Going for broke

Going for broke

It seems we have sanitised the parables, domesticated them, if we are to follow the judgement of a man, Gerhard Lohfink, who has devoted a lifetime to studying them. The Parable of the Talents, we were brought up to believe, is all about using our abilities. Whether they are great or small they will be rewarded equitably. But it seems it is not as simple as that: ‘No one gets executed for teaching nothing more than bourgeois morality!’

But Jesus did get executed and it was because his teaching was explosive. The master, who entrusts his property to his servants, goes away and then returns and demands an account, is the Son of Man who will return in judgement. The master is portrayed by Jesus as a millionaire business man. He entrusts considerable sums of money – which he later calls “little things”, peanuts, in our language, – to his servants and is happy when they make 100% profit. It is unlikely that honest deals would realise such a return so rapidly so the servants must have been into some sharp practice, such as we see revealed in the recent banking scandals in the US and Europe.

The third servant risks nothing but the master doesn’t contradict him when he says, ‘I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering grain where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid.’ This servant is considered ‘worthless’ and is ‘thrown out into the outer darkness’. But he was the one person whose conscience wouldn’t allow him get into all the shady deals.

So the story is neither religious nor moral. It is about the harsh and reckless world of financial speculators and manipulators of interest rates, a world where those who do not take risks lose everything. But why does Jesus tell such a story? Amazing as it may sound, he uses an image from the real immoral world we live in to reveal God’s plan: the new world that he wants to create will only come about when people risk everything. There is no room in it for cowards and comfort seekers. It is those who ‘go for broke’[1] that will create it.

So next time you watch a DVD on crooked business men or ‘terrorists’ spare a thought for Jesus’ message. These are people who risk everything to achieve their ends. We may not like their goals but we cannot help but admire their panache, their flamboyant courage. Would that the ‘children of light’ showed the same!

16 November 2014                 Sunday 33 A

Proverbs 31:10…31                I Thess 5:1-6                           Matt 25:14-30

   

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[1] Go for broke is a phrase from Hawaiian Pidgin meaning "to wager everything". It was the motto of a World War II Japanese-American military unit,