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"Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Poorer?"

Matthew 25:14-30
November 16, 2008

“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. The one who had received the five talents
went off at once 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
seed; 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.’

Today is stewardship Sunday, the day when we gather up our pledges for the
upcoming year’s budget, and it’s also the time when I am to give some sort of safe
sermon that either encourages you to consider being more generous than you
currently are, or, in an economy likes ours, to simply assure that your generosity will be
meet with God’s own generosity, that it’s OK to give as freely and generously as you’ve
given in the past, even in this weakened economy. I think those things are true, but I’m
going to go in a different direction with our text from Scripture today, one that I actually
preached on back February of 2007. I looked at my sermon from that time, and it was
very conventional reading of this parable, and one that has been around for a long
time, in one form or another. But because I’m feeling squirrely, and because I’ve
always been a little troubled by this parable, especially when you dig a little deeper and
think things through, I’ve decided because of all of these things that we’re going to look
at this parable a little bit differently today. Those of you who were part of the “Humor In
The Bible” Lenten series have heard some of this, so forgive me for that, but I suspect
most of you haven’t heard it, and I wanted to share it with you because I do think we are
in the right time, and the right place to hear its message, especially on this stewardship
Sunday where generosity is our key focus.

But first, let me give you the way that most people have interpreted this parable—and it’
s a very valid way of understanding the text, to be frank and honest, and I’m not so
much arguing against it as perhaps muddling up the picture and offering a different way
of looking at Jesus’ parable. The typical way of handling this text as a preacher would
be to say that this parable is about how God has given to each of us a set of gifts,
talents, capabilities, that we are entrusted with, and for which we are responsible for,
much as these servants are responsible for these talents, or large amounts of money,
during the time when the master of this house is gone off for a long trip. These
servants are to invest that money, to nurture, to make it grow, during the time he is
away, much as we are to invest our talents, and to nurture, and use them to be about
the kingdom’s business until the master arrives back home—until Jesus comes back
again. As I mentioned last week, Matthew 24 & 25 is called the “little apocalypse”, the
texts where Jesus talks about the end of all things, and so this interpretation fits in
nicely with the context. But there are words of warning as well—if we do not nurture the
gifts God has given us, if we don’t use them and invest them into the work of the realm
of God, as the third servant did not, then what little we would have been given will
actually be taken from us, and there will be a punishment, a gnashing of teeth and
weeping—a very vivid picture being sketched out by Jesus. The point of this parable,
as interpreted by most, is that this is about being good stewards of the gifts we are
given, and you can see why this text seems like the perfect one for a day like today,
when the whole issue of stewardship is right there, right before us.

But there are problems with understanding it in this particular way, problems that
become apparent if we did a little deeper here, and put it into historical context. The
first thing to notice is that unlike almost all the other parables in the Gospel of Matthew,
Jesus does not say these words right before he tells the story: the kingdom of heaven
is like this. No, instead, he simply starts it off with, “for it is as if a man...,” and so on.
Maybe that ought to clue us in on the fact that this isn’t your typical parable, that maybe
Jesus isn’t trying to advocate for the world view expressed here, but is, in fact, trying to
point us away from understanding the world as the characters in the story seem to
understand it. And the reason why I say that is because some of the values expressed
in the story seem to be in direct contradiction to the values that Jesus was teaching his
disciples only chapters earlier, in this very Gospel, especially in the Beatitudes in
chapter 5. For example, if you think about it, this story seems to say exactly what we’ve
all come to believe about this world, especially in the last few years, this cynical idea
that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer in this world. I mean, isn’t that the way
the world works? Recent studies have shown that “Nationwide, the average income
rose 9.0 percent for the top fifth of families, edged up 1.3 percent for those in the
middle fifth, and fell 2.5 percent for those in the bottom fifth of the income scale.” (http:
//www.pbn.com/stories/30659.html)   Most of us are middle class, but staying middle
class has become harder and harder, and yet there more millionaires in this country
than there has ever been.

That old sayings seems to be true, at least for most of us, but what’s so striking and
maybe troublesome about it for us here is that it seems to be a truism that works in the
spiritual world as well. It almost seems as if Jesus is saying that the more gifted you
are, the more likely you’ll be even more blessed, and the less gifted you are, the less
likely you’ll be blessed. So, is it spiritually true that the spiritually rich get even richer,
while those of us blessed with less patience, less kindness, less goodness, are going to
even lose what little we have? That’s not good news for me!   And it also doesn’t seem
to fit in with what Jesus seems to say on the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes,
where it seems to turn the world’s ways of doing things on its head: Bless are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven—in the Gospel of Luke, the “in spirit” is cut
out. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek
the nobodies, for they will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:1-3). In contrast to the old
saying that “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer,” the spiritual values of Jesus
seem to say that the “rich get poorer, and poor get richer, at least spiritually, and in the
Gospel of Luke, it gets more literal, because Luke is obsessed with material
possessions, and what to do with them. This parable doesn’t seem to fit with what
Jesus seems to be teaching, at least if we interpret it the way it has been traditionally
interpreted.

And another thing that has caused a lot of people to wonder is that image of the master
in the parable, the one people assume is representative of God in the story. The
problem is that isn’t really a pretty picture of who God is, if you think about it. First, the
man never questions his servants on how they made their money…and believe me,
even in the first century, getting a 100% return on an investment would raise as many
eyebrows then as it would now—usually the only thing that get you that kind of return is
something under the table, something illegal—maybe cocaine trafficking or something
like that—I mean, something’s not quite right here. I certainly think that it could be
exaggeration for the story’s sake, but would those ancient listeners have heard it that
way, as simply an exaggeration for the story’s sake?   Or would that have also been a
little puzzled by those who seem to be awfully successful investors, perhaps too
successful? And there is the issue of the master, and what kind of man he is: did the
third, unsuccessful investor have real reason to fear for his life, if he didn’t produce
100% returns on the money entrusted to him? Remember in the parable where that
third servant says the master was harsh, and that he sowed where he did not reap, and
gathered where he did not reap? Think about it for a second—he’s essentially
accused his master of being unethical, of being a thief, of taking what is not his, going
into other people’s fields and stealing their grain? And what’s even odder is that master
never actually refutes him—he simply repeats back what the other guy said, as if to
say, “oh really.” And it gets even stranger, especially if we make the mistake of thinking
that master is meant to be God in this story, because this same guy then tells the third
servant to violate one of the tenets of Jewish law, which was to lend money for interest—
it was considered to be terribly unethical for a Jewish person to charge interest,
because it was truly seen as the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.

So, if there are all these problems here with this text, or at least problems with
interpreting this as a kingdom parable, interpreting it as a way of seeing how the
kingdom of God really works, what the kingdom of heaven is like, then what in the world
is Jesus trying to tell us here? And how would those earliest listeners have heard this
parable—and keep in mind his earliest listeners were overwhelming poor, not part of
the elite class, not the wealthiest and the brightest of his generation? How would they
have heard these words? Well, Douglas Adams in his book The Prostitute In The
Family Tree says that they would have heard it as satire, as Jesus making fun of the
powers that be that think that they stand on no one’s shoulders, that they are self-
made men and women, that have gotten what they deserved in this life by pluck and
grit, as they used to say in the South. In the ancient world, the richest people believed
that as well, but they believed that there was a divine element to it as well, that you
could see who God favored by how much they had in this life, that these were the good
people, the righteous people, that God had blessed them with lots of stuff because they
were, in fact, good honorable people—that was the conventional wisdom of the day,
much like it is in some quarters today.

But in our parable today, the ethically challenged, the unscrupulous, seemed to be the
ones who are benefiting the most from the system, the ones who are on top, and the
one who is cautious, who wants to avoid doing anything illegal, who knows that if he
doesn’t produce the results his master wants, illegally or not, he is going to be the one
who pays the steep price for doing the cautious thing and ethical thing. For that
ancient and poor listeners, they might have heard this parable as reflecting their
reality, their reality of being exploited by those in power, reflecting their own reality that
the rich get richer and the poor, well, they get poorer, even to the point of being kicked
out of the kingdom, ironically, for doing the more ethical thing—not getting that money
unethically—cocaine trafficking or something like that, or lending out that money for a
little bit of profit. I think what they might have heard thousands of years ago is
someone saying to them, that in fact, they are loved by God, and this God is for them,
even if they have nothing, even if they are told by others that the fact that they have
nothing shows that God is not on their side, is not for them. In next parable Jesus tells
after this one in chapter 25, we find out the goats in the parable of the goats and the
sheep, the goats are surprised that they find themselves on wrong side of God’s
judgment, and I think this parable before us today is hinting at that truth, that we will be
surprised at how dependent we really have been on the mercy of others, the goodness
of others, and the mercy and goodness of God.

In our culture, we struggle with the idea of the self-made man, the one who pulls himself
up by his own bootstraps, who with enough hard work has made his way in this world on
will and pluck alone. And those, those who haven’t achieved, well, they haven’t tried
enough, worked hard enough, and all those things we hear. Well, some of that may be
true, but sometimes the system makes sure that some people don’t have the
bootstraps, and don’t have the hope needed to get up and do. There are no self-made
men, there are no self-made women—there are only people who have climbed on the
shoulders of mothers, fathers, friends, teachers, strangers, who helped them to get
there. Look at your own belly buttons, and you and I will quickly realize that no one is
self-made—we’ve all been given gifts on the journey to get us where we are at.

In fact, in reality, all of it was a gift, right, one way or another? I mean, think about it—
think of all those who we need to thank for getting us to this point in our lives—our
parents, grandparents, friends, teachers—especially our teachers—who gave us gifts
along the way so that we could achieve what we have achieved in this life, whatever
those achievements are, even if it just surviving, just keeping our heads above waters,
which describes a lot of us nowadays. And, of course, it goes even back to those who
nurtured our faith—we believe in God, because others believed before us, and we are
the recipients of God’s grace through this particular church and all the other churches
we’ve ever attended because others believed that God’s grace still seem to flow
through the church, flawed and human as it might be. Those ancient listeners, they
knew the game was fixed, they knew that it wasn’t likely they were ever going to achieve
the wealth and status of those that Jesus is making fun here, but, unlike the elite in this
parable, they didn’t fool themselves into thinking that they could go on this journey of
life alone, and they didn’t fool themselves into thinking that they had done it all by
themselves, even if it was just surviving from day to day. Unlike the wealthy of Jesus’
day, and even our day—and that may include us, in comparison to others around the
world—those ancient listeners knew they were dependent on God, and each other in
order to get through this good but difficult world sometimes.

And maybe that is what we do at this church as well, when we show up every Sunday:
we acknowledge how connected we remain to the First Giver, and we acknowledge how
connected we are to each other—and how really dependent we are on God and each
other. God has been so good to me—I’ve been given less than I wanted, but I’ve
probably been given more than I deserved in this life, and on Stewardship Sundays, I
am always reminded of that truth—that it was all a gift from God and from the people
that loved me, raised me, taught me, stood beside me, nurtured me, corrected me, and
accepted me for who I am, warts and all. I give because others gave before me, in this
church, in all the other churches that I have been a member of, and I give because
others gave to me when I needed the help, whether it was my dad slipping me a twenty
when I was headed back to college after a brief visit, or when it was something more
valuable, like a word of appreciation and confidence after a day that stripped me of all
my belief in myself and my skills. We go on the journey together, following after the
way of Christ, with each other, together—notice Jesus gathered a GROUP of disciples
around him, because we will need each other on the journey. This is one of those
places where fellow travelers meet each other, fellow disciples who follow after the way
of Jesus, a place where we meet each other on a weekly basis, gathered around our
worship of God, who has knitted this unlikely group of sinners and saints together in
this moment, and all the thousands of Sundays that came before this one on this day.
God has been so good to us, for 155 years now, and God will remain so, and I think
one of the reasons God has remained so is because we know how much we owe to
God, and how much we also owe to each other, and to the ones who went before us.
Amen.