I think Jesus teaches with stories not to give us answers but to urge us to participate. Stories invite us to interact with him, to ask questions, to challenge and even disagree.
We are not being prepared for a pop quiz on Monday; we are being prepared for our lives.
I notice we tend to interpret parables in the same ways we interpret ourselves. If I am feeling judged or judging, cast out, pretty much a failure where Jesus or any other higher authority is concerned, then I see these in the parable. At other times I see myself as having been entrusted with resources and doing as well as I can with what I’ve been given.
One of the things I see today is what a mess I can get into when I am afraid that I won’t have enough, that I won’t be enough. What a mess, when I see my higher authority, the one who provides, as harsh and demanding. Oh, what weeping and gnashing of teeth I endure when I hide out, when I bury precious parts of myself rather than risk having the whole me be brought to the light.
Maybe with in the parable of the Master and Talents, he hopes beyond hope that we will not continue to be stony-faced listeners.
Maybe he wants us to react and stop accommodating the myth of this kind of master, the master of mammon and harsh punishment who would cast people away. We can stand up and come into our own. Jesus is a new kind of master, and we can be a new kind of servant.
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