At church this morning, my pastor preached about the parable of the talents. See here
to read the parable in Matthew 25:14-30. In this parable, a master is
going on a journey and entrusts to his servants some talents, which was a
unit of wealth in Jesus’ day. Two of his servants manage to increase
their talents, whereas a third servant, afraid of his master, buries his
talent in the ground. The master on returning rewards the two
profitable servants by entrusting them with more responsibilities,
whereas the unprofitable servant is thrown into outer darkness, where
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The pastor was suggesting that the third servant represents the
Pharisees. The third servant had a negative view of his master and was
fearful of him, and the pastor thought that this was the sort of
religion that the Pharisees promoted, one that was fearful of God. Here
are some of my thoughts about that interpretation:
1. I read Christian blog posts and literature, and they are pretty
down on the Pharisees. There have been times when I have wanted to
share a Christian article or blog post that I found edifying, and I have
decided not to do so because its criticisms of the Pharisees might
offend Jewish people I know. The thing is, I identify with what these
articles say about the Pharisees, not so much because I think that they
get the Pharisees entirely right, but because these articles criticize
trends in religion that I find to be oppressive or just plain wrong:
putting burdens on people, legalism, looking down on others, being
afraid of God, relying on performance rather than embracing God’s love
and grace, etc. Granted, there may have been Pharisees like this in
Jesus’ day, but I wouldn’t paint them all with that brush, for there
were also Pharisees who emphasized love and grace.
2. The pastor’s point did get me thinking: Does the parable of the
talents relate in some way to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.?
There are people who argue that, when Jesus talked about Gehenna, he was
referring to a garbage dump in Jerusalem where dead bodies would be
thrown, and that Jesus was saying that a lot of dead bodies would be
there as a result of the crisis in 70 C.E. On whether I agree with that
view or not, I am mixed: I am open to it, but there are texts in the
Gospels that seem to suggest that Gehenna relates to the punishment for
sinners after Jesus comes back and judges. In any case, 70 C.E. marked
the end of the official Jewish religious cult. That’s what makes me
wonder if my pastor has a point in his interpretation of the
unprofitable servant—-as somehow relevant to the Jewish religious system
of Jesus’ day. The problem with this view is, however, that the Pharisees survived
and thrived after 70 C.E.: they created rabbinic Judaism.
3. I have read similar views to what my pastor was saying this
morning about the unprofitable servant. I vaguely recall reading Martin
Luther saying that the third servant saw his master as fearsome, and so
the master rewarded the servant according to the servant’s beliefs and
words—-the master became fearsome. For Luther, the third servant should
have seen his master as good and gracious. My problem is this: okay,
the servant saw his master as fearsome and cruel. Shouldn’t the master
have tried to prove that servant wrong by being kind to him, even after
the servant made a wrong decision? Instead, the master has the servant
thrown into outer darkness.
4. I struggle with the parable of the talents, yet I affirm for
myself its message of using what God gives us. I do that by praying and
reading my Bible.