Reaping Where You Haven’t Sowed: The Parable of the Talents

(Matthew 25: 14-30)

“Sir, I had heard that you were a hard man, reaping where you had not sown
and gathering where you had not scattered…”  --Matthew 25:24b

This is another passage that has always frightened me –always troubled me; I relate to the poor servant who has heard and believed that the master is ruthless and hard.  He panics when the master gives him the single talent and does what seems to him most prudent: he hides it in order to protect the master’s money –so that it can be safely returned to him when called for.  He avoids the risk of investment that the other two servants undertake, because in his heart he fears the master will take payment out of his hide if he loses the money.

So, he acts in what must have seemed a prudent way and is able to return the master’s money safely to him.  But, the master challenges this approach –this caution—and the servant is punished anway.

One thing I am troubled by when dealing with parables, when studying the teachings of Jesus in general, is the rush to allegorize or spiritualize everything.  The rush to disengage from the actual and make everything neat and tidy by turning it all immediately into symbols and a simple lesson; dismissing complications in order to create an easily digested lesson.

Of course a lesson is there, that was part of His mission –to teach us—but I like to remind myself: don’t be in such a rush to sum it up. To package it with a bow.  Don’t be in such a rush to make everything clear and simple and safe.  Spend some time with the actuality of His words.   Remember what He said about why He taught in parables:

“Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” –Matthew 13: 13

Clearly Jesus is using parables not because they are the clearest form of communication, but for another reason –perhaps their staying power: the memorable nature of a brief, simple, narrative with a couple of memorable characters makes parables easy to remember and therefore easily transmittable by an oral culture.

But, for me, this speaks to an intent not to be clear and simple –but to be a little bit mysterious and definitely not to be afraid of being a little confusing.  So, I have to often remind myself: Don’t be in a rush to make everything clear and simple and safe.  Spend some time with the mystery, with the actuality of Jesus’s words. 

Spend some time with the actual of the story; contemplate the actual events, characters, images He chose.  Contemplate the whole of it –or find yourself one little troubling verse or line or word –even—and spend some time with it.  Don’t try to make it make sense. Don’t try to force an answer to appear before your eyes.  Just let yourself be a little troubled and maybe a little agitated.  Let the seed of that truth work its way into your soul, your mind, your heart. Inside you.

In this parable the master never denies what the servant says –that he is a hard master, and he never denies that he reaps where he has not sown.  He simply repeats to the servant what he has said.  Why?

Spend some time today with that master; with that servant. Why did Jesus use these two characters? Why did He tell His followers this particular story? And why did He use it to create an image of the Kingdom of God?  And –perhaps most importantly—why is He telling it to you, now, over 2000 years later?

Don’t rush to clarify it. Don’t rush to make sense.  Don’t bury the word in a mound of scholarship and footnotes and academic theological interpretations.  Those have value, and may help you at some point.  But first, just spend some time with that hard image, with that hard master, and see where God leads you.  Let God plant His seed in your silence, so that you can reap what He has sown.