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Investing for the Future
A
Sermon from the First Congregational Church of Bellingham">
Investing
for the Future
A
Sermon from the First Congregational Church of Bellingham, UCC
August
29, 1999 Dilbert
bumbles along, loyally going to work every day in corporate America, sitting in
his cubicle, doing his job. Everyone seems to be working against meek and mild
Dilbert from the evil human resources director to his incompetent boss who comes
up with countless ways to waste time and sabotage projects. In yesterday's comic
Dilbert is making a presentation when a colleague jumps in and does a hostile
takeover of his presentation. He goes home and tells his dog about it who asks
"and you let him do it?" Dilbert responds "He had a laser pointer
the size of your head." Hostile
takeovers of the business world appear in the headlines regularly, but they
aren't just a phenomena of the end of the twentieth century. Takeovers have
existed in one form or another for as long as someone has had something which
others valued and wanted. Those who desire power and wealth have always sought
to accumulate what belonged to others. How
do you suppose those in today's parable left with the ten and five talents made
all that money? Probably by a takeover of one sort or another. We often read
this parables as speaking of the kingdom of heaven, and so we struggle to make
sense of how a takeover is like the kingdom of heaven, this appears to be at
odds with what we know of Jesus' teachings. Continuing
to share "what I learned on my summer sabbatical" I invite you to join
me as we travel down a different path of interpretation of this parable. In an
ethics class, part of my summer program at San Francisco Theological Seminary,
taught by Dr. Carol Robb, we examined the parables of Jesus as subversive speech
but we started by looking at education. We
value education in this community, some times we even take it for granted. We
sometimes forget education can be very subversive. In the middle of this
century, educator Paulo Freire was hired to develop a literacy program for
peasants and the poor of the slums of his native Brazil. Rather than teaching
people to read by importing unfamiliar words and concepts of the dominant
culture, Freire's revolutionary literacy campaign began by spending time amongst
the illiterate. He listened to them, researching the vocabulary of the peasants,
studying their habits of speech. Then created visual images, pictures, of the
common elements of their lives: farming, sewing, hunting, fishing, cooking,
pictures of common, familiar tasks. The images were bright and colorful, Freire
said, they "had to beautiful, we're Brazilian." The
literacy process continued with a group of people gathering for an evening to
discuss one of the pictures, to decode the images in the picture. So in a
picture of a man farming they might discuss: what he is wearing, who makes his
clothes, what he is doing, what tools he uses, where the tools come from, what
he is growing, who can afford to eat the crops he grows, and if the people have
enough food. Vocabulary cards were made from the visual images, taking one
common word which could be broken down into phonetic families.
Freire's
goal was to teach the people to read, and to educate them about their culture,
to help them see how their actions interacted with nature, and impacted the
world around them. In teaching literacy, Freire gave them tools for social
analysis and the ability to name their world. In this literacy process the
people learned to analyze their own context and demythologize the reality of the
dominant class. This kind of education can lead to visions of a future far
different from the present. It is transformative, challenging the way things
are. When there is a large gap between the wealthy and poor, as there is in
Brazil, this threatens the comfort of the dominant class. Paulo Freire's
literacy program threatened the establishment, the wealthy, the powerful, who
retaliated by first putting Freire in prison, and then exiling him from his
homeland. Eventually he worked for the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
Education can be dangerous. There
are similarities between the cultures in which Jesus and Paulo Freire lived and
taught. Both were advanced agrarian societies where colonial exploitation shaped
the lives of the people. Often the synagogue or the church helped sanction the
status quo by blessing the poor, the impoverishment and degradation of peasant
life. William Herzog, in his book,
Parables
as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, hypothesizes that
Jesus used parables in a way similar to Freire's literacy program.
What
might it mean for us if the Parable of the Talents refers to the Kingdom of
Heaven in a very different way than we might have assumed previously? What if
Jesus is presenting scenes from the every day life of the first century to
educate the peasants, not to teach them to read, but to help them analyze their
culture? If we were to go along with Herzog's interpretation it might mean this
parable is told by Jesus so the poor and oppressed might identify and name the
injustice and oppression of their world.
What
if Jesus teaches the justice of the Torah, the Scriptures, to challenge the
pietistic interpretations which have kept the peasants in their place? Is it his
goal to create dissonance, leading the hearers to challenge the social,
economic, political, and community structures? Always a dangerous thing to do.
Perhaps risky enough to lead to crucifixion. Let's
take a closer look at this parable using different lenses. It is a story where
everyone works to maintain the wealth and privilege of a few. The land owner is
the one with the money. To protect his interests and expand his influence, he
must travel to increase his investments, expand his business, diversify,
network, politic, and purchase new luxury items expanding his power base
politically, economically, and socially.
While
he is gone on power brokering trips, he appoints trusted managers to take care
of his interests. These middle management retainers are the ones who make the
system work, keeping the wealthy rich and the peasants poor. They are the ones
who make money for the landowner by negotiating with the peasants, becoming
targets for their anger at the disparity between the rich and the poor. As a
benefit it is expected they would line their pockets as they increase their
master's wealth, as long as they don't draw too much attention to themselves. If
they fail to bring in the expected profits, their future prospects are limited. So
the ones entrusted with ten talents and five talents, which are incredible sums
of money, (wages of a day laborer for 200 and 100 years) hustle to create more
wealth for the land owner. Even though usury was forbidden by the Torah as
oppressive, they knew it was their job if they didn't make a profit. They borrow
against the collateral entrusted to them and make speculative investments to
bring in big profits. If they are really good at it, they will exploit some
poor, subsistence farmer, maneuvering in such a way so their boss is positioned
to acquire the land and displace the peasants, while they make a little profit
of their own. It
is the third person, the one entrusted with one talent, who is the focus of the
parable. He isn't a risk taker, he's not irresponsible with the talent, by
taking the money out of circulation it can no longer be used to displace others.
Even putting it in the bank would mean breaking the law of the Torah, making
money off of interest paid by someone else. So he puts it away in a safe place
until the landowner returns. And when the time of reckoning comes, he is
blatantly honest with the landowner, identifying him for what he is, a harsh
master, exploiter of the poor, who spends lavishly and extravagantly on himself
in wasteful excess.
The
landowner's response is to invite the first two managers to enter into the
"joy of their master" and to vilify, shame and humiliate the third
manager. He calls names, judges and rejects the one challenging him. The talent
is taken from him. And Matthew adds, he is to be thrown "into outer
darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Put
in a modern setting the parable might sound like this: At the end of the fall
harvest, a vineyard owner from Yakima Valley, home of thirty wineries and dozens
of rich wine grape growing vineyards, is leaving on a business trip. He will be
meeting with leading French vineyard owners to acquire premium and rare
rootstock for introduction to the Yakima Valley. As part of the trip he and his
wife will visit an automotive factory in England to pick up their new Range
Rover where they will learn the intricacies of driving the finest built 4x4 in
the world. In
preparation for this journey he summoned three of his managers and entrusted his
property to them. To one he gave five Rattlesnake Hills vineyards, to another
two vineyards beside the Yakima River, and to another one Sunnyside vineyard.
Then he went away. Raymond,
who received responsibility for the five Rattlesnake Hills vineyards, goes off
at once to the bank. He uses the grape vines for collateral and borrows against
them. With this money he buys the grapes from the adjacent vineyard to produce
wine, and selling it makes a large profit. In
the same way, Jose , who had responsibility for the two Yakima River vineyards
also makes a substantial profit. But Esperanza, the one with responsibility for
the one Sunnyside vineyard, took the profits from the fall harvest and secured
the landowner's money in a safety deposit box. When
the landowner returned home in the spring he gathered his managers together in
his office for an accounting. The one responsible for five Rattlesnake Hills
vineyards presented his profit statement saying, "Sir, you entrusted me
with five of your vineyards, I have made a 100% increase for you." His boss
said to him, "Well done, Raymond. Because you have been trustworthy in a
few things, I will give you even more responsibility. Can you and your wife fly
with us in our little plane to Seattle for dinner at the Columbia Towers and a
Seahawks game?" And Jose , the manager of the two Yakima River vineyards,
likewise turned in his profit statement, saying "Sir, you left me with
responsibility for two vineyards. I have doubled their worth." The boss
said to him, "Well done, Jose , because you have been trustworthy in a few
things, I will give you more responsibility. Can you and your wife join us for
our little trip to Seattle for dinner and the game?" Then
Esperanza who had responsibility over the one Sunnyside vineyard spoke up
saying, "I have only worked as a manager for two seasons, after working
with your field workers for seven years. I know how harsh and demanding you are,
I was afraid to make a mistake with your land and your profits. I put your
profits in a safety deposit box. Here are all your profits from the fall harvest
of the Sunnyside vineyard."
The
landowner replied, "I never should have given responsibility to a woman!
You wicked slackhard! If you knew how harsh and demanding I am, then why didn't
you at least put my money in a savings account? Then you would have an interest
income to show for my months away. You've had your chance, you're out of here.
Never again! Raymond, you take over responsibility for that vineyard. If
this parable is about the kingdom of heaven, then we usually assume the one with
power is the God-figure. It would take a lot of manipulation to make this
landowner into anyone remotely resembling the God of love and forgiveness Jesus
has been teaching elsewhere. He ignores the Torah and harshly judges the manager
who fails to produce, no second chance here, no gift of grace, not remotely
close to what I would call good news. Perhaps
this is more a story of economics and power than of heaven, pointing out that
managers are necessary to the process of exploitation carried on by the rich and
powerful. Many of us, like Dilbert, assume we don't have a big enough laser
pointer, we are so far from the center of power there is no way to change how
things are done in business, in politics, in education, in society. The person
given one talent shows this is untrue, in a small way he has challenged how
business is done. In the process he is criticized and rejected for his actions.
If he had worked with others, he would have made more of an impact than working
alone. Since he worked alone, he will live out the punishment alone. Looking
at this parable as a new way of viewing and analyzing the world perhaps leads to
more questions than it answers. And maybe that was Jesus' intention, to raise
the consciousness of the hearers, encouraging them to look around, to observe
and analyze their culture, and question the inequity of the systems of which
they were a part.
What
is the message for you and for me? How is Jesus calling us to live out our faith
in the midst of systems, powers and principalities?
Over
and over again God breaks into our world in unexpected ways and shapes us anew.
Calling us back into the dance, reaching out and pulling us into the cycle of
solidarity. Each time we come back to the beginning, we discover there is still
more to learn. The music of life changes and so does the dance. Each day we are
invited into the dance, to pick up today's rhythm, to find what new learnings
God has for us and to follow God's leading through stories and structures,
challenging unjust systems. What does God require of us? To do justice, to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.
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