"The parable of the talents is among the most abused texts in the New Testament."
Commentary, Matthew 25:14-30, Carla Works, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
General Resources for Sunday's Lessons from Textweek.com
Prayer
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Resources for Sunday's Gospel
A master goes away, leaves funds to be managed, and returns to find one steward who has not been a steward at all but has buried the master's treasure. The scene is ugly but the message is clear: risking for the kingdom of God and being prepared for the master's return is a task to be embarked upon at this very moment.
In this passage, Jesus is teaching about the end times. Are we waiting for the Kingdom of God? If so when is it coming? Jesus' intent appears to be to say the Kingdom of God is now. Yes, there will come a time of judgment but now is our of work.
The goal is to be clear that those who follow Jesus are to see life as the place in which they are to be tillers in the garden, soil tenders for God, and harvesters. Those who recognize their value in God and choose the Way of Jesus are choosing to work now and not to wait.
According to scholars Allison and Davies, there could be many reasons for the importance of the story for Matthew's community. Perhaps because rabbis at the time taught people to insure confession just before their death, or maybe it is important because there is some waning enthusiasm in the community as years pass between Jesus' ascension and his return. We do not know.
If we take this whole section of teaching between 24:36 and 25:30 there is a stark contrast that emerges between the work of everyday life and the end time. We have people feasting, and marrying, we have people working and serving. It is contrasted with images of fire and earthquakes, famine, and disaster. (Allison & Davies, Matthew, 412)
N. T. Wright (author and theologian) in his inaugural address recently at St. Mary's College wrote this:
"Zephaniah's text is much like the judgment language we hear from Jesus in the gospels."
Commentary, Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Mark S. Gignilliat, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"The poetic response to the elimination of God as a real player in the world is that God will have “a day.” God will have a time of intrusive self-assertion."
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Walter Brueggemann, ON Scripture, 2011.
"If we can move beyond our initial anxiety at Zephaniah's rhetoric of judgment, this passage offers marvelous opportunities for pedagogical, liturgical, and pastoral engagement."
Commentary, Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Carolyn J. Sharp, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.
Oremus Online NRSV First Reading Text
I do not know this passage well. We only read it a few times in the three year cycle. So, I will lean on Walter Brueggeman's excellent essay.
Zephaniah's prophesy is one of doom and despair! It is, in the words of Walter Brueggeman "extravagant" and "hyperbolic." (See his Day1 essay here.) Brueggeman points out that the gift of the prophets was the foresight of seeing the road being taken by the people. Meanwhile, the people live either with their eyes below the horizon or in denial - seeking to avoid the unavoidable accountability of how their actions are impacting their very own future. Like other prophets, Zephaniah's prophecy attempts to bring this future judgment to the attention of the people.
Brueggeman points out that the seeking response by the people. Zephaniah is not predicting the future but rather using extreme language to get the people's attention. Zephaniah's desires are to return to the "holy purposes of God."
Countries get into trouble, Zephaniah points out, when the people forget God and forget the least among them. The least and lost are never far from God's heart. Societies reflect where their true heart lies, suggests Zephaniah when one follows how the people seek wealth and forget the widows, orphans, and strangers in the land. When the society forgets God's beloved, who are given special attention in the Torah, then that society is doomed.
Brueggeman writes,
"Rather they have decided, in quite practical ways, that God is no real agent in the life of the world. The old superstitions about God have been rejected and God, while worshipped, is seen as an irrelevant. God cannot do good and cannot do evil, does not punish and does not reward, and so can be safely disregarded.
In our time we, like those ancients, have found God to be an irrelevance to the life of the world. The so-called "new atheists" only bring to speech what is commonly unspoken but tacitly accepted. In a world of Enlightenment rationality where human knowledge is transposed into ultimate control, God is surely an irrelevance."
The prophet answers this by suggesting that God will eventually have "a day of intrusive assertion."
We are generally uncomfortable with such prophecies. We don't like the idea of accountability or particular kinds of responsibility. We like to believe we are free of the responsibility of actions by others or consequences we could not have imagined. But Zephaniah reminds us God watches over the poor, the widow, and the orphan. God intends to be part of the world. God is a part of the world. God does not withhold destruction - especially when people's own sinfulness and self-absorption rules. There are very real-world consequences to a society like Zephaniah's when people forget to serve the good and the one who is good.
The scripture is not about the people of Israel. the scripture is about God, it is God's narrative, and how people have responded or not responded to God's invitation to walk with God. Zephaniah is pointing this out, calling our attention to the work that is in front of us.
Zephaniah is hoping to move our hearts so as to remind us and call us to action. Zephaniah is desiring that people see that we don't control the future at all - such control is merely a fiction. Instead, what lies before us is the accountability of lives led.
Again Brueggeman:
"The Mystery will--soon or late--envelop our self-confident control that has been greedy and self-serving. And comes then the uneasy, unsettling awareness that our tools for control are futile in the big picture, no help from money, no help from knowledge, and no help from arms...no help! No help at all!
Of course such hyperbolic rhetoric might be wrong. Maybe our control will prevail. Maybe our mastery will continue to perpetuity. Maybe all will be well and all manner of things will be well. Maybe we will dwell in perpetual shalom. Maybe. But we may doubt that as the poet doubts that. And you, dear reader, may doubt with the poet. We do not know the day or the hour; of course not. We only know that we are called to sober awareness. The hidden mystery of life is well beyond our little systems and will not be mocked."
I am curious what it means for preachers to preach in such a way as to manifest the poetic imagination and to use the story of Zephaniah as an awakening. Sometimes we think we must be the prophet when the reality is telling the prophet's story and the history that follows may be a well into the prophetic imagination such that people awaken to the reality of their own situations. Zephaniah's time then becomes linked, attached, to our own. In so doing, the preacher makes the past present. It becomes possible for people to see and hear that God will not, has never, and will never abandon creation. Instead, we may gain insight into the holy ways of God and God's purpose for us in our context - which it turns out, is not that much different from Zephaniah's.
"The gospel lesson for today is the parable of the talents, in Matthew, where Jesus warns against burying a gift that God has given. Deborah is an example of someone who seems to put her gifts to work in surprising, creative, and inspiring ways." Commentary, Judges 4:1-7, Sara Koenig, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.
Deborah clearly speaks for God, as is indicated by the direct quote in verses 6-7. She is one of the seven great female prophets of Israel, and one of the great 23 women of Israel. Her words on living a life worthy of the blessed community of shalom would influence Torah scholars even to this day. She is seen as a model of faithfulness and part of her influence is upon her call to worship regularly. (Tamar Kadari at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/deborah-2-midrash-and-aggadah) Like other great prophets before her (including Moses) one midrashic tradition (probably written by men!) says she was guilty of the sin of pride and her gifts were removed from her. (Midrash Tadshe, Ozar ha-Midrashim [ed. Eisenstein], 474).
Deborah was a gift to Israel who God had not saved but allowed them into the hands of Sisera because of their worship of idols. The story is also entwined with the story of Ruth and the famine. (See Jud. 4:3; The Tanhuma [ed. Buber], Behar 7; and Ruth Rabbah 1:1; from Kadari article cited above.)
The Jewish tradition is that Deborah sat under a Palm tree and taught the Torah. She is responsible for uniting Israel in faith and turning them from idols through her teaching. (see Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, Chap. 10, 50; Kadari.)
Our passage reveals the story in pretty blunt terms unlike the poetry of chapter 5. Note that the working of God comes through Deborah, Barak, and Jael. It takes a group to deliver God’s people out of their trial.
What stands out is how Deborah, the main character, puts her gifts to work. Sara Koenig writes, “Deborah is the only female judge, and she is also a prophet. She hears and speaks for God…Deborah is an example of someone who seems to put her gifts to work in surprising, creative, and inspiring ways.”(from Preaching This Week, see above link)
Deborah as a woman stands out as part of the community of leadership. She shares in an equal way as men in her time. With others, she gives shape to life with God. She is a guardian of Israel’s highest values and offers them over and against corrupt living oriented around idols.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of this type of leadership writes:
“The essential lesson of the Torah is that leadership can never be confined to one class or role. It must always be distributed and divided. In ancient Israel, kings dealt with power, priests with holiness, and prophets with the integrity and faithfulness of society as a whole. In Judaism, leadership is less a function than a field of tensions between different roles, each with its own perspective and voice…Leadership in Judaism is counterpoint, a musical form defined as ‘the technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality.’ It is this internal complexity that gives Jewish leadership its vigour, saving it from entropy, the loss of energy over time.”The Song of Deborah is one of ten songs: the song of Israel in Egypt, the Song at the Sea, the song at the well, the song of Moses, the song of Joshua, the Song of Deborah, the Song of David, the Song of Solomon, the song of Jehoshaphat, and a new song for the future (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Masekhta de-Shirah, Beshalah 1. This list varies in different sources; see J. L. Kugel, “Is There But One Song,” Biblica 63 [1982], 329–350).
I will leave you with Frederick Buechner’s take, which I find a bit cheeky. It is worth a read though and reminds of both the power of Deborah’s witness and the reality that God calls real people…
"It is a wonderful song, full of blood and thunder with a lot of hair-raisingly bitter jibes at the end of it about how Sisera's old mother sits waiting at the window for her son to come home, not knowing that Jael has already made mincemeat of him. Deborah composed it, but she got Barak to sing it with her. Barak looked like Moshe Dayan, and it must have been quite a duet. The song brushes by Barak's role rather hastily, but it describes Jael's in lavish detail and must have gotten her all the glory a girl could possibly want. Yahweh himself gets a plug at the end"So perish all thine enemies, O Lord!" (Judges 5:31)but by and large the real hero of Deborah's song is herself.
Everything was going to pot, the lyrics say, "until you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel" (5:7), and you can't help feeling that Deborah's basic message was that Mother was the one who really saved the day. And of course, with Yahweh's help, she was.
It's hard not to bridle a little at the idea of her standing under the palm tree belting out her own praises like that, but after all, she had a country to run and a war to fight, and she knew that without good press she was licked from the start. Besides maybe the more self-congratulatory parts of her song were the ones that she assigned to Barak. (Frederick Buechner, originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words http://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/11/6/deborah?rq=deborah)
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