For Sunday
Proper 28A
Collect
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
For Jesus’s final dark parable, he unleashes a story of trust, investment, and huge profits. For the reader, this all hinges on our familiarity with usury—profiting immensely and immorally—and how much God commands us not to exploit other people for massive profit.
In a sense, this is like the modern cautionary tale; think Wall Street.
And like these more modern stories, the reader is being shown what they know is wrong and invited to deal with it. To find sympathy with those whom the bad guy rejects. And to encounter the suffering as not only morally wrong, but unjust. Like punishing someone for returning to them their own stuff.
What we do after the cautionary tale is on us. But it does serve as a helpful key for investigating our world. For exploitation schemes, from bankers to slavers, and for influences that predicate trust on how much we can get from someone else’s labor. Observing what not to do often helps point us in the right direction.