The Loser Is The Winner

HOMILY NOTES

MATTHEW 25: 14-30

SEPTEMBER 2, 2017

Three servants are given money to invest while their master is away.  Each is given a different amount depending on their perceived abilities.  The ones who are given more, make 100% return on their transactions.  The one who is given the least to invest, buries the money and gets punished by the master, tossed out into the darkness of the street, unemployed and homeless.  I do not think that this parable is one that weds capitalism to religion, specifically, Christianity.  But many Westerners, educated in the Age of Enlightenment and the Reformation, with the Protestant work ethic, see it as good old hard work, talent and smarts are rewarded.  

Here is my take.  It is about surprising grace.  Say what?  Well, The master is a hard-nosed guy, who harvests fields that he did not have planted.  This means that he foreclosed on farmers who could not pay their debts, took over their land and reaped the profits.  Way harsh for religion, but not so harsh if you are a banker.  It is business.  The ones who doubled there money?  Now that is quite a return on investment, so they probably did some underhanded method to make 100% return.  Good business, but not good ethics.  Maybe insider trading?  Or took advantage of some persons who were in a tight spot at the moment?  Very entrepreneurial but not very neighborly.  

Now the fellow who buried the money?  He did not lose anything, and did fear his boss, the master.  But the greedy master wanted at least to get some interest on the money.  So this poor frightened fellow is thrown out on his ear.  The outer darkness of the street is where God is.  God wants to embrace the world’s idea of “loser.”  When we are failing to fulfill the world’s demands in commerce and industry, the desire for “more,” then God is ready to welcome us.  God invests in lost souls, and powerless people.  This fellow is the one who enters the kingdom of surprising grace.  The others get a few short years of success in this life, and then find out that such behavior towards others does not do them any good in the kingdom.

You can’t take it with you.