talented shareholder

I walked the middle way from Capel Curig to Dolwyddelan for no particular reason except to be out for the count. (of the US Election!)  Paths cross and collide on that pathway a journey through a bland landscape not empty but bleak where the division between land and sky is the most prominent feature.  The occasional fence or ancient dividing wall of the enclosures almost becomes an event.  But my eyes are cast down not up, focusing on the pathway that is not altogether obvious as it meanders through.  I’m standing drinking coffee at a marker post deciding which way to go. If you choose to go one way you choose not to go the other the other way – obvious, but often not so in life. No path we choose is wrong, just different, perhaps more difficult. We must choose the path we walk.

Standing apart whilst divisions grow and choices are made. What will we support? Is there a right way and a wrong way, a just way and an unjust way; a more caring loving accepting way of being? We leave marker posts for each other to follow in life, but interpretation is key to following the way. So I turn to a traditional interpretation of a bible reading which leaves me stuck in the midst of the mud.  It sees God as master and a faithful disciple as one who obtains a good return on the master’s money, the ‘talents’. Or perhaps, God gives us abilities or skills and its up to us to repay that gift. The word Talent comes from the ancient greek meaning an amount of Gold, a sum of money. Perhaps we were unwilling to critique the unjust financial systems, or perhaps we were just lazy, talent was a useful dual meaning and the awkwardness of the parable drifts away as does the original meaning of the word. The unfaithful one, the one who washes his hands of his masters unjust dealings and buried his masters money in the ground. We are told that this master is one who is involved in aggressive and unjust business dealings and praises those who double the investment.

The parable offers us no easy ethic or simple path to tread. It is a source of agitation, a struggle. Can there be any other explanation? Perhaps there is another way. Jesus could be offering a critique. The master is not God, the master is one of the unjust elite who is looking for a return on the investment at all costs. Call the master Blackrock, or Goldman Sachs, or Royal Dutch Shell or HSBC, or perhaps even their shareholders.  How close to home does it have to be before it becomes another painful truth. Those who take the money and return it with 100% interest are the slaves to the
system which says profit is king.

The one who buries the talent is the one who stands up to the unjust master, who critiques the system. This is Jesus, the talented shareholder, he has cast himself as the one who is condemned by the world for standing up to it and refusing to be complicit in the master’s exploitation of the other slaves. He even takes the ‘talent’, to prove it’s uselessness and plants it in the ground, then when the master returns he takes it out of the ground. See – it bares no fruit, unlike the wealth of the natural creation which bears much fruit. This parable becomes a critique on an economy in which the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. And they say the bible is not relevant to modern life. The servant who critiques the master is cast into outer darkness – Just as Jesus is cast out, crucified. The abundance of creation, rather than figures on a page mark the wealth of a nation. This is not complete without what follows, where Jesus speaks of gifts offered to strangers, of hospitality, and care for the sick. This is the beggar in disguise, the least of these who turns out to be the one in whose footsteps we attempt to tread walking a narrow path and dare to suggest that it is the Christ we follow. The Middle Way