Well done, good and trustworthy slave...
(Image: "Jewish Ghetto" by Carrie Mae Weems)
My Worth: From the Outer Dark
Where the weeping, where the gnashing?
Cast into the outer dark,
silence greets me, a silken silence
without the grip and grasp
and drumbeaten brow, silence
slipsliding down
a sleek hole,
unforetold dimensions
of silence, pussyfooting
gods and masters long
past, immunity
from all past crimes.
My one talent?
I planted it to grow,
to breathe in earth:
grass-withered,
seeded flower, yes,
I can stand the voice &
breath of god,
but I can’t stand
the weariness of
capital gain &
crumbling property.
I am a simple
man: call me worthless
if you must,
if it makes you feel better,
if it stacks the deck
in favor of
the master’s vanity,
his wealth,
& the groveling servants.
Then you ought to have
invested my money with
the bankers, he sez:
that’s an outer dark I’d
rather not.
Labels: peas porridge
posted by murat11 at 2:50 PM
12 Comments:
Ah, yes, the parable of the talents and the two stewards. That one has always stayed with me, and not always in good ways, as you've so wonderfully expressed here.
The book of Matthew always seems problematic to me, and its placement first among the gospels more a political decision than a judgment on its spiritual value. It's been a while, but this makes me want to re-read Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels. Maybe after I finish Tuchman (which for now looks like it's going to take forever).
anno: I get, at least I think I get, the notion of not hiding our talents away, but aside from the hilarious contextual gaffe of Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, what took hold of me was the worthless slave's fate. What if his fear was real, what if he (or she) indeed had a different experience of the master?
awesome post - my EFM group was quite divided on this reading. Two people saw this reading as using and squandering gifts - the rest of us did not...and it felt like there was all this pressure to see the reading in their vain (at least that was how I felt). So when I heard my local pastor preach - (1) it was his best sermon I've heard (2) I felt vindicated.
My local pastor quoted a chunk of text from a NT scholar (can't remember who now) that spoke of his experience leading a bible study with Religion major and maximum prison inmates. One of the inmates got to the passage being about exploitation, about the third man being the hero. The NT scholar mentions that the master in this reading is not God.
jsd: Any chance of a link to that sermon? Robert took the traditional "not hiding our talents" route and gave a good sermon from that angle, but I did a pretty bad job of stifling my guffaws during the gospel reading itself. It's the violence of the reaction to the third "slave" (and my new theory - it hit me as I was answering anno - is that the third slave is a woman) that makes me think something's just ain't right about this story. It was much more a visceral, than a cerebral, reaction on my part.
On a completely different note, congratulations on living in the CDC's "Healthiest City in the US."
The parable, I believe, is a simple call to responsibility and obligation. All three servants- though unequally talented(in skill) and thus unequally talented(the name of the Roman coin) in money - were all equally responsible and obligated to their master to make use of, to the best of their ability, their potential. As their own profit grows so does their master's, and for his sake, not their own, are they responsible. Such, it says, is the kingdom of heaven. At least servant #3 returned the money intact, not loosing it all buying short a hedge fund or a sub-prime mortgage. The common man does not think himself master to the broker(because he makes so much more money than himself) but he is. Woe unto the market manager, and Whoa! unto the market.
Bass: I like the way you lined up them horses.
I'll ask him if I can have a copy of his sermon - the church's website is whoa-full.
jsd: I would love to have a copy of the sermon, or even just a pointer to the NT writer he was quoting.
Stay warm, and love to all of you.
Sir Murat11,
Your writing touches me, deep inside. If this is a simple man, may all men be simple.
Thank you, Tammie. I appreciate the eyes and ears and heart you bring to your visits here.
Getting to this kind of late, Paschal, sorry. I like Bass's interpretation. But even that can be a scary program when you think your talents are naught or not appreciated. I understand the 3rd servant's fears very well, but I don't think I see his master as God. My God image is a more loving and forgiving image which counteracts many of my images of authority much better than a stern and strict God would. Mind you, that loving God isn't always the one I run to for comfort, but I think that is why he put such loving friends in my life, because he knew me so well. So I just try to keep him tied to my thoughts and the center as much as possible, and, hopefully, his work on me and my work for him causes his/my talents to grow.
Peace! Hope! & Joy!
Lee: I agree with you that the master is not God, but I do think that interpretations that tend to lop off the "unseemly" third slave and focus on the other two "investors" inadvertently throw the master back into the God-role. I keep having the sneaking suspicion that Jesus was pointing to the third not as a cipher for irresponsibility, but as a cipher for an entirely different way of seeing and being, a portal to the kingdom outside Jack in the Box.
Post a Comment
<< Home