Melissa’s sermon focused on Matthew 25: 14-30, the Parable of the Talents. This passage has often been used to justify a variety of teaching praising rampant capitalism or aggressive evangelization and placing God in the role of the master who casts out the lazy slave into darkness for burying the talent he should have invested. However, Melissa challenged us to imagine the religious, economic, and context in which the parable originated, and thus arrived at the conclusion that the “lazy” slave had committed an act of passive resistance against unjust leadership and economic systems that exploited the poor to benefit the wealthy, and he was punished for it. The master represents Rome, the money changers, and others Jesus saw as exploiters of the poor, not God. In our own struggles against those who oppress the weak we must remember that then, just as now, speaking the truth to those that abuse power can cost us dearly, but that is where we meet Jesus.
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