The Lectionary gospel text for tomorrow is Matthew 25.15-30, also known as the Parable of the Talents.
And it's a preacher's dream text for Stewardship Sunday drives. So I'm sure that's the direction so many of us will be going in our sermons.
But I think that's all wrong.
First, there's that ambiguous word, "talents". In Greek, it's just "money", but so many of us have heard this parable associated with Stewardship for so long, that we automatically think that trio of "time, talents and treasure". Then there's verse 30, which no preacher ever preaches in context, so I always advise preaching students just to leave it alone. There's also the incredible increase of ten talents and three talents doubling in their value due to the commitment and industry of the faithful servants, and the inevitable impulse to think that anytime a King gets mentioned, it's got to be God showing up in the parable.
Even before a preacher ever opens his or her mouth, most of us have heard this Parable so many times that we automatically hear Jesus showing up and berating us for not doing enough with what we have.
But is that the correct way to preach this parable?
Let's take a closer look, at the risk of ruining some great Stewardship Sunday sermons.
1. The unchallenged premise of so much preaching of the parable is that the divine figure of the story is "a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed". But that's not the God of Israel, Yahweh who brought God's people into a land flowing with milk and honey, drinking from cisterns they did not dig and reaping harvests that they did not plant. Read Exodus and Joshua and Jeremiah again. It's unlike the God who tells harvesters to harvest badly, leaving the edges of the wheat, leaving dropped sheaves behind, not stripping the vines or shaking the olive trees, so that those who have nothing to sow can reap anyway. Read Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Ruth again. It's also unlike Jesus' sower who goes out and throws seed wastefully all over the place, knowing that whatever lands on the good soil will produce beyond one’s wildest dream. The "lazy" servant's depiction of the assumed divine figure -- which goes unchallenged -- is not the God made known in Jesus Christ.
2. The moral of this story, as it's often preached, is all wrong too: "For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away". Read Amos again. Amos warns against those who add field to field and -- instead of leaving behind the edges and dropped sheaves for the landless -- sell the sweepings of the field. It's contrary to Jesus' preaching elsewhere: His warnings against greed and his "good news to the poor" all throughout Luke. And it's contradicted by the living witness of the Church in Acts and both Corinthian letters. This is why preaching this Parable on Stewardship Sundays will leave any preacher embarrassed. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer? How's that the God of Grace made known in Jesus Christ?
3. Then there's the problem of the King's (if the King is God) absence. The absence of the divine figure is customarily assumed to be the early church's struggle with the delay of the parousia, with questions about how to live faithfully until the Son of Man comes again. But anyone who's read Matthew closely knows that the apocalyptic event here isn't some delay in returning on Jesus' part; it's the destruction of the Temple. Matthew 24-25 have that event in mind. Matthew 28 makes it clear that Jesus is no absentee God: "All authority is given to me ... I am with you always". The Christ of Matthew is present with the Church, not absent.
This parable isn't harsh on the Church. Nor does it need watering down for Stewardship Sunday sermons.
Because this Parable of the Talents isn't about money at all. It's a political vision of being Christian.
It's not a prescriptive parable of how we all need to use our time, talent and treasure well -- as utilitarian as that interpretation may be. This story is a descriptive parable of how the system works when absentee landlords "give" money to servants, only to demand back a healthy return. Think taxes here. It's a descriptive parable of someone who refused to participate in that process, in a situation where absentee landowners and their lackeys were the primary interface between Jewish peasantry and the Roman Empire. That servant -- deemed "lazy" and unfaithful by the Empire -- pays an awful price for refusing to play along. A grim interpretation, perhaps, but no more grim than the words at the beginning of this corpus in Matthew 24: "Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name".
There's a lot to preach here. But Stewardship Sunday sermon material it isn't.