Reflection for the Thirty-Third Sunday of the year / A Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Proverbs 31: 10-13, 16-18, 20, 26, 28-31 (RM in Canada), or 10-13, 19-20, 30-31 (RM in the U.S.), or Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18 (RCL); Psalm 128 (RM) or 90 (RCL); 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-6 (RM) or 1-11 (RCL); Matthew 25: 14-30.
Can you trust a crook? Or a predatory business cheater? Or an abuser?
Or someone who claims absolute, all-powerful, divine authority over you?
It looks like we’re facing down another really problematic parable this week, one on which you’d slam the Gospel book shut at first reading. But history is our friend here. And so are exegetes who specialize in the analysis of scripture texts using the historical-critical method and the original languages.
At first glance it looks like the “harsh man, reaping where you did not sow…” is supposed to represent either God, the first Person of the Trinity, or Christ the second Person, presiding at the final judgement, welcoming some persons while violently abusing and rejecting others. It looks for all the world like a moralistic parable intended to scare the socks off of Christians so they will get their house in order before they find themselves before the judgement throne. Reading this at the close of the church year, one in a series of end-of-the-world-in-terror-and-ruin readings, just reinforces that. The dismay goes hand in hand with the fact that when this Gospel was written, almost three generations had passed since the lifetime of the historical Jesus, and he had not yet returned in glory. You can almost hear the early Christian communities complaining, “But he promised!”
The amounts of money, if you figure out the equivalent, are simply astronomical – one talent equaled fifteen years of a labourer’s wages. In Luke’s version the amounts were much lower. Both Matthew and Luke were drawing on an older source for the story. But the real clue that some other meaning was intended here has to do with the vocabulary employed, and what certain specific words would have meant in Greek to the hearers.
It seems likely that the original version was in fact a reproach by Jesus to the religious authorities of his day for their rigidity and refusal to adapt the religious traditions they guarded zealously. One clue is in the term handed over, as in “Master you handed over to me five talents,” which in Greek can mean the passing on of old traditions. Note that the first two servants made the “traditions” grow, while the third buried them in the ground. Another is the word gained, which in the early church referred to gaining new Christian converts for the church community. Another is dug in the ground, literally hiding the light by burying it out of sight. Yet another is the word translated variously as faithful or trustworthy.
This word trustworthy involves not only being steady and reliable, but also courageous and assertive. And here’s a jumping-off point for making this reading make sense to those of us who work for the continuing evolution of our Christian faith communities toward justice, honesty, transparency, and necessary structural reform. Being truly faithful doesn’t mean clinging to what no longer works, or what doesn’t accurately represent what was said or meant, or what remains on the surface and never probes toward deeper meanings. Faithfulness can mean daring risk-taking, articulating a new vision whether or not that vision will be understood. It means running the chance of persecution, bullying or ridicule. Faithfulness means your roots are deep and strong enough, and your trunk and limbs flexible enough, to bend in the wind.
It doesn’t mean burying what we have now so as to prevent any further growth. A fearful person might do that. He didn’t steal the money, just buried it.
So what do we do with this God who harvests other peoples’ crops for himself, and abuses employees for their fear of attack? Maybe just recognize that it came from somewhere in our collective past, and let it go.
A friend of mine signs off Email messages with a quote that turns the famous Serenity Prayer around backwards:
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
© Susan K. Roll
*Edited from the Reflection of November 19, 2023
Susan Roll retired from the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, in 2018, where she served as Director of the Sophia Research Centre. Her research and publications are centred in the fields of liturgy, sacraments, and feminist theology. She holds a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, and has been involved with international academic societies in liturgy and theology, as well as university chaplaincy, Indigenous ministry and church reform projects.
