So this week we have the parable of the talents, familiar territory, and one of those cringeworthy passages about the perfect wife, dripping in patriarchal condescension. So maybe best to just move on quickly and hope for better pickings next week?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear me say – well maybe, but maybe not so fast…
There is at least one thing odd here. Why are these readings paired up?
I’ve learned over the years that there is usually a rationale for strange pairings. I don’t know who the Holy Spirit was leading when they compiled the Lectionary in the days following the Second Vatican Council, but it seems clear that He was at work – we should at least look for His signature.
Another flag, although not one you can be expected to note, is that we read the parable of the talents and assume it is about our talents (or lack of them). Duh… But actually it really isn’t. Or at least that’s getting it backwards.
When Jesus was speaking, and the evangelists writing, a talent was simply a measure of weight. It was a large amount. Estimating such things in modern terms is always tricky but a good guide is that a talent of silver was probably worth about 15 years of wages. The amount of wealth that the master was entrusting to his servants, even the least capable of them, was huge.
So Jesus is talking about being entrusted with fabulous riches. The connection with “talents”, i.e. our capabilities, only came about in the 16th Century when the word gained a new meaning – based exactly on an interpretation of this parable in terms of what we would now call talents.
We can certainly choose to interpret what Jesus was saying in that way. He says plenty of other things that are consistent with the message that we must use our God-given gifts and not bury them – but knowing that wasn’t exactly what he was talking about certainly opens up the possibility to look for additional meaning in the parable. How else might we interpret the huge wealth that the master is giving out?
This story is being told by Matthew in the period just before Jesus gets to Jerusalem for his passion and death, and sits alongside those other stories about how things work out in the long term (the restoration of the Jewish nation, the end of the world, the second coming, etc). Luke makes the context for this story even more explicit by presenting it as a direct response to the disciples thinking the kingdom was just about to appear in front of them. Jesus, in this case, does not give another explanation about how they have misunderstood what the kingdom is, but rather a parable that tells us that the coming of the kingdom is not something that is done by God, something done to us or for us – it is something we have to do. We have been given the master’s possessions i.e. his wealth, his power. We have to do something with it.
Yes, for sure, you should use your God given talents, whatever form they may take. But more than that, Jesus is demanding of his disciples that they take what they have been given, the huge wealth that is an understanding of what the kingdom is (or “faith”, to put it in other terms), and use that to build the kingdom. It isn’t going to be done for us, we have the responsibility to make it happen.
This makes the ultra-harsh response to the fearful servant more understandable, and his failure more stark. He wasn’t just a shrinking violet who hid his capabilities away, he totally failed to do exactly what he knew was expected of him. He didn’t need to do much – just putting the money in the bank to earn some interest would be enough. We don’t have to do much with our faith, maybe go to mass once a week, or say a daily prayer, or make a donation once in a while. But doing nothing – that’s a big problem.
So what about the perfect wife? Where does she fit in? Part of our problem here may be that we’re falling into our familiar trap of being way too literal. The Book of Proverbs was being written about the same time as the Book of Wisdom, with its representation of the female wisdom of God, as we heard last week. The feminine is used as a way to talk about aspects of God very different to the masculine, warrior attributes we find emphasized in earlier periods of Israelite history (“the Lord is my strength and my shield”, and such like).
We can read this passage in Proverbs as telling us that the worthy wife, a lifelong companion, i.e. the love of God, is worth more than pearls (etc). This plays the same game with the value of (monetary) wealth and the value of our relationship with God as we see in many places in Scripture, including the parable of the talents. Yes the metaphor of the wife comes out of a patriarchal society, that’s what it was, but if we look behind the language, the message is actually the same as the one Jesus is giving us. We need to grab hold of what is of value and make something of it – and that can be everything from our spouse, to our ability to sing or climb a mountain, to our faith. Then the kingdom will arrive.