Because everyone else is running
Text: Matthew 25:14-30
Because everyone else in running.
When everyone is going in the same direction, or doing the same thing, we need somebody who can wake us up with a question, why we do what we do. Otherwise, it is easy to take things we do for granted, forgetting that a different way is possible. Because everyone else is running.
When I was in University, I took a long commute to go to school. Even longer than the Canadian commute of two miles, barefoot, uphill, in a blizzard. My commute was one hour by train and a half an hour of riding a bus. Altogether it took almost 2 hours including the waiting time. So, it was crucial to be on time to catch the school bus that the University provided. If I missed the bus, I had to wait for the next one for fifteen to thirty minutes depending on the time of day. The problem was that I was not the only student making this journey, and my University was not the only one in the University town. As soon as I got off the train, I had to run! Run with so many other commuters, who were also trying to catch their buses. The train station was like the Olympic stadium where all the runners were racing to the finishing line, the entrance of the train station to catch the bus on time. It was interesting to observe how a simple behaviour like running became a habit. One day I found myself running even though I did not need to as it was around late morning, and the station was quiet. I asked a friend of mine who was running with me, ‘why are we running?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said my friend, ‘because everyone else is running.’
The problem with our habitual way of doing things is that we are not conscious of our behaviour. We do it just because that is what we have always done it or that is what everyone else is doing. Without our knowing why, not only do our actions have less impact, but also, we do not realize the consequences our actions bring to ourselves and others. Collective habits can be even more dangerous than individuals’ because of the power they create. Think about a religious cult with a blind faith, or the angry crowd of Vancouver Canuck’s fans rioting after watching their team lose. The human mind is capable of believing anything, beautiful things or terrible things. That can be a curse or blessing depending on what we believe in. So, we must examine our culture, especially the dominant culture in our society, and how we participate in it as individuals and as a community. The dominant culture holds the power to name what is normal or not, what is acceptable or not, and who belongs and who doesn’t.
I am a perpetual foreigner in this country: my identity as a racialized immigrant with language barrier put me outside of the dominant culture. But at the same time as being a perpetual foreigner, I have power and privilege: my gender identity, sexual orientation, being abled body, my education, job, class, marital status, and being a settler in Canada gives me certain power and privileges that I did not earn. Identity is complicated! Whether we like it or not, we all have social locations based on how the society sees us. The question is who benefits most from the dominant culture, who benefits the most from these ways of seeing, and at whose expense?
As long as our system is hierarchical, there is always a struggle to belong; there is always a gap between the ones who get, and the ones who get left behind. The good news is that we don’t have to maintain the status quo. The not so good news is that there is a price in rejecting the status quo. Even so, would you be willing to accept the cost rather than keeping the status quo? That is the question the parable wants us to answer.
I’m interested to know the motivation of the third servant. Why did he hide the talent in the ground in the first place? Obviously, the action he took put him in a danger. What did the servant do wrong in the eyes of the master? The servant did not lose any of his master’s money. All he did was keep the money safe, and handed over to the master saying, “here you have what is yours.” Reading the between lines, I wonder if there is an unspoken rule, a cultural norm, that the master expected from the servants by entrusting his money to them. The first servant and the second servant both did the same thing. They doubled the money they were given by trading it. They knew exactly what the master wanted even though he never said that. What made the third servant stand out is simply not doing what the others were doing. That made the master mad because the third broke the unspoken rule. The master called the third servant wicked and lazy. Who do we call wicked or lazy or stupid – for not adhering to our own implicit cultural rules? The brutal consequence for the third servant – losing the money and being thrown into the darkness – proves that threatening or challenging the system is dangerous.
The unusual actions of the third servant must have impacted the landless peasants in the audience. They knew exactly that the other two servants traded their master’s money to exploit the poor and the vulnerable in society. Those two servants were in a mutually beneficial relationship with the master. The master with land looked for others who were exploiters like him. So, in his absence, those retainers could use the wealth to make more money by loaning to peasant farmers. If you think your VISA rates are bad, in those times were high; estimates range to 60 percent and as high as 200 percent for loans on crops.1 The master needed those servants as much as they needed him. The peasants couldn’t break the endless cycle of poverty. The master told the first and the second servants, “Well done, good and trustworthy… enter into the joy of your master.” It became clear who benefited most: the master, the exploitive capitalist, and his minions, those who depended on the hierarchy. It is this unjust system that the third servant spoke out against. This servant said what the poor always wanted to hear right to the master’s face. “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” But that was not what made the master upset. It was Servant #3’s action of hiding the money. By doing so, he did two radical things: he exposed the true relationship between the master and the servants, and he refused to exploit the vulnerable. When everyone was running in the same direction, the third servant showed that a different way was possible.
How are you doing with pandemic fatigue? Did you run out to finish your Christmas shopping before we moved to Code Red, in the hopes of a “normal” Christmas? Are you longing to go back to normal? Here is what Sonya Renee Taylor says about our longing for the old normal. Taylor is an author, poet, social justice activist, educator, and founder of the Body is Not An Apology movement. She said:
“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
Taylor’s insight opens up new possibilities as to how we can spend our time of physical distancing. Instead of running, now everything is stopped – or many things have stopped. So, this is the gift of a time to reflect on our community relationships, how our way of living affects each other and all living things. We have canceled and will continue to cancel many of our regular activities during these times. There is no way for us to invest and multiply our resources like the first and the second servant. What if we intentionally take our time to discover and tell the truth about our world – how it is broken and needs healing? What if we show the world that a different way is not only necessary but also possible? When everyone is running in the same direction, we need somebody who can stop us with a question, “where are we going?” Can we be that person even if there is a risk of being rejected and thrown into the darkness, where there will weeping and gnashing of teeth? The third servant thinks so.