The first two of the servants, entrusted with a portion of the master's wealth, are notably successful in their investments on his behalf. That the story means little or nothing to the success-religion fixation on Jesus' (numeric) emphasis on "money" references is evidenced by the fact that the story obviously uses the success of the servants' ventures as a proxy for their intents. It would be vapid to image that Jesus intends the moral lessons of the parable to anticipate a situation in which a servant is found morally reprehensible because the rains of God perchance did not fall on the season's wheat crop.
Of course, Jesus' listeners will want to imagine themselves in the company of the venturous servants, and will want to think they have little in common with the despised servant who did nothing but salt his master's money away. (To little avail, as it turns out, since we must assume that this wretch will fall lower in his master's estimation than would a bold servant who lost all in the market. Unfortunately, the thrust of Jesus' parable here does not accommodate a master's statement of, "Nice try, thou good and faithful servant.") The unsuccessful servant is castigated by the master for not having at least entrusted his talent to the bankers for the sake of the interest.
It is this last point that is probably of much more importance than the rousing stories of the two successful servants--whose stories are both one-dimensional and unsurprising. We tend to be surprised, however, (and not a little discomfited) by the servant's explanation of his paralyzing fear--that the master is a hard man who reaps where he did not sow. The master, most importantly, does not deny this characterization of himself--or at least he does not find it problematic that the servant views him so. The master's subsequent declaration--that the despised servant should have at least deposited the talent with the bankers at interest--must of necessity translate into an instruction to the listener, and it would be as good a surmise as any to assume that Jesus means for us to persevere by such means as we can, even as we feel only an indifferent affinity with what we can understand about the character of God.
There is much about the character of God that we do not understand, and that is bound to leave us troubled. Unquestionably the God of Jesus' teachings (for all that we want to associate Jesus with love) is the God of eternal (and therefore infinite) damnation for finite misdeeds. It would be a foul lie to pretend that this prospect does not echo the notion of the master reaping more than he sows. This is not the same as to say that humanity's lot is infinitely dismal in the exchange. Jesus speaks much about salvation as generously offered and easily obtained. The wretched servant is dealt with harshly, but the extent of his failing need be seen as no more than the difference between placing a talent with the bankers or placing it under a mattress.
And, as I promised, the matter of the opponents of the master's elevation to king is revisited at the end of the parable. These persons are to be apprehended and slain in the presence of the master-now-king. Harsh indeed are the master's judgments, but taking a deposit to the bank or refraining from contesting an official's elevation are scarcely such duties as would consume all available joy from a person's life.
And we must ask ourselves if life is ever to be free of plodding investment of time and energy in prospects of wavering, transient enticement. We must ask ourselves if life is ever to be free of wondering about the divine we cannot see, about questions of infinitude we cannot comprehend. How much, we must wonder, of our religious energies are wasted on fussing about questions of the eternal and the infinite, when it is quite possibly in the formulation of those popularly-embraced "great questions" that we waste what opportunity we might have, if not to answer such questions, at least to refrain from god-like picking and choosing which questions to contemplate?
I say that we draw lines out ahead of ourselves in our imagining, not merely that we can contemplate the infinite, but that we can tell ourselves that we have chosen proper lines to pursue. I say that we concoct stories about humanity's relationships to the divine, and that we are masterful story-tellers in convincing ourselves and each other that the stories that matter to us are the stories that matter. In short, our relationship to the divine is a question most typically of the story-lines we will pursue, and those we will not.
We embrace fantasy if we embrace the notion that the life of the believer is typified by the fantasy-existence of the favored servants of the parable. Leaf but a few moments more through the gospels, and there are warnings aplenty against servants thinking they are other than worthless servants--worthless even as they have done their duty. Collect for yourself ten cities or ten additional talents (or the modern equivalents thereof) and be prepared to hear, "You fool, this very night your life will be required of you!" Step outside and wonder if you are stepping over a Lazarus, or wonder if you ought to concern yourself about who languishes at other doorways.
And, of course, thinking that the parable applies to the time of judgment is but a fantasy-projection of one's fate over the intervening moments or decades. All of us are under the suspension of judgment about what we do with our "talents," and all of us harry the prospect of Jesus' enthronement as King with our pleadings about how we ought to be spared this or that trouble in our plodding lives.
And yet here we stand with Jesus' promise--nay, his fervent hope--that we have abundant lives. And here we stand with Jesus' admonition not to worry about tomorrow. And so are we to gather to ourselves the goods and the good things of the earth, and to trust that tomorrow will bring nothing but the continuation of such prospects?
And yet Jesus tells us that each day has troubles enough of its own. And we are to live it abundantly. Would any of the logic of the theologians, or any of the aspirations of the theologians, be empowered--were we but to contemplate for a moment--to sweep away the looming potential that Jesus' idea of an "abundant life" for his followers is a life bursting with daily realizations of personal sin and failings? If we are to contemplate the infinite, then ought we not to contemplate the infinite ramifications of our sin? If in rage or neglect we barrel over roads and highways, do we not share in the sin of our fellow humans who collect, in the horrid lottery of chance, the label of killer? If we flare up in murderous rage, do we not share in the undiluted guilt of others who--given goads and opportunities that we are perhaps spared--actually commit the deed of murder?
And Jesus will not stop there. Do we not actually murder those whom we assail with "harmless" words? If we commit adultery even by the mere thinking of it, do we not commit murder even by the mere contemplation of speaking harmful "harmless" words? In religion, there is the thinking about infinities of time, and there is the thinking about the relative foolishness of imagining we can conceptualize infinite time, and there is the thinking about how we must guard ourselves against madness in thinking about infinite time. Do we not possess therefore a competent arsenal of thoughts to protect ourselves, insofar as practical, from madness at contemplating any infinity? Might we not be both empowered and entrusted to consider infinities of questions about infinity?
Our questions about infinity--and particularly about our infinite God--radiate from our existences in an infinitude of expanding possibilities. The merest notion that one question about the potentialities of God (or about how the potentialities of God impinge upon us) is more important than any other question is an act of horrid presumption. I am thinking at present of merely on example. Jesus describes an "unjust servant" who buys the gratitude of his fellow humans by shorting the master on what is owed him. The master praises him. Such a parable is taken wrongly if it is taken to provide answers about our existences, and it is taken half-wrongly if it is taken to provide "food for thought" in how it might illuminate our understandings about our relationship to God. The parable is meant to blow the lid off how we think about ourselves and God.
Jesus tells us that we can gain for ourselves not merely the good wishes of our fellow humans by passing off to them what belongs to God--we can gain for ourselves welcome into heaven. To get to heaven (or at least to get to where we need to be to strive for heaven) we must clear ourselves of accusations or hard feelings on the part of others. We must plead to fellow creatures as our judges. This does not make sense in terms of our contemplation of the sovereignty of God, but that is only because we choose to claim, for our psychological benefit, arbitrary boundaries to the question of God's sovereignty. We do not say that we understand infinity or eternity, even as we can imagine that we are infinitely inferior to God and dwarfed by the eternity that is in turn dwarfed by God. Why then would we say that there are bounds to the implications of our sin, sin of which we do not know the bounds?
View these matters so, and one can no longer entertain the artifices of the denominations' writhings. Pick up a Catholic study Bible, and read about how the "Keys of the Kingdom" legitimize the pastoral role of the Bishop of Rome--or the College of Cardinals--and his (its) subordinate functionaries. Pick up an evangelical study Bible, and read that the binding and loosing of--Peter's? the apostles? the believers?--Keys of the Kingdom is a function of pronouncement of what God has already decided. Preferably, take the Gospels as a whole and the "answer" to the question is couched quite simply--though in a quasi-organic flow from the mundane to the abstract.
We look to our fellow creatures for salvation. We look to the good or bad estimations we might receive from the Ninevites, or from the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. We might expect to be appraised by Balaam's ass. What of it? Sin is question of an infinity of shortcomings in the sight of God. Why then would we think of this particular question of infinity as being intrinsically different from any other? All questions of infinity involve not merely our inability to get our minds around it, but also our inability to encompass the possibilities latent within it.
It is to be expected that, in our study of great ideas that bear upon our relationship to God, the sublime (to us) would rattle up against the ridiculous (to us). We are to give up our lives. We are to live abundant lives. If we would but do the personally ridiculous thing of stepping back for only a moment of contemplation, we would realize that "no life" in the framework of "abundant life" amounts to a life of days of trouble--trouble of which there is aplenty. In this simple yet challenging viewpoint the teachings of Jesus make most sense.
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