Spread the Love

Luke 19:11-27

As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, ‘A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, “Do business with these until I come back.” But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, “Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.” He said to him, “Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.” Then the second came, saying, “Lord, your pound has made five pounds.” He said to him, “And you, rule over five cities.” Then the other came, saying, “Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.” He said to him, “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.” He said to the bystanders, “Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.” (And they said to him, “Lord, he has ten pounds!”) “I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.”

This is a tough one. And apparently scholars and other preachers think the same thing, because there’s no real consensus as to what exactly Jesus is saying here; and it doesn’t seem to be a very popular one—in fact, if I weren’t doing this sermon series on the parables, you may never have heard this one. The common lectionary we follow just skips right over this passage. And I mean, I can understand why.

There’s the possibility this is a classic sort of allegory; that the main character, this noble, is a stand-in for God or Jesus; that the slaves, or more probably servants, are disciples or listeners; that the money, or minas, is the Word. But this is a tough one to stomach, right? It portrays an angry, vengeful, even petty version of God, a version of God I certainly don’t believe in—and there are variations on this interpretation. There’s one interpretation that comes from the same book and author I alluded to in my sermon last week, William R. Herzog’s Parables as Subversive Speech, and that interpretation posits that the nobleman who comes back a royal is bad—he’s a bad man, he’s an absentee land or business owner, he’s leaning in hard to the unjust systems that benefit him by traveling to hoard more land and wealth and playing games with his money and his servants; and the third servant, the one who saves the coin and does nothing with it, is actually the hero, standing up for the people who don’t want this obviously cruel man to be king, and in doing so, sacrificing himself. According to Herzog, the point of this parable is to show people what a violent and unjust society in which they are all living.

I want this to be the correct interpretation so. badly. Because I do believe in an unconditionally loving God, and I do believe in a pro-justice, pacifist turn-the-other-cheek Jesus, and there was just no way to me that this royal elite could represent God or Jesus, especially one this cruel. It just doesn’t make sense. And as much as I still believe Jesus and God to be wholly forgiving and the ultimate arbiters of peace, justice, and love, I just, unfortunately, do not buy this interpretation. It would be such an outlier among the parables, and there’s not really a lesson or anything to take from it besides “this world is bad and it will hurt you.” It’s sort of a bleak lesson and there’s not much in that would drive anyone to much action besides the general cruelty of it all.

And one thing I had to remember when I was working on this sermon, one thing I’ve had to remember working with these parables all Summer, is that these are meant to challenge us. If I go with the interpretation I find easiest to digest even if, deep down, I’m not actually convinced, I’m not challenging myself. I’m not challenging anyone. I’m doing a disservice to myself to anyone who’s listening to me now, or who goes online and stumbles upon this sermon later. So if I’m not convinced by Herzog’s interpretation, that the nobleman is simply cruel and bad and the scorned servant is the hero of the story, that means I have to grapple with the fact that Jesus, the deity that is both divine and one of the people, one of the oppressed; the deity that I see as being all-forgiving and unconditionally loving is represented in this story by a cruel and vengeful elite. So how do we reconcile these two things?

 Well we can start with something I talked about this a little bit at the beginning of this Parables sermon series, when we talked about the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in Mark; in that parable, God was represented by an absent and neglectful elite landowner; I talked about how much I was struggling with this concept, how much I was overthinking; but luckily, we had discussed that passage during the last Bible study of the year, and Brian had helped me come to the conclusion that Jesus was likely giving examples like this because they were, unfortunately, ones with which his listeners would be familiar. And it’s very unfortunate that Jesus’ listeners would have been familiar with a scenario like this one—the elite were often cruel and petty, and seemed to take pleasure in harsh punishments for the mistakes of their underlings.

And there’s actually an additional layer to this interpretation that makes it even more convincing—this story seems to be a mirror of an actual historical event, that of Archelaus, son of Herod—he was supposed to inherit his father’s throne, but there was an uprising of sorts; but this story is just too similar to Archelaus’ journey to Rome for it to be a coincidence. Jesus likely did this to add an extra layer of verisimilitude to his story—this would resonate with his listeners who were likely aware of that event. And so for all these reasons, it’s relatively clear to me that Jesus is trying to give his audience harsh lesson here.

But we  have to look at the big picture here—we’re getting towards the end of Jesus’ ministry in the gospel of Luke. In this very chapter, Jesus will cleanse the temple, as we talked about last week. He’s full of righteous anger seeing how broken his world is; and he’s also inching closer and closer to his death. He knows what’s coming. So I can’t help but wonder if Jesus’ understandably dour mood is flavoring this strange and kind of scary parable. After all, Jesus is fully human in addition to being divine, and he would therefore be susceptible to mood swings, to fear, to anxiety. So right now he seems to be letting that anger take over and he’s giving his listeners some tough love.

When he goes to cleanse the temple shortly, he’ll go in to cleans it of people selling doves and other animals to sacrifice for exorbitant amounts. Temple authorities will essentially be extorting people with the promise of forgiveness, of righteousness, by making an extra buck off of those who come through to pray and to worship God. It’s blasphemy, it’s sacrilege. What Jesus is seeing is people squandering the gifts God has given them, turning the gifts of this world into nothing. The call of God is to spread the gift of Love, to take that unconditional love, to take that grace, and pay it forward. But they’re instead hiding it—out of fear, out of selfishness, it’s unclear, but it’s being squandered. 

We are all given unconditional love and grace. But if we don’t meet others with that same love and grace we’re given, what good is it? If we take those gifts and bury them or wrap them and hide them away, whom does it help but ourselves? And what’s stopping us from spreading that love and grace around? Maybe a society that doesn’t care about us and makes us not want to care about others in it; maybe expectations that we’re scared we won’t live up to. There are so many reasons we might be tempted hide our God-given gifts.

This parable, as harsh as it may be, is a warning—if we hide our gifts, if we don’t do anything with what we are given, we are destined to fail as a people. If we give in to our selfishness or our fear, we’re going nowhere fast.

We’re seeing this today, right? We have all the resources at our disposal— a single one of the top five richest people on this earth could put an end world hunger if they wanted. But they don’t. They’re full of so much fear that they take true God-given gifts and tuck them away so that they can continue to gain earthly power. I find myself sometimes wishing I could have a word with those billionaires, try to show them the truth in some righteously angry way, try to scare them into submission… but I don’t really think I have the rhetorical skills or the charisma to do that adequately, unfortunately.

But what I’m saying is, I can understand Jesus’ anger. He sees what people are doing to God’s house, turning it into a marketplace to make money for themselves; he sees how much those in power loathe him for speaking the truth, for leading with love and gentleness, and so he rather violently explains that squandering God’s gifts will lead to them digging their own graves. And things are ramping up to Jesus’ own violent ends… immediately after today’s passage, Holy Week begins—he rides that famous donkey into Jerusalem; he weeps over the city that is about to do such harm; and then he cleanses the temple with righteous anger. He’s kind of at a tipping point here.

So when we put all of this together— the historical context of the story of Archelaus and Herod, the type of story and characters Jesus’ listeners would understand, the place we find ourselves in Jesus’ ministry and journey, the fact that Jesus is human and is frustrated and scared and about to knowingly go through something unspeakably horrible, the simple fact that parables are not supposed to be taken literally, that they’re extreme examples or representations of something else—this strange and scary parable becomes a little easier to digest, I think.

Jesus was upset. He was angry, and he was scared. And he was preaching this parable to people to sort of, paradoxically, scare the fear out of them. He was letting them know that if they continue to squander their God-given gifts of love and kindness out of fear or selfishness, they will be sorry. And as is always the case with us mortal humans, we’re doing it to ourselves. We’ll be sorry because our own fear and selfishness and short-sightedness will destroy one another, ourselves, and the world.

And so we take the love that God gives us, and we spread it and we multiply it. We take the gifts we’re given, and instead hiding them away, or using them to lift ourselves up, we use them to lift up those around us; we use them for community; we use them to bring people together. When we come together as one, those gifts of love are multiplied.

“All those who have, more will be given…” Jesus says ominously. But this simply means that when we go out into the world and spread the Love and the good works we’re called to do, everyone benefits. And so, we will go from today with our heads spinning, knowing that from this strange and violent parable, is actually telling us to spread the love. Amen.