Matthew 25:14-30

Matthew 25:14-30     Talents and Risk-Taking

Matthew drew the basic details of the parable from the source that he shared with Luke – though both made changes to it to suit their own purposes.

Consistently, Matthew’s concern was the question of how disciples were to live in the period preceding the coming of the Son of Man.

Significantly, there was no introduction to the story that would follow.  Would it be a baffling parable, an easy illustration of how God does things and what the final judgement will be like, or the occasion for a lesson in something else?

The amounts were considerable.  One single talent was equivalent to the wages that a day labourer might earn in fifteen years.

The setting seemed to be the world of the Empire, where intelligent and competent slaves were not infrequently trusted with administration of properties on behalf of their owners.

In the world of that time, hiding money in the ground was an accepted way to secure its safety.  

Matthew’s note, that the master returned after a long time, served to highlight that he was still addressing the issue of the Lord’s delay.

If Jesus had told the original story, even with somewhat different details, he might have ended at this point.  In the Galilee of his day, his peasant hearers would have heard it as a sad, but all too familiar, account of how things were happening in their changing society.  Big landholders were taking over more and more farms.  Peasants were being forced off their land to become tenant farmers or day-labourers.

In the rural mindset of the time, the sum total of wealth was regarded as fixed - wealth that accrued to one was regarded as wealth unjustly taken from another.  People had no sense of how investment, risk and work could increase wealth without others necessarily becoming poorer.

Given that understanding, the story was by no means an illustration of the Kingdom.  Rather it described life according to the values of the kingdoms of the world – where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The conclusion was essentially Matthew’s.

A common interpretation of the story would allegorise – and spiritualise – it to some extent.  Talents would be seen, not in their original literal sense of quantities of money, but as personal gifts of the creating God, or charisms. The master presumably would represent God.  The point of the story, then, would be that God wants people to use their gifts for the sake of the Kingdom.  Those who do so would be rewarded; those who neglect to do so would be punished.

The interpretation would fit in with the context: living well and being prepared in view of the coming of the Son of Man.

However, the image of God does not fit well with the God whom Matthew had described in the Sermon on the Mount, who makes the sun rise on the wicked and the good, and the rain fall on the just and the unjust [5:45].

A better interpretation is possible.  The parable is not about God.  The story is a parable dealing with the question of how to be prepared while a wealthy man went on his journey, to return only after a long time (the issue of delay). Parables are not allegories, however.  Usually, they have one main point that they wish to make – but the point may not be immediately clear.  

According to this understanding, the story does not illustrate life in the Kingdom, except for the one point.  The first two slaves in the story showed initiative and were prepared to take risks – and it paid off.  The third, out of fear of the master, was afraid to take risks.  He opted for the safe way, the unimaginative way.  And it did not pay off.

Essentially, life in the Kingdom is love.  To love is to trust; it is risk.  Jesus, indeed, had made the point that it involved dying to self in the hope of resurrection.  To love enemies, to forgive, to exercise justice, mercy and love is not necessarily safe.  There is no certainty that they are at all successful, at least, in the short term.  Safety is the option for the status quo; risk is the option for the Kingdom – which is why so many fail to respond to its promise.

Interestingly, practical loving serves to strengthen and deepen love.  The neglect of love means that love atrophies.  For to all who already have, it will be given, and they shall have more than enough; and from those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

The outcome, the outside darkness where will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, does not refer to God's punishment in the next life but to the chaotic experience of life in a loveless and violent world.

Next >> Matthew 25:31-46