Studying parables is detective work

Important stories are told over and over again. Stories have an amazing record of maintaining key elements even though they are told in an unending variety of contexts. Changes are made and additions are attached. Placing a story in its original form and context is a true challenge.

Getting the parable of the talents back into the form in which Jesus told it and figuring out the identity of the original audience is a challenge a professional detective would relish. Who was the very rich man who apparently controlled a lot of money and property? Who were the slaves that were under his complete control?

Modern democratic structures were unknown. In cities, controlling structures were authoritarian. Households were the most powerful economic, political and social structure in a typical city. Wealth and power were held by a collection of households that included blood relatives and a very large contingency of servant-slaves who toiled at the behest of the household head. The wealthy man in the story was one of those household heads. The extent of his wealth is indicated by the size of the grants he made to three of his slaves as he was leaving on an extended trip. Five talents were more than a man could earn in an entire lifetime. Two talents were the equivalent of wages for a laborer for 30 years and a single talent was the earnings of a laborer for 15 years.

The role of the servant in a household was very precarious. They were former peasants who became retainers for the head of a household. They lived in comparative wealth at the will of the head of the household. Disobey and the slave/retainer had no choice but to return to the status of impoverished peasant. They were hated by other peasants for joining the household of a great oppressor of peasants. Returning to peasant status was not an attractive possibility.

There was no way for the head of a household to become so wealthy by honest means.

Further, there was no way for the two servants, who doubled the grants from their patron, to do so by honest means.

The Matthew writer made the head of the household clan into a God figure by adding verses 29 and 30 to the original parable. He made this insertion some 40-50 years after Jesus originally told the story and after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

If verses 29 and 30 are stripped from the parable, and if the story was first told by Jesus to peasant poor people, Jesus becomes a whistle blower and is explaining the evil of the householder and his servants to the people who have been cheated and reduced to poverty.

In the story, the third servant of the urban rich man becomes the truth teller. The third servant said the rich man was harsh, a taker of money that he did not earn. The rich man never denied the charge. The rich man assigned the third servant to a life in hell.

Who is the hero in the story? The writer of the Matthew version of the story, by adding verses 29 and 30, made the rich man a God figure. In interpreting the story, which version fits the God and Heavenly Father of Jesus from Nazareth?

In the centuries following the captivity of the Israelites in Babylon, a very harsh form of Judaism developed. The God of many Israelites became harsh, judgmental, vengeful, and destructive, waiting to get even with all oppressors of Jews. They became apocalyptic and expected their God to be a winner over all opposition. This was the nature of the God of the Zealots in Galilee, who advocated violent rebellion, and it was the nature of the God of many of the Jewish political and religious leaders.

Jesus from Nazareth, an impoverished peasant town, became the great whistle blower on the rich and powerful people who controlled the cities and who were the great oppressors of poor peasants.

The Matthew gospel writer and the Luke gospel writer, who repeats a form of the parable, embraced a strange form of Christianity by embracing both the gentle and the warrior model of following Jesus. This pattern of embracing both a loving God and a violent God continues among Christians to this very day. Wheaton College is known as a great center of Evangelical Christianity. Wheaton is my alma mater. I love the vigor of its dedication to “Christ and His Kingdom.” I despise the Wheaton ROTC unit that trains high-ranking Army officers for the U.S. military.

Christians have become so compromised that they cannot speak the truth about the evils of our society. Christian churches have become both loving and apocalyptic. In the process they have lost their ability to speak the truth about the economic tyranny that is fostered by large American corporations. They have become the companions of the first two servants of the household head in the Jesus parable about the talents. They have deserted the great leader of the poor, Jesus from Nazareth.

On a broader scale, Christians are afraid to identify Walmart as one of the truly evil corporations of the world. The Walton family members have all become billionaires off the backs of poorly paid workers in America and around the world. The typical Walmart employee qualifies for food and housing subsidies. Walmart is a huge benefactor of public subsidies of its workers.

I cannot imagine Jesus remaining silent in the face of American economic tyranny. Will Christian churches and Christians do a little detective work and speak openly about what is going on?