of God’s only Son. (John 3:17f)
To escape condemnation we don’t need
to establish a good conduct record in some heavenly golden book: a series of
stars after our name representing our prayers, sacrifices, and good works.
Thinking we must do that is “not believing in the name of God’s only Son.” His
name is synonymous with mercy, generosity, and love. Escaping condemnation,
being saved, means one thing only: trusting him. It is as simple as that. We
don’t need to negotiate with God. We don’t need to con him into being lenient.
We couldn’t do that even if we tried, for God is lenient already. He invites us
to trust him. That is all.
Trusting him means risking all, our
hearts first of all. It means loving: generously, recklessly, without limit and
without conditions. Because that is the way God loves us. And doing that will
mean suffering the wounds that love inevitably inflicts. Show me a person whose
heart is battered and bruised, and I’ll show you someone who has loved: not
always wisely, perhaps, but deeply, passionately, tenderly. I’ve suffered those
hurts myself: more times than I could ever tell you.
With this parable of the three
servants entrusted with enormous gifts on behalf of an absent master Jesus is
inviting us to imitate the first two servants: to recognize the generosity of
the one who gives us our gifts; and to trust him as we use and share his gifts
to us, confident that when the Master returns we shall hear his voice, speaking
to us personally, and with great tenderness: “Well done, good and faithful
servant. Come share your master’s joy!”
