Sermons from St Faith's
Talents Today
Revd Sue, 16th November, 2014
In our late capitalist world, talent is
eminently bankable. Dancing on Ice,
Strictly, Bake Off…The Apprentice - scarcely a
night goes by without something of the sort –
usually with an expert – or a ‘master,’ perhaps
– standing righteously and in many cases
viciously in judgement. Popular culture
seems to be a place where you can be cast into
outer darkness for a soggy bottom, or a mistaken
pricing structure. The grim
emptiness of it all is perhaps most
visible in Simon Cowell – he shows both the
bankruptcy of popular culture –and, somehow,
what it’s really all about – money! A word
from him can set someone on the way to a
multi-million dollar career – or to
humiliation. Talent shows reduce humanity
to be expendable specs of human capital – and
we, the TV audience, are encouraged to be part
of what the French anarchist writer Guy Debord
calls ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ – perhaps
having our feelings manipulated in the rags to
riches stories – but certainly, the worst that
is in all of us brought out when we are
encouraged to participate in the humiliation of
those who don’t make the mark – ‘you’re no use
to me – you’re fired.’
It is an odd but apt echo of our Gospel
today. For do not be deceived – a talent
here is not something you can do, like playing
the piano, counted cross stitch, or making a
fine Victoria sponge. No – a talent is a
shed load of money – the 7 that the first two
slaves accumulate would be worth about £ 500,000
in today’s money. It’s highly ironic that
we’ve reached a place today where its cultural
expression is both so literal and so symbolic.
Today’s Gospel, then, isn’t a pleasantly
affirming tale of ‘using our talents’ – it is a
savage satire of a violently exploitative
economic system and the mean and hard faced man
that has benefited – for the master is not,
contrary to the way this parable is usually
interpreted, God – but a savage and cruel
representative of violence and injustice –
‘you’re no use to me, you’re fired,’ he says,
effectively, to one unfortunate slave.
What else do we know about him? Well, he’s an
‘absentee landlord’ – he’s off on a long
journey; he ‘reaps where he does not sow’ –
something he doesn’t deny and even boasts about
a bit; in other words, he’s a thief – he takes
the fruits of the labour of others, and he does
so with perfect legal impunity. Like the
likes of Simon Cowell and Alan Sugar, he is rich
and powerful enough to get away with it. He
charges interest – something that was absolutely
forbidden in the Hebrew scriptures – as it still
is in Islam, of course – and he keeps slaves –
which shows that he must have been in cahoots
with the Romans. And what is his attitude
to the third slave? He is ‘wicked and lazy
and worthless.’ The Greek that the latter
translates literally means ‘unprofitable.’
The master measures others only by how much
profit they can bring him – they are simply
instruments in his wider ambition – and if
you’re no use, well – ‘you’re fired’.
And what about those slaves? Well, they
were slaves – not servants – but bound in
servitude – bound by debt of one kind or
another. They were probably ordinary peasants,
who had worked the land – but then struggled to
pay the tithes of both Empire and Temple – and
so were eventually forced off their own land by
debt, selling first their seedcorn, then their
labour and then, eventually, themselves to
exist.
How do they make the money? Well, possibly
– they became useful by exploiting the knowledge
of the community from which they came – they
understood the cycles of debt and poverty, and
what would have maximum effect. They could lend
the money entrusted to them to struggling
peasants, then foreclose on the debt and take
the land; they could, effectively, be
pawnbrokers, buying from desperate people and
selling at a high profit; or – as Joseph does in
Genesis – they could stockpile essentials like
wine and grain and oil and manipulate the price.
They are not skilled enterpreneurs; it is not,
in one way, that they are using their talents –
they are using their master’s power to increase
his wealth; to some extent they might share in
it – but insecurity is built into the system,
making the slaves turn against one another and
compete. It is a classic case of divide
and rule.
So who is the hero of this tale? Well – it
is – and would be to Jesus’ peasant audience –
the third slave. He refuses to participate
in this game – he radically detaches himself
from the system of exploitation and
accumulation. He chooses to express
solidarity with the community from which he
came. ‘Have what is yours,’ he says – perhaps in
an echo of ‘give to Caesar’ – when Jesus, a few
chapters ago resists the Pharisees’ impossible
dilemma by suggesting the disciples give the
blasphemous Roman coin back to the exploitative
system where it belongs.
This slave pays the price – he is cast into
outer darkness. And this, of course, is
also the price Jesus pays – for unmasking the
violence and injustice of the world, he becomes
its victim, cast into the utter and outer
darkness and violence of the Cross.
So it might give us a start to realise that this
is our vocation too – to take up our Cross -
radically to disassociate from the violent and
exploitative economics of our late capitalist,
spectacle- driven world. It is a vision of
course that has inspired radical Christian
discipleship – from the highest poverty of the
Franciscans, who sought a relationship with the
material world characterised by use that was
never appropriation, to Thomas Merton’s
contemplative radicalism.
Well, we might not manage that – but we do have
a means of radically disassociating from the
violent economics of our age – it is of course
the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Kingdom and
of the gentle economy of God’s relentless
generosity; and isn’t our calling to live
eucharistically? For in so doing we are
indeed – like the slave who represents the
radical disassociation for Kingdom values – cast
into outer darkness, even perhaps a little
discomfort with our comfortable lives; but in
order that we might live the Resurrection – to a
life not shaped by luxury and insecurity – but
by knowing and trusting our complete dependence
on our generous God – a God whose relentless
love and searing judgement are one.
Amen.
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