This section encourages you to reflect on how God guides us through scripture and what the bible teaches us about our responsibilities towards each other.
This section encourages you to reflect on how God guides us through scripture and what the bible teaches us about our responsibilities towards each other.
A Bible reflection on Luke 19:11-27 (and Matthew 25:14-30)
Read the parable of the Talents and see how the different perspectives and experiences of the slaves raise key questions about workers’ rights and the role of the Master – the boss.
The Parable of the Talents
As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant region to receive royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves and gave them ten pounds and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’ When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves to whom he had given the money to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by doing business. The first came forward and said, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.’ He said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.’ Then the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ He said to him, ‘And you, rule over five cities.’ Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why, then, did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.’ He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to rule over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’“
We all know the traditional interpretation of this parable. God has given us ‘talents’ – here described as ‘pounds’, and we will be judged on our use of them at the Last Judgement. But is that the meaning Jesus intended? The head of the household in Luke 19:12 is an aristocrat who is going off on business and leaves his most powerful servants a huge amount of money, each according to their skill, to make him a profit while he is away. The amount of money is on a fabulous scale: 10, 5 and 1 talents or pounds. We are talking about millions of pounds in today’s currency. The investment opportunities would include lending to peasants with high interest rates to plant crops and with the land forfeit as collateral or buying up essential supplies and selling them on at profit to those in most need. Remember that the peasants in Jesus’ time are already paying a large part of their produce in tax in kind to the Romans and to the Temple, so the stewards’ extortionate and exploitative profit-making is on top of an already heavy taxation. Again, this buys into the process of alienating the peasants from the land so that they become dependent on the new elite large estate owners. In Luke’s gospel, the aristocrat departs a nobleman and returns a king. There is a memory of Herod’s sons rushing off to Rome to claim the throne with Herod Antipas returning as King of Galilee.
Look at the praise poured out on the first two stewards, but what would the original audience have thought of them? Amazingly, the third steward tells it as it is. He has safeguarded his master’s money but refused to collude with the iniquitous practices of his fellow stewards. He cuts through the seeming virtue of their service and names and shames his master as strict, cruel, harsh and merciless, as an exploiter of the labour of others. He is the vulnerable whistle blower who exposes the structure of exploitation and gives a prophetic judgement on it. His reward is exclusion, poverty, misery and gnashing of teeth with the homeless. He is being excluded from the luxury of his master’s household into the daily struggle of the day labourers.
This is a dangerous story. It makes those at the top and bottom of society reflect on what would happen if retainers and stewards no longer colluded with their master. What would happen if they took up common cause with the landless and powerless masses that remain in the majority today?
Questions for discussion
How does this Bible text speak to you?
What does it invite us to do as individuals?
What does it invite us to do as groups, communities and as the Church?
A Bible reflection on Luke 16:19-31
Read this story about wealth and poverty and how two very different people received the opposite responses from Abraham after death for the way in which they had lived on earth.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
Here we have a powerful and wealthy man, dressed in purple clothes. These cost a fortune and imply a royal or imperial official, whose fine cotton is imported at great expense from Egypt. Lazarus meanwhile, is described as destitute, corpse-like, almost carrion for the wild dogs. Yet the dogs alone are kind to him, licking his sores which are the result of malnutrition. The social difference between the two protagonists could not be greater and, to underline this, Jesus emphasises the great gate that keeps Lazarus (whose name in Greek ironically means “God helps”) excluded. If only the gate had been open, everything would have been different. The rich man dies and is no doubt buried with honour.
But now in paradise, like a privileged dinner guest, Lazarus reclines on the breast of Father Abraham and the Rich Man is in torment in Hades; not Hell but the place where you await the resurrection and learn the lessons you should have done in life. What has the Rich Man learnt? He asks Abraham to command Lazarus to bring him water but Abraham reminds him of his life and that this is the consequence. There is a play here between the gate the Rich Man could have opened at any time to have comforted Lazarus and the great gulf that now separates them. Next, the Rich Man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers so they can avoid his fate. Abraham points out they already have all they need in the teaching of Moses. Again, notice how the Rich Man speaks of Lazarus, as an insignificant slave. He has learnt nothing. And then that extraordinary, ironic sentence ‘If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ And Abraham’s retort: if they have ignored Moses and the prophets, who spoke God’s word, why would they listen to one resurrected?
Throughout, Abraham seeks the Rich Man’s recognition of Lazarus as equally a child of God. Yet he only cares about his brothers. He cannot see Lazarus as a child of God and, therefore, as his brother, which is the teaching of the Torah. In telling this story Jesus places himself squarely in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah 1:16-17,5:7; Jeremiah 5:23-29; 21:11-14; Amos 2:6-11; 5:10-24 and Micah 3:1-3, 9-12, which condemns the exploitation of earlier generations of Kings and oppressive royal officials. But the story also highlights how class and family interests within the new economy have undermined the sense of solidarity among the people.
The parable gives us a way of interpreting the two-tiered society of the time. That such a great divide between the rich and the people of the soil is the direct result of serious interest on loans, of high taxation and their consequences. What is required is the re-establishment of a sense of mutuality, of fundamental relationship. Without this, it is possible for the rich to continue to exploit the poor, seizing land and building great estates through the manipulation of debt. The shared space that they all once inhabited as Israel, the people of God, has been undermined and re-interpreted. The poor are meant to believe this is God’s will or blessing.
As Jesus tells the story, this official interpretation unravels. The destitute on the street becomes the honoured guest at the heavenly banquet. It is fitting that Jesus should have referenced Abraham, whom the Jerusalem elite had used as the symbol of their class and its ethnic purity, and who legitimated their rule. In Jesus’ story, however, Abraham is now the one who restores true kinship and hospitality to the destitute. Such stories show Jesus in serious conflict over the interpretation of the religious Law and its application.
Questions for discussion
How does this Bible text speak to you?
What does it invite us to do as individuals?
What does it invite us to do as groups, communities and as the Church?
A Bible reflection on Luke 18:1-8
Read the parable of the struggle and perseverance of a poor widow and see how faith and resistance are crucial if we aren’t satisfied with an unjust life.
The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus told this parable to encourage his followers to persevere in prayer and to confront injustice while awaiting God’s Kingdom. Jesus assures his followers that God will provide justice in the end. The place of this parable is an unnamed city. Here are the civil authorities who frequently make corrupt alliances with the priests, lawyers, governors, militia and the rich. Widows were very vulnerable in Jesus’ society – they were among the powerless ones. In this parable we have two people: the judge described as one of these bad characters who did not fear God or respect humanity. The Biblical insistence of doing justice for the widow and orphan was because there was no justice for those living in poverty, such as described in Exodus 22:21-23. And since there are so many similar texts in Exodus, Deuteronomy and the Prophets, it is clear that such compassionate practice was often abandoned. And we have the widow who constantly begs the judge to grant her justice. These two people lived in the same city but represent opposites at every level.
While we do not know the nature of the injustice the widow has suffered, it must have been serious if she wasn’t willing to give it up. She was defenceless and trying to make a legal case against someone who had wronged her. Jesus’ story presumes the woman is without support or worse, that her family have undermined her inheritance rights by bribing the local judge. A woman had to be represented in court by a man usually of her immediate family, but Jesus tells us she is alone, so her prospects are not hopeful. In this story the widow’s claims are just, but she has no means to persuade the judge to act positively on her behalf. The presumption is the judge has already been bribed to find fault against her. Jesus tells us the judge is so corrupt that he “has no fear of God and has no respect for anyone”. This is already clear as he deals with her case alone. All such cases, by right, demand a tribunal, so bribes have already perverted the Law. This is a judge who has colluded with the Roman forces of occupation and their systematic alienation of the local masses from their means of support and survival, creating a culture of debt and dependency.
But the widow does not give up. She sees exactly what is happening, she knows what her rights are and she works out an effective strategy to bring about the justice which the corrupt process deprives her of. She does not appeal to the court, as the local justice system has been clearly undermined. She identifies the key figure who can change things and targets him – the unjust judge. She goes public. She appears day after day at the town gate where the men of influence gather, and she cries out against him. One woman’s voice repeatedly calling for justice. She speaks the truth and many there will recognise it as truth. She makes public the corruption of the Law which should serve all. Notice her emphasis is on calling him to do justice. She is calling him to account in public.
So what made the judge change? Was he afraid of her, worried about how she might discredit him or is he just fed up with her insistence? One day he says to himself: “because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” At last, her constant demand brought her justice. He can only take a certain amount of shame, because beyond that, his own authority will be undermined and his wealthy backers may no longer have use of him.
Jesus gives us a model of a thoughtful and creative woman whose unorthodox action, beyond the norms of gender and status, gains the just verdict that simple appeals to the compromised system could never have achieved. As a piece of sustained grass roots activism it has a lot to teach us.
Women are often the most vulnerable persons in our cultures today. They should not need to beg for justice nor should they beg alone. No woman should passively allow themselves to be imprisoned in roles that diminish them or that oppressive societies determine for them. As Christ’s followers, both men and women have a responsibility to persist, to be faithful in prayer, and to be active in the struggle for social justice.
Questions for discussion
How does this Bible text speak to you?
What does it invite us to do as individuals?
What does it invite us to do as groups, communities and as the Church?
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<< Back to Section 2: Social Justice in Scripture
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Our relationship and responsibilities towards creation need to change urgently. We are co-creators of the earth’s wellbeing not passive consumers of its resources.
The prophetic role of Pope Francis in particular, has challenged us to think and live in radically new ways.
