It’s perhaps providential that the appointed Gospel on Stewardship Sunday should be one of the great parables of stewardship. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the Master who entrusts his property to his servants stands as a figure of Christ who entrusts us with all our material possessions and spiritual blessings in this life. The Master's going away on a long journey represents Christ’s Ascension into heaven at the end of his earthly life. And the Master’s long-delayed return and settling of accounts with his servants points towards Christ’s Second Coming and the Last Judgment, when we shall be raised from the dead to give an accounting of our stewardship of the gifts entrusted into our care.
Beyond that, interpretations of this parable have tended to go in one of two directions. First is the economic interpretation, associated with what Max Weber called the Protestant ethic. By this reading, the parable justifies the accumulation of earthly wealth and the enjoyment of material prosperity as signs of God’s favor. To those who have, more will be given; to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away. That’s good news for the rich: not such good news for the poor.
Second is the moralizing interpretation. Even though the word “talent” in Greek means a huge sum of money, and has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to paint, sing, or do needlepoint, innumerable sermons on this parable exhort us to use our God-given gifts to the best of our ability. That is good advice in itself, but it’s not really the message of today’s Gospel.
We generally fail to realize how shocking and scandalous this parable would have been to our Lord’s original audience. They didn’t understand economics the way we do. We’re apt to admire the first two servants who invest their money and double their return for their good business sense. And we’re apt to scorn the servant who buries his money in the ground just as we scorn people today who stuff their life savings away in their mattresses. After all, money loses value over time with inflation and you’ve got to keep it wisely invested just to stay even.
That’s how we think; but people in the ancient world thought very differently. They didn’t have the same understanding of inflation as we do; and they saw nothing wrong with burying treasure in the ground. In fact, the rabbis taught that when someone entrusted you with a large sum of money, burying it for safekeeping was the most morally responsible action you could take. Indeed, one who buried such money in the ground was released from liability if the money was lost.
Moreover, the operating assumption in the ancient world was that the supply of this world’s goods was finite, limited, and already distributed. So, if you were not born rich, the only way you could get rich was by making someone else poor. People who became wealthy through their business dealings were thus universally suspected of fraud, deceit, or theft. Financial success was not the badge of respectability that it is today: quite the opposite.
So, our Lord’s original audience likely regarded the first two servants, who double their money, as shady and dishonest characters—just like their master who reaps where he has not sown and gathers where he has not winnowed. The great scandal of the parable is that these disreputable servants are the ones who end up being rewarded, while the honest servant, who’s done the right thing by burying his money safely in the ground, is the one who ends up being punished.
Now, what could our Lord possibly mean by telling such a transgressive story? Well, I would propose that the parable challenged its original audience, just as it challenges us, to imagine a different kind of world, governed by different kinds of economic laws, with a different kind of wealth, denominated in a different kind of currency. We live in an economic world governed by finitude and scarcity. In such a world, there are circumstances in which hoarding treasure makes perfect sense. We’d better guard what we have or others might take it from us.
But maybe the talents in the parable represent a different kind of treasure: not commodities to be invested or hoarded, but rather gifts to be shared. Our Lord has entrusted into the care of his Church great spiritual treasures—the Gospel, the Sacraments, and all the gifts of grace. He intends us to share these treasures and spread them abroad liberally. And when we do share them—freely, generously, and abundantly—we find that unlike material wealth and possessions, which diminish the more we give them away, these spiritual gifts keep on multiplying back to us until the day when the Master returns and bids us enter into his joy.
What special insights might this parable offer us today, on Stewardship Sunday? Well, first, consider the key difference between the two servants who enter into the joy of the Master, and the servant cast into outer darkness. The first two servants exhibit bold generosity of spirit and a willingness to risk everything in their Master’s service, while the third is motivated by fear, insecurity, and the desire to protect himself by eliminating all risk. Similarly, when we consider how much we can afford to pledge to the financial support of our Church, we need to cultivate that same spirit of generosity and willingness to take risks in the Lord’s service.
Second, notice the transformation of relationships that takes place at the end of the parable. The Master bids the two servants, “Enter into the joy of your Master.” That invitation implies that henceforth they are no longer servants but partners, fellow heirs with the Master in a joint inheritance. This point is of crucial importance for us. So often, conversations on pledging seem to presuppose a dichotomy between “us” and “them.” That is, we, the representatives of the institutional Church, stand up here and try to persuade you, the members of the congregation, to part with more of your hard earned income than you think you can afford, and you, in turn, occasionally give us pushback and tell us why we shouldn’t be so demanding. That kind of “us versus them” dynamic is a lose-lose proposition for everyone concerned.
The crucial breakthrough takes place when we replace this “us versus them” dynamic by a collective taking of responsibility, which acknowledges, “we’re all in this together.” That is, this is our parish, no-one else is going to support it but us, and we all need to do whatever we can to ensure that it has the financial resources it needs to fulfill its mission, even at the cost of significant risk and sacrifice to ourselves. When we accept collective responsibility for stewardship in such a spirit of love and generosity, then we may be confident that when our Master returns we shall hear the words, “Well done good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master.”
We generally fail to realize how shocking and scandalous this parable would have been to our Lord’s original audience. They didn’t understand economics the way we do. We’re apt to admire the first two servants who invest their money and double their return for their good business sense. And we’re apt to scorn the servant who buries his money in the ground just as we scorn people today who stuff their life savings away in their mattresses. After all, money loses value over time with inflation and you’ve got to keep it wisely invested just to stay even.
That’s how we think; but people in the ancient world thought very differently. They didn’t have the same understanding of inflation as we do; and they saw nothing wrong with burying treasure in the ground. In fact, the rabbis taught that when someone entrusted you with a large sum of money, burying it for safekeeping was the most morally responsible action you could take. Indeed, one who buried such money in the ground was released from liability if the money was lost.
Moreover, the operating assumption in the ancient world was that the supply of this world’s goods was finite, limited, and already distributed. So, if you were not born rich, the only way you could get rich was by making someone else poor. People who became wealthy through their business dealings were thus universally suspected of fraud, deceit, or theft. Financial success was not the badge of respectability that it is today: quite the opposite.
So, our Lord’s original audience likely regarded the first two servants, who double their money, as shady and dishonest characters—just like their master who reaps where he has not sown and gathers where he has not winnowed. The great scandal of the parable is that these disreputable servants are the ones who end up being rewarded, while the honest servant, who’s done the right thing by burying his money safely in the ground, is the one who ends up being punished.
Now, what could our Lord possibly mean by telling such a transgressive story? Well, I would propose that the parable challenged its original audience, just as it challenges us, to imagine a different kind of world, governed by different kinds of economic laws, with a different kind of wealth, denominated in a different kind of currency. We live in an economic world governed by finitude and scarcity. In such a world, there are circumstances in which hoarding treasure makes perfect sense. We’d better guard what we have or others might take it from us.
But maybe the talents in the parable represent a different kind of treasure: not commodities to be invested or hoarded, but rather gifts to be shared. Our Lord has entrusted into the care of his Church great spiritual treasures—the Gospel, the Sacraments, and all the gifts of grace. He intends us to share these treasures and spread them abroad liberally. And when we do share them—freely, generously, and abundantly—we find that unlike material wealth and possessions, which diminish the more we give them away, these spiritual gifts keep on multiplying back to us until the day when the Master returns and bids us enter into his joy.
What special insights might this parable offer us today, on Stewardship Sunday? Well, first, consider the key difference between the two servants who enter into the joy of the Master, and the servant cast into outer darkness. The first two servants exhibit bold generosity of spirit and a willingness to risk everything in their Master’s service, while the third is motivated by fear, insecurity, and the desire to protect himself by eliminating all risk. Similarly, when we consider how much we can afford to pledge to the financial support of our Church, we need to cultivate that same spirit of generosity and willingness to take risks in the Lord’s service.
Second, notice the transformation of relationships that takes place at the end of the parable. The Master bids the two servants, “Enter into the joy of your Master.” That invitation implies that henceforth they are no longer servants but partners, fellow heirs with the Master in a joint inheritance. This point is of crucial importance for us. So often, conversations on pledging seem to presuppose a dichotomy between “us” and “them.” That is, we, the representatives of the institutional Church, stand up here and try to persuade you, the members of the congregation, to part with more of your hard earned income than you think you can afford, and you, in turn, occasionally give us pushback and tell us why we shouldn’t be so demanding. That kind of “us versus them” dynamic is a lose-lose proposition for everyone concerned.
The crucial breakthrough takes place when we replace this “us versus them” dynamic by a collective taking of responsibility, which acknowledges, “we’re all in this together.” That is, this is our parish, no-one else is going to support it but us, and we all need to do whatever we can to ensure that it has the financial resources it needs to fulfill its mission, even at the cost of significant risk and sacrifice to ourselves. When we accept collective responsibility for stewardship in such a spirit of love and generosity, then we may be confident that when our Master returns we shall hear the words, “Well done good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master.”
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