Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. At once the one who had received the five talents went off and traded with them and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 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. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
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In his video homily on today's parable (link below), James Alison points out a number of pertinent points about the context and concepts in this parable: eg. according to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, 100% increase was the expected return in these kinds of situations (of course almost all journeys in ancient times took "a long time"), so the first two 'slaves' were just doing what was expected, nothing more nor less; also that a 'talent' was around 30 kilograms (not grams) of gold, which at time of writing would have a value of over (AU)$92 million. So it was not a measly amount given to the third 'slave' that he could not have done much with anyway.
In addition, the language (in the Greek) which the third servant uses is quite proud, even arrogant, and dismissive. It is not the language of a humble servant, but of someone who has a very dim view of the master and is not afraid to tell him so.
One other thought I had is that the 'master' doesn't take the one talent back, but gives it away (to the servant with 10 talents), which gives the lie to the servant's belief that he reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter. The 'master' in this parable is, I think, not at all interested in getting more for himself, but in promoting the flourishing of his servants.
I don't read this as a story of an exploitative overlord who is trying to economically exploit his underlings. To me, apart from anything else, that interpretation doesn't fit in the overall context of, as James Alison puts it at the beginning of his homily, "Matthew's three final parables concerning how to live in the apocalyptic time, in the time in between the Lord's death and his coming - this time in which all the forms of order and the structure of the world will have shifted, nothing will be clear - and how we train our imaginations. ... It's going to be about growth, the possibility of growing and becoming in the time of the bridegroom's absence."
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"The problem of the servant who received one talent and went and buried it is not its lack of yield, but how he imagined that his master would treat him: ‘Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed: and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo there thou hast that is thine.’ In this case it is Luke who makes the situation more explicit; this, I think, because the manoeuvre is less common in his Gospel, while for Matthew it is typical of his way of speaking. In Luke the master says: ‘Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant...’ And that is exactly what happens. Once again it is the subject’s imagination of his master that is absolutely determinant of his behaviour. One who imagines his master as free, audacious, generous, and so on, takes risks, and himself enters into a fruitfulness that is ever richer and more effervescently creative; while one whose imagination is bound by the supposed hardness of the master lives in function of that binding of the imagination, and remains tied, hand and foot, in a continuous, and may be even an eternal, frustration."
- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 153-154
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"So what's going on here? I think that the notion of the kind of partnership that we're invited into is being opened up. Our first reading [Proverbs 31], which is the reading about the fruitful wife, if we stop and think about it, not, if you like, as somewhat patronizing attitude towards women but rather an expression of what a fruitful partner looks like, I think that that's bringing us actually very close to the attitude of the master going away saying, ‘I want a fruitful partnership with you. I'm actually setting you up to be partners. I want to see you flourish, this is what your flourishing will look like. See how much you can dare, see what you can take, get away with, run away with. See how much you can make out of this, that's the kind of thing I want you to understand, that I'm actually with you. Things that look impossible aren't, things that look difficult aren't.’
"And that has been for me the really tough thing to learn. I assumed as, you know, as a gay man, that I was out of being useful. I had no family base, no church base, no commercial base. It seemed quite literally as though I was being asked to come with something out of nothing. And yet, it has been my joy and my discovery that I'm called to be a partner, and that it's the partnership that is the flourishing."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 33 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGptQAGEKzU)
[Source of quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper28a/]
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