The Daily Disciplines
Everything we do is practice for the next time. When we cease to practice, we lose our fluency, and memory becomes imperfect. Some things are practiced by default- when did you last consciously practice eating? Other things require conscious effort. My handwriting is slow, laborious and has lost its fluency. I type without thinking.
When we took our young children back out to the desert where we had lived, they were profoundly uncomfortable with the open spaces. We noticed our son was happier and less fractious whenever we went walking in the enclosed space of mountain gorges. We become used to, and are affected by our environment. Years before, leaving the desert, my wife and I were depressed, dislocated and disoriented by urban life. A day out walking in the hills begins to resurrect memories and instincts which have been lost to our consciousness.
As urban westerners we live in a profoundly artificial environment. It is possible, even easy, to avoid the outside world for days at a time! Enter the garage by an inside door from the house, drive out using the automatic door opener, drive to the underground car park, and take the internal lift up to work. Leave before it is properly light, and return home after dark. We live in a world which we Australians especially, think we control. In truth, we are irradiated with uncontrolled advertising and other stimulation, rarely alone enough to be in silence, and uncomfortable if we are. We live in a noisy, crowded and driven world, which is the anathema of all that our spiritual ancestors learned is necessary for health. We have stepped out of reality into an artificial place.
The spiritual disciplines are designed to bring us back into the real world from our artificial place. They create time, silence and space for us to re-engage with the depths of life. They patrol the corridors of the mind, as someone has said, re-minding us of what is really important. Religion without practice becomes merely an idea, caught in the currents of the ideas round about, without the anchor of reality.
Whilstleblowing Together
Sunday 16 November
Matthew 25:14-30
Greenacres Untiting Church
Amos 8:1-7
This is what the Lord God showed me-a basket of summer fruit.
He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?'
And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.'
Then the Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by.
The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,'says the Lord God;
‘the dead bodies shall be many,
cast out in every place. Be silent!'
Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practise deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.'
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
Amos 5:21-24
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Matthew 25:14-30
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.
After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, "Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents." His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master." And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, "Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents." His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master."
Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, "Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours." But his master replied, "You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. 28So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
There are two ways to read this parable. The traditional way suggests that a master goes away for a long time and leaves some senior slaves in charge of the estate. Two are faithful to the task, and do the job well and are rewarded when the master returns. The third slave fails. He is severely punished and cast out. The lesson is: don't be like that third slave. Use the gifts God has given you.
I think we probably all know this interpretation. It's the interpretation we alluded to in the children's story this morning. You can see the First Impressions commentary that follows this interpretation, too.
The second interpretation of this parable is not as well known. But I think, on reflection, that it is very important. I need to acknowledge Dr. Robert Linthicum and an organisation called Partners In Urban Transformation who have made this clear to me. If you follow the link I have up on the screen, you will see I have heavily used their lectionary resource for today.
In this interpretation, we should note first of all that the parable does not begin with the words "the kingdom of heaven is like." It's not describing the Kingdom of Heaven as some of the other parables are. It describes is an extraordinarily rich household. A talent was a measure of money, and we are talking about a man who has between 16 and 25 million dollars, in today's money, to entrust to his "slaves" while he goes off on a long journey.
These slaves are not humble cooks or labourers. They are like the senior executives in a company like Microsoft or BHP Billiton. We are talking about the elite of the elite here.
Our translations of Matthew say they were given the money according to their ability. In the original Greek, the literal meaning is "power." They are given the money in proportion to their power and influence. They were heavy players.
The next thing is that Jesus was talking to people who would have hated people like these. Why? Because they were poor people; most people in Jesus world were poor. And they were mercilessly exploited by people like this very rich man. They would see him the way we might see a very greedy industrialist leaving some very greedy executives in charge.
In Jesus' society 2% of the people held almost all the wealth and manipulated peasant farmers with interest rates from 60 to 200 percent! (Parables As Subversive Speech: Jesus As Pedagogue of the Oppressed, William Herzog, Westminster John Knox Press p161.) And "the purpose of making such loans was not so much to make a large profit... but to accept land as collateral" so that in a bad year, when the farmers could not pay the loans, they could foreclose on the loans and get control of the land.
What would also be going on is that the slaves would be managing the master's money to siphon of a lot of money for themselves. These were not slaves as we think of slaves. They were hard and dishonest people, too.
So in this interpretation of the parable, it is unthinkable that we would imagine this Master to be in any way like Jesus who is absent from us, and for whom we are long to return! Jesus would not describe himself in this way.
When the master comes back the first two slaves hand him a hundred percent return. They have doubled his fortune. This is spectacular, given that they will have been feathering their own nests as well.
In this parable, quite different from the traditional interpretation, the third slave is a hero. For he says: "Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed." This is an amazing statement. This man has had an epiphany. He has seen the absolute injustice of the economic system he was a part of, and he has refused to stay a part of it. He has become someone that the prophets of the Old Testament would be proud of. He has refused to sell the poor for the price of a pair of sandals. Amos 8:6.
Now if the Master in this story was a good man according to the old testament prophets, who said let justice roll down like waters... then perhaps he would repent. But no, the master says "You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest" (vss. 26-27)
But the slave had been so converted to the honesty and compassion of God that he would not even "invest the money with the bankers". As PIUT say, " even though he would make some interest off of such investments, he knew the bankers would take that money and issue exorbitant loans and foreclose on them with all the rapacity of the other two slaves. And this man was not going to participate - even in a minimal, far-removed way -- in any such exploitation of the poor."
What this servant did was to "out" his master! He was a whistle blower on the corruptness of the financial and social system of his day. We all know what a whistle blower is. They are someone who is in the system, often even a person with some power, who has the guts to stand up and say, "What we are doing is wrong. It is bad. It is corrupt."
In this case he would say, "We are ripping families apart, we are consigning people to poverty and starvation, we are destroying the fabric of our society, we are being disobedient to God. We are doing the very things for which God punished Israel in the past and sent us into Exile. We must stop this!"
But the master essentially says "Yes. I do reap where I do not sow and gather where I did not scatter." If I may quote PIUT again "He cannot see the evil that he is doing. It is all just "good business" - even if it creates a class of expendables, results in peasants being forced into poverty, treats fellow Jews as if they are nothing more than pawns for his own acquisition of power. He cannot even perceive the negative or evil impact of his own actions - the common plight of the powerful!"
We know what happens to whistle blowers in Australia. They suffer. They should be heroes. They are people who help preserve the decency of our society! You'd think that we would praise them, and promote them, and clamour to have them as our employees. But more often, we vicitmise them, slander them, and drive them into poverty and ill health, or worse. And when we see governments doing this, we don't stand up for people, because then we'll be in trouble too. True we have attempts at whistleblower legislation, but it is minimal protection and inadequate.
And in the parable... the whistle blower gets it in the neck. "So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (vss. 28-30).
This is how it works. This is the system. The system doesn't change. It crushes those who stand up against it. We know this. It "takes away the wealth or power" [of the whistleblower] "and gives it... to those who already have the most power, increasing their proportion of power.".... The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, says Jesus. This is the way of the world.
This seems the most negative outlook! It seems hopeless. What can be done to change society if people will always get crushed? How can we do what God wants and stand up for justice and peace and compassion if we are just going to get squashed?
I want to quote at length from the PIUT essay in a moment. But before I do, think about this:
In the USA, there has been a frightening lawlessness by the Bush administration, and manifest and manifold abuse of human rights, including wholesale torture. The people in power have been unapologetic just like the master. People have been vilified, silenced and crushed as they have protested. The election of Barak Obama, who will have his faults, and many of them, has come about by thousands of people working together at a community level.
PIUT say, "Change can occur only when the people work together, work in concert with each other, work with careful strategy to call the systems and the people to accountability, and work for specific, concrete change. For, when there are thousands of you, not even the Roman Empire can eliminate you all and must therefore come to some accommodation with you.
Consequently, it takes the people of God working together, faithfully following a "long obedience in the same direction" that will bring about the transformation of the world into God's intentions for it. That is the essential message of this parable. And that is the message of all these stories that Jesus has grouped together, as he spurs his followers to understand to practice the depth of what true faithfulness to each other, to Jesus and to God entails."
The real power in this congregation is not when I stand up and preach the gospel. It's not when Barbara say, helps a new arrival from Sudan whose getting ripped off by a mobile phone company. It's not when Gwen is kind to a down and out visitor to the Op Shop one Friday. It's not even when x is ill, and humbles me with her faith in the middle of her suffering, when I visit her in hospital... and she did, and I thank you x.
The power of the congregation is when Barbara and Gwen and x and I know that the whole congregation is behind us. It's when we know we can trust each other, and that we are loved and cared for and prayed for. It's when we have a plan to work together.
Part of my mission here is to find a vision of how we as a congregation can grow in energy and effectiveness as an embodiment of the Christ in Greenacres. Jesus, Justice, Peace, Compassion, Love... these are all words that I have been finding important. Today's reading adds a couple more: Together, and Community. I pray we may find a way to be this.
Andrew Prior
Direct Biblical quotations in this page are taken from The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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