The Parable of the Talents

In Matthew’s Gospel, as Jesus’ time with his disciples winds down, he tells his disciples three parables about the last judgment (or, God’s ultimate justice). Last time, we looked at the Parable of the Bridesmaids, with its message to be prepared. Today we’ll look at the second of the three, the Parable of the Talents — a parable whose interpretation has literally changed the English language.

Text

While Luke includes a very similar version of this story (Luke 19.11-27), I’ll be looking at Matthew’s version. Continuing directly on from the Parable of the Bridesmaids, the text goes like this:

[25.14] ‘For it is just like a man who, as he was setting out for another country, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them: [15] to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one—to each according to his ability. Then he departed. [16] The one who had received five talents immediately went off, conducted business with others, and earned five more talents. [17] Likewise, the one who had two talents made two more talents. [18] But the one who had received one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. [19] After a long time those slaves’ master came and settled accounts with them. [20] And the one who had received five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying: “Lord, you handed entrusted me with five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” [21] His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful slave; you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” [22] And the one with two talents also approached and said: “Lord, you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have made two more talents.” [23] His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful slave; you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” [24] Then the one who had received one talent also approached and said: “Lord, I knew that you are a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed. [25] So I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, here you have what is yours.” [26] But his master replied, “Evil and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? [27] In that case you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was mine with interest. [28] So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. [29] 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. [30] As for this worthless slave, throw him out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Experience

For a long time now, I’ve been pretty keen on the personal growth side of theological spectrum. So, I naturally take kindly to the traditional interpretations of this parable that see it as a call to work with what we’ve been given in order to bear as much good fruit as possible. But I’ve also always been a bit grossed out by the master’s talk of the rich getting richer — it sounds true of the world but surely not of God’s kingdom!

Encounter

In the parable we have a cast of four characters: a wealthy master who goes on an extended foreign trip and leaves his property in the hands of three servants, each according to his abilities. And true to form, the two who are entrusted with more are able to double what they have, while the one who is given the least to work with ends up being too afraid to do anything with it.

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Narrative Details

We shouldn’t be surprised that the master entrusts this money to slaves, since enslaved people could occupy very senior and important roles: it was a legal status, not a statement of ability, or even necessarily of education. A talent was a huge amount of money, equal to several (15-20 years by many estimates) years’ wages (Stern; SBL; Case-Winters 277). A spiritualized interpretation of the parable that expands its scope from money to talking about all that we’ve been given, including our skills and abilities, has been so common that the word ‘talent’ itself has come to refer to such human resources in English rather than to money. The first two stewards engage in trade and double their investment. While we may laugh at the third slave for burying the money, this was a common way those for whom banking was out of reach to keep their wealth safe (Stern; see also the Parable of the Buried Treasure).

Reckoning

The substance of the parable is revealed when the master returns from his long absence. This absence parallels the bridegroom’s delayed arrival in the previous parable and again suggests that the time between Jesus’ departure and the ultimate establishment of his justice may be longer than expected (SBL; Stern). But, delay or no, there will be a reckoning, a calling to accounts, just as we see in the parable. The first two slaves, who both double what the master had given them to work with, are praised, while the third is judged severely. Before we look at why this might be, it’s helpful to think of the scenarios the parable doesn’t mention. For example, none of them invest money but lose it, there’s no situation in which someone who received less money makes more than someone who received less, and there is no story of someone who squanders the money. Here, the one who made five talents receives the same reward as the one who made two. (In Luke’s version, each of the slaves receives the same amount of money to start, and the the first two receive a reward proportionate to their earnings, but this is not in view here in Matthew.)

The point is that the parable doesn’t seem overly concerned with the amount of money — indeed the master seems to delight in spreading it around and seeing where it leads (Capon). Rather, the parable, tying back as it does to the message of readiness of the Bridegroom, cares about what is done with the time and resources given (Case-Winters 277; Scott 233). As Scott notes, stewardship stories always involve a test of responsibility (Scott 233). The third slave has been irresponsible, not by wasting or losing what had been entrusted to him, but by squandering it through inaction and hoarding. Money only has value in being used; in refusing to work with the money, he has nothing to show for the opportunity he’s been given.

Both versions of the story root his inaction in his fear of the master (Scott 235; Nuechterlein 28A;^ Capon): He believes him to be  hard and unscrupulous. The irony is that he gets the master he believed in. This is explicitly stated in Luke’s account (”I will judge you by your own words” (Luke 19.22)), but the idea is consistent with the teaching of Matthew that we will be judged by our own standards and get the God we believe in (Nuechterlein).

Scott sees in this a further veiled criticism of the Pharisees: they see the Law as something that might be lost and therefore must be protected at all costs, so they insulate it in layers of legal bubble wrap. For Jesus, however, it’s something to be played with and probed, so as to liberate the faithful to love more freely (Scott 234). What Jesus wants is boldness in faith and radical investment in life, not fear (Case-Winters 277).

Challenge

Subversion of First-Century Expectation

According to the majority of commentators, the main way the story subverted first-century expectations was in its treatment of the third slave. The world of investment and finance would have been out of the reach of most of Jesus’ audience, and the practice of hiding one’s valuables was generally understood to be the most prudent way of managing them (Nuectherlein; Scott; Capon). He pulls the rug out from under them by saying that when it comes to the coming kingdom, this kind of prudence and conservatism doesn’t work.

Contemporary Challenges

That said, it’s becoming common for interpreters to object to this interpretation because of its troubling root metaphor (See Nuechterlein for a strong and sympathetic summary of such arguments). As Neuctherlein states the objection, “If Jesus comes to save us from our violence by empowering a new Way of being human, then it includes our politics and economics,” so this parable with its apparent message that “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is deeply problematic. Their solution is to read the parable not as pointing to the kingdom of heaven but revealing the evil of the kingdoms of this world. Just as he read the man without a wedding garment as a Christ figure, so Nuechterlein sees Jesus as the third servant here: the one rejected and cast out by the ways of this world.

There are a couple (to my mind fatal) flaws in approaches like this. First, they remove the parable from its literary context: It’s hard to see how this message would explain the Parable of the Bridesmaids’ urgency of being prepared. And second, this is not the only place Jesus expresses the proverb about the rich getting richer. We already saw, for example, that he uses it when explaining why he teaches in parables. If we reject it outright here, we need to do the same everywhere else we see it. As I wrote in that post:

The important question is whether this is a prescriptive saying or a descriptive one: That is to say, does God actively give to those who already have and take away from those who don’t, or is it a general truth that one has to have in order to get more? The latter seems the most likely solution, not just theologically, but also logically. It was a basic economic principle known in the ancient world as much as today that the best way to get further ahead in the world is to already be ahead (Walton & Keener)… So in our world it often does seem like the rich do get richer and the poor poorer.

Here [in his explanation of his turn to parables] Jesus applies this principle to spiritual perception: The harder one’s heart, the more crowded one’s life, the more certain one is about one’s existing beliefs, the more difficult it will be to truly hear and understand what God wants one to know. Conversely, the more attuned one already is to hearing God’s messages, the easier it will be to hear and apply further.

This interpretation can easily be extended to this parable: The more actively engaged we are with our faith, the more good fruit it will bear, and good fruit begets good fruit, so this perpetuates. Conversely, if we just sit on our faith, ‘preserving it’ perhaps, but not doing anything with it, it doesn’t do anyone, least of all ourselves, any good. This reading is both consistent with how Jesus uses the saying elsewhere and appropriate to the urgency of this final series of parables.

In what is a bit of an interpretive leap, Capon notes that this can also tie back to the Parables of the Kingdom and Grace (and the Sermon on the Mount) and their concern with “the lost, the least, and the little” (Capon). For the first two servants are praised for being “faithful over very little.” This is reminiscent of the Kingdom working in the smallest things, like a mustard seed or yeast, and the desperate hunt for the one lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son.

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This interpretation of the parable helps us to grow in faith and love by rejecting fear-based, stingy, images of God and the frightful religion they promote. Exulting in a God who is generous and infinitely creative, and who delights in our own generosity and creativity, it inspires us to invest in, work with, and play with our faith and see what beautiful things might come from it.

It’s impossible also not to think about faith and fear in our current political moment. So much of what seems to be driving the new rise of the far right is nothing other than fear, and the exploitation of that fear by powerful people to gain more power. With this parable, we must reject fear as a driving force in both our politics and religion, for “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4.18).

Summary & Conclusions

For the second of his three final parables of judgment, Jesus builds on the need to be ready described in the first. He defines this readiness in terms of an active engagement and investment in our life of faith. It isn’t something precious and fragile that needs to be protected — such a spirit won’t do anyone any good. Rather, it’s something to used with boldness, for the love and life of the world.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.

^ All references to Nuechterlein in this post are to his post for Proper 28A.