Proper 28(A)

Matthew 25:14-30

The third slave who buries his money doesn't look so bad in today's economic climate. Nonetheless, he is the principal and confounding figure of this odd parable. In the storytelling pattern of three, the emphasis always falls on the third character or incident.

Jesus' first listeners would have heard in the parable a criticism of the scribes and Pharisees, who resisted the crisis that Jesus' ministry created. Our Lord's repeated challenge to the Temple leadership was that they had "buried" the spirit of the faith of Israel under the mass of their traditions and regulations, preserving the status quo rather than injecting the faith with new meaning and relevance.

By the time the early Church received Matthew's retelling of the parable fifty years later, its meaning had begun to change. Again the emphasis fell on the third servant, but the issue now was the early Church's puzzlement over the delayed second coming of Christ: you hear this alluded to when the master, who had departed after entrusting what he had to the servants, returned "after a long time" (verse 19) to see what they had accomplished. The parable makes clear that what it meant to be "good and trustworthy" (verse 21) was not theological correctness, passive waiting, or strict obedience to clear instructions, but active responsibility for developing and expanding the faith's meaning: such actions took initiative. Theological error could creep in. Such commitment could involve risk in the face of Christianity's early opponents.

So given this history of interpretation, what does a postmodern Christian community find in this parable beyond an old-fashioned system of rewards and punishments regarding the afterlife? Is there still a score-keeper God? Most of us have been conditioned to equate the "kingdom of heaven," the phrase with which the parable begins, with life after death. Yet the parable seems quite focused on earthly circumstances-as Jesus almost always is-and their consequences. And so an initial observation might be that we participate in the "kingdom of heaven" or kingdom of God in the very present. This observation can be consoling to those who cannot believe that there's a life beyond this one and encouraging to those who have hope that there is some connection between this life and the next.

The parable itself is strongly postmodern in that it does not lead to a logical and reasonable conclusion. In fact, the opposite is true: the parable leads to a dilemma rather than a resolution. That dilemma is posed by the third servant, whose very first response to the master who has at long last returned begins, "Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed" (verse 24).

But is this true? Wouldn't the first and second servants say something quite different about the master? He even appears to give them the money, and they seem to understand it as theirs, while the third servant returns the money with the words, "Here you have what is yours" (verse 25).

Yet undeniably the parable proposes a painful truth: what we believe about God we reveal in our lives. If the Kingdom of God is both a present and future reality, then we are already participating in what is and will be eternal truth for each of us. Our dilemma is that we prefer to make God in our image rather than our being made in his. I certainly believe that in reflection on Holy Scripture, in worship and fellowship, and in deeds of love and justice, we can change our present and eternal lives, our images of God and ourselves. Isn't the point of our lives to come even in the present to some place of peace born out of love? Does anything else really matter? And our understanding of God either makes this realm ever recede before us, or it becomes our long-sought haven.

Preached by the Rev. William E. Smyth

Calvary Parish

November 16, 2008