You’re probably all aware that we are reaching the end of our liturgical year, in two weeks we will be in Advent, and with the end of the liturgical year we are hearing the last lessons from Matthew’s Gospel. They are not the easiest ones. They are what we call the “Parables of judgment”: The wicked slave (24:45-51), The ten bridesmaids (25:1-13, you heard it last week), The talents (25:14-30, we hear it today), and The sheep and the goats (25: 31-46, we’ll hear it next week). Most of these parables are unique to Matthew’s Gospel, and we tend to shy away from them because they seem too harsh, especially in progressive and liberal churches where we promote an inviting image of God, where we put the emphasis on Jesus’s teaching about generosity, forgiveness and compassion. We will certainly not dispute that. The thing though is that if there are recurring themes in the Bible, judgment is certainly one of them. Judgment is actually a huge theme in the Bible, from beginning to end, and although Jesus certainly knew how to tell a chilling story, to his Jewish audience, he wasn’t saying anything too shocking. People expected and actually longed for the Day of the Lord where all wrongs would be put right. They believed that something was terribly wicked in the world, and they believed that only God’s justice could put an end to it. So Jesus had to address that. The second thing we need to be aware of is that those parables were told in Jerusalem, during Jesus’s last week on earth. The stories are more dramatic because the teaching is more intense and more demanding. Jesus is leaving soon and he tells his audience how it will be like when he comes back, whether we believe it will happen in this life or the next is not the issue. The question that inhabits all of Jesus’s parables of judgment is: Will we be ready for what comes next?
So let’s take a deep breath and start to unpack together what Jesus’s parables actually teach us about the judgment, instead of trying to avoid the question.
There are a few things we need to notice to start with. First of all, indeed, we need to have in mind that what we read is a story, a parable. Jesus used this way of teaching to capture people’s attention and to lead them to question their faith and their lives. Jesus does not explicitly say that the Master is God or that the servants are Israel or the faithful ones, but he says that it can be compared to that, or maybe he asks the question: What would you think if it was like that? In our story today, Jesus does not say so much that God is the kind of Master he describes, rather he wonders aloud: If God was this kind of master and if Israel was this kind of servant, do you think it would make sense that this and that happen? Would it be wrong or would it be justified? I also bring to your attention that a talent was the equivalent of 50 pounds of silver, the equivalent of 15 to 20 years of wages. Jesus often spoke about money, but when he did he usually talked about it directly. When Jesus talks about money in a story it is always a symbol, so the audience has to decide what it stands for. I am saying all of this so we understand that there are a lot of gray areas. It is a story about the judgment, not a description of the judgment itself.
So how would the judgment be like? The main idea of the story is that the Master gives his servants a gift and then leaves them free to do whatever they decide to do with it, but in the end they have to be accountable. I like to think that a talent is such a large sum of money that it covers the needs of so many years, almost a life span: 20 years (the one talent), 40 years (two talents) or even 100 years (the five talents). It can be compared to the time God gives us on earth, or to the way God covers our basics needs, a testimony to God’s generosity, or even deeper than that, it is the price of Redemption: God covers the debts of our sins for a lifetime. Whatever way we read it, we have to understand that Jesus shows us in the Master an example of extreme generosity and trust. I know the word “salve” is used, but it really does not describe slavery as we have come to practice it in human history. Here, the Master gives his servants complete freedom to do whatever they decide to do with his gift and to me this is a good reflection of the character of God.
Now we have to understand that the servants are also accountable for the gift. The problem with that is that we read it with a sort of capitalist mentality. We assume that, because the Master praises the servants who made five more talents or two more talents, God asks us to lead productive and successful lives. But I don’t think this is the way Jesus would have preached it. There was no concept of productivity in the first century. The idea here is to be fruitful and to “bear fruit worthy of repentance” (Matthew 3:8): Being welcoming, generous, compassionate, forgiving. We don’t have to save the world, Jesus did it, but we have to respond to the love that has been shown to us, to live out the values of the Torah, and for us Christians, to live out the values of the Gospel. As God has given us, we have to give to others: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sinned against us (Matthew 6:12). This is basically all of Jesus’s teaching. Again, this is a story that Jesus told the disciples the very week he would be arrested and put to death, and so we can wonder if through the story he does not ask them this question: What were they going to do with his legacy? With all the miracles they witnessed, the teaching they heard, the example Jesus gave them? They were, of course, to multiply it.
So what happens if they don’t, and how are we to understand the Master’s anger and the third slave’s condemnation in the story?
– Well again, first of all we have to notice that the issue isn’t that the slave fails, it is that he does nothing. He hides the gift, he puts it in the ground and forget about it until the Master’s return. The problem is not that he made the wrong investment, the root of the problem is that he does not care for the gift, and even more, he does not even acknowledge it as a gift. He can’t wait to give it back to the Master.
– Indeed, there is no mention that the two first slaves gave back what they had to the Master. They just say that they used the gift and enjoyed it. The third slave hands out the talent and says to the Master: “Here you have what is yours“. The salve confesses that he does not trust the Master and has a very poor image of him: He sees him as tough and unfair: “A harsh man [who] reaps where he didn’t sow“. If we look at the story closely, we understand though that it isn’t how the Master is: Again he is generous, he gives his salves freedom, he wants to share with them his wealth and his joy.
– From there, and based on the third slave’s word, we understand the real issue: The third slave does not love the Master and does not trust him so he does not want to receive anything from him. Would you accept the gift of someone you hate? No, you wouldn’t trust a gift from an enemy. And we have to consider that’s the way people often sees God. It isn’t only for atheists, but for all of us. Paul says that we all were God’s enemies: For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:10)
The only thing we can do is to accept and to enjoy the gift. Jesus teaches that there is a real possibility to be separated from the love of God, in outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, but if anything the story tells us that it will be our own doing, our own refusal that will cast us away from God. There is no idea of torture or pain inflicted of us, just immense regrets. The gift indeed will be taken away from us, if we decide we don’t want it.
So what does it say to us today? Well, I think that if anything it invites us to recenter on the awareness of what God has given us and how we respond to it. Are there places in my life where I refuse to see God’s goodness towards me, or where I refuse to trust God to give me good things? The goodness I have received, am I willing to pass it on to others in acts of welcoming, compassion and forgiveness? Do I believe that what God has given me is too small or to fragile to be multiplied? What is the kind of generosity I live by with my time, my money, my skills, my abilities and my spiritual gifts? In the end, is my life a joyful response to the Master’s gift or a distrustful hiding away?