For Sunday, November 16, 2014 – Matthew 25:14-30
Really? ‘Throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?!’ All because the servant fears the master and has poor investment strategy? What a disturbing conclusion to a complex parable. Who would want to serve a master who ridicules the economic prowess of someone who has never been entrusted with resources, who has never had the benefit of banking or entrepreneurial endeavors? Does it make sense for the master, who hasn’t even been around for a very long time, to be so utterly exasperated, at the end of his rope, on the brink of sending a whole batch of us away? I do not feel good about this frightened servant burying the little he has and then being called “wicked and lazy.” This is not the kind of servant I want to be. This is not the master I want to serve. I might as well just go ahead and cast myself out now. Or maybe I should stand up to Jesus.
I notice we tend to interpret parables in the same ways we interpret ourselves. If I am feeling judged or judging, cast out, pretty much a failure where Jesus or any other higher authority is concerned, then I see these in the parable. At other times I see myself as having been entrusted with resources and doing as well as I can with what I’ve been given. One of the things I see today is what a mess I can get into when I am afraid that I won’t have enough, that I won’t be enough. What a mess, when I see my higher authority, the one who provides, as harsh and demanding. Oh, what weeping and gnashing of teeth I endure when I hide out, when I bury precious parts of myself rather than risk having the whole me be brought to the light. What a mess it causes when I am reluctant to stand up and say, wait a minute, Jesus! You are not finished with me yet!
I think Jesus teaches with stories not to give us answers but to urge us to participate. Stories invite us to interact with him, to ask questions, to challenge and even disagree. We are not being prepared for a pop quiz on Monday; we are being prepared for our lives. Maybe with this parable, he hopes beyond hope that we will not continue to be stony-faced listeners. Maybe he wants us to react and stop accommodating the myth of this kind of master, the master of mammon and harsh punishment who would cast people away. We can stand up and come into our own. Jesus is a new kind of master, and we can be a new kind of servant.
