Buckets of Money

 

Haiku for having a go.

The journeying man,

in the story Jesus told,

left his slaves in charge.

Diff’rent sized buckets

of money according to

perceived competence.

Take what you’re given

and use it well, with wisdom,

grace and compassion.

Fear is enemy

to action. What if I fail;

what if I blow it?

The master returns

to inspect the estate. How

is your stewardship?

Days of accounting

wherein my efforts are judged.

I have judged myself.

Well done, companions,

you have loved, served and striven!

You are my true friends.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Playing safe

Haiku for faithful stewards

Talents were immense

lumps of money, like a big

CEO payout.

The so-called experts

don’t agree, but a million

will get somewhere near.

Another story.

This time three slaves are summoned,

trusted with big bucks.

Their freehanded boss

is going on a journey.

Take care of my things.

You know how it goes:

Five talent man makes five more;

two talent man, too.

When the boss returns

he commends them. You’ve done well,

I’ll trust you with more.

The one talent man

got cold feet; panicked, anxious,

hid it in the ground.

Here we are! he said

when he came before the boss:

All safe and secure!

He is not impressed.

Security is worthless;

learn to take some risks!

Get out of my sight!

You cannot serve God’s kingdom

if you play it safe!

© Ken Rookes 2017

The ten talents

feathering our own nests

Most of us have accepted what we were told, that we are expected to make the most of our talents. Then we will be given more according to how responsible we have been. This story was not about natural gifts. It is about money and possessions. Talents were gold coins.

I was in a group discussing this when someone said, “I feel sorry for the guy who was only given one. He obviously did what he thought was best with it.” The room went quiet and all eyes swung to see who had spoken. The comment had set us thinking. Someone else said, “I feel sorry for him, too. Neither of the others helped or encouraged him. He was obviously afraid. Maybe he had reason to be. Maybe he was inexperienced in such things. The master showed that he didn’t have much faith in him by giving him the least. He knew the master was demanding. Perhaps the master had told him that he thought he was hopeless, as my father used to tell me.”

A third person in the group spoke up. “I don’t understand this story. My experience and understanding of God and Christ are just not like the master in this story. Jesus didn’t condemn those who had less. That’s what the world does! And to reap where you did not sow and to gather where you did not scatter seed is to rob the people who did the work in sowing and scattering.”

Another person in the group lived on a farm on the outskirts of a major city. She told of how people had helped themselves to their sheep and how orchardists in their district had trouble with people helping themselves to the fruit. She said, “I can’t see Jesus doing that to people. What if we have been wrong in assuming that the master in this story is representing God? What if the point Jesus was making is that this is the way the god of this world works?”

There was a stunned silence as we all re-read the passage. Then someone said, “This is the way the economy has been run in recent years. People are expected to work hard to make more because the more people earn, the more the government gets through taxes and the more managers get in their salary packages. The rich are getting richer and what the poor have is being taken from them. Like the master here, some people in our community think all poor people are lazy, whatever the cause of their poverty.”

This is not a story about ability. It is a story about money and the pressure to make more money. We have been guilty of trying to make it “nice” by interpreting it metaphorically. We can know this because the next part of the gospel story is about Christ judging the sheep and the goats on the grounds of how they treated the poor, fed the hungry and thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and visited those who were sick or in prison.

Could it be that, in doing what he did, the third man was taking a stand against the system which exploited poor people? This story may have been different, even in our usual interpretation, if they had all worked together to achieve what the master wanted. Maybe the two more able servants could have offered to mentor the third.

The Global Financial troubles are a reminder to us that we are not called to feather our own nests, but to see how we can best help those with no nests. Christ continually challenges us to question assumptions as we follow his way. May you receive many blessings as you contemplate this.

Rev Julianne Parker

(for full sermon see sermons page)

Making a Profit

Across the centuries many have hailed

the Parable of the Talents, so called,

as a divine endorsement of commercial enterprise.

The worshippers at mammon’s various temples:

the merchant bankers,

the stock brokers,

the importers, the exporters,

the buyers and traders,

the investors and actuaries;

must all love this yarn.

Central to the tale is buying and selling

and making a profit,

all of which become the means

by which the nerve, ingenuity and commitment

of three servants are tested by their master.

Sits a bit awkwardly, though,

with the “eye of a needle” line delivered elsewhere;

among the teacher’s more usual misgivings

about riches and possessions.

Unique among the yarns

recounted by the master story-teller,

this one assesses fruitfulness

in terms of astuteness and monetary gain;

more commonly it is gauged by acts of love,

forgiveness and peace-making.

Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong

with making a modest profit.

© Ken Rookes 2014 

I posted another poem about this parable last week, getting ahead of myself. It is called 'Reckoning.'

Reckoning

I shall dig deep the hole

in which I hide my heart.

There it shall lie,

secure, safe,

and unscathed.

On the day that the master returns

I shall retrieve my heart

and present it before him,

intact, entire

and untarnished.

© Ken Rookes

Oops, I got a week ahead of myself. This poem is a reflection on the gospel for Sunday 16th November. I am posting one for 9th Nov.

Parousia is not for whimps

The church in history lives between the times, and some times are worse than others. Today it is easy to let fear govern our lives. A whole political and social culture is nurtured by fear, and it stalks our church life. Traditionalists fear the gift of the Second Vatican Council and a changing church, and want to keep their treasure intact through a return to dated rituals and arcane theology. Those who welcomed the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII often want to freeze it in time and are fearful of renewing the renewal. The wise women at the wedding feast, the enterprising servants in today’s Gospel and the good wife of Proverbs were people of foresight, initiative and independence. The church today has been given vast treasures of “talents.” Will these increase or remain hidden and guarded?

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=2590

The harvest is ripe

The tragedy is that many people are afraid of losing or endangering God and so seek to protect God from adventures, to resist attempts at radical inclusion that might, they fear, compromise God's purity and holiness. Protecting God is a variant of not trusting God. Matthew wants his hearers to share God's adventure of inclusiveness. God is bigger than our religious industry. Sometimes we find God is pulling in great profits in areas which we had deemed beyond God's interests. It is a fascinating thing to have God compared to the entrepreneurial multimillionaire. "God's mercy never ends" is a way of saying grace has capital, love is rich. We need to encourage people to stop putting God under the mattress. As we begin to trust allowing God to move through us, our lives change as individuals and our communities have a better chance of change. There are rich pickings, so to speak, and the harvest is ripe.

-William Loaderhttp://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost22.htm

Das Kapital

Jesus told a story

about a man who went on a journey.

The man was a capitalist,

probably living off his inherited wealth

while his lackeys did the work.

Nothing new in that.

The man went off for an indefinite period,

having entrusted three servants

with his fortune, in measures

according to the ability of each;

with the simple instruction, (implied);

make as much as you can.

Two out of the three do so

and become the heroes of the story,

drawing enthusiastic plaudits from their master,

who, by doing nothing, has become even richer.

For fear, the third played safe,

and when called to account, produced nothing

but the original lump of money.

He is thus declared a loser,

a failure, a ne’er-do-well.

In truth he was a true product

of a fearfully greedy economic system;

which was not the point

that Jesus was making,

but which still needs to be considered.

© 2011 Ken Rookes

Reckoning

I shall dig deep the hole

in which I hide my heart.

There it shall lie,

secure, safe,

and unscathed.

On the day that the master returns

I shall retrieve my heart

and present it before him,

intact, entire

and untarnished.

© Ken Rookes

Saving the master

You can’t have it both ways, Jesus,

creating yarns about foolish rich people

who don’t know what is really important;

telling others to give everything away

if they want to be disciples,

while at the same time making heroes

of rich, mean and crafty people

in other stories.

If I could enter the parable

I’d find the third servant and tell him:

Don’t be scared;

don’t leave the money in the ground.

But don’t trade with it, either.

Create your own radical alternative;

give it away! Yes, all of it;

to the poor. Then we’d see

just what sort of person the master is.

You could always say

that you were only thinking of him;

making the needle’s eye wider.

You never know,

he might even give you

the other fourteen talents.

© Ken Rookes