God the Venture Capitalist

This week’s gospel reading came from the book of Matthew—it is known as the parable of the talents, and I discovered a fresh perspective on this parable thanks to my preacher Lance at New Covenant MCC in Laurel.

The parable goes something like this: a master leaves his servants behind to go on a long journey. But before he goes, he gives three of them some money. He gives 5 talents to one servant, 2 talents to a second, and 1 talent to a third. Now a talent (Greek : talenton) in the story is not actually something like being able to play the piano or remember names. It was a denomination of coin—a coin that weighed several hundred pounds and was worth about 25 years’ labor for an average person. Which nowadays would be around $500,000, but I think Jesus is in for the hyperbole, so I’m going to say it’s about like a billion dollars today.

So the master goes away, leaving one servant with a billion dollars, one with 2 billion, and one with 5 billion. The guy who got 5 billion dollars goes out, invests it, buys into a camel business, gets the Romans to try a new style of sandal, whatnot, and makes back the 5 billion, plus another 5 billion more.

The servant with 2 billion does the same—puts the money in a couple different funds, a few dot-coms, an energy efficiency company, etc., and doubles the money.

The servant with 1 billion dollars, though, gets scared and buries the money in the ground.

After all this, the master comes back, and brings the three servants to him to settle up accounts. The first servant says, “You gave me 5 billion, I’m giving you 10 billion back.” The master is delighted: “Great job! You’re obviously a competent manager—now I’ll put you in charge of something really important. Come party with me.” Things go similarly well for the second servant.

By this point the third servant is probably very nervous, so he starts making excuses: “I heard you were a mean micro-manager, who never funds start-ups and is always laying people off for no reason. I figured you’d have me blacklisted if I lost any of your money, so I hid your billion dollars in an underground vault. Here it is, safe and sound.”

This is not what the master wants to hear, though: “So you heard I was the worst boss ever, huh? Go to hell. Maybe I should’ve micromanaged you—you’ve demonstrated your lazy incompetence pretty clearly here. Couldn’t you have at least put the billion dollars in a money market account so that I’d have some interest when I got back? You’re fired. And don’t expect to ever work in this town again.”

In the past I’ve thought about this parable as a story about how we should be careful not to misuse the gifts God gives us—not to hide them or be lazy with them. And I think it is that, but it’s also a parable about what God is like. If we identify God with the master, then God is like a venture capitalist, or an entrepreneur. What is the creation if not a crazy attempt to get something new and exciting into the market? I can just imagine God rolling up her sleeves and getting to work—trying out the light and darkness, the land and the water, the trees and plants, the fish and birds and land animals, the people, and after each one saying, “Hey, that looks good!” God could be like an artist or writer in that way, too, bringing something out of nothing and enjoying it thoroughly.

So what this story tells us about God is that God may possibly be one of the worst venture capitalists ever. The master gives each of the three servants an incredible amount of money, and doesn’t ask for any business plans, any resumes or CV’s. It’s extravagant. It’s unbelievable.

So when the third servant accuses the master of being a mean cheapskate, he’s not only demonstrating how much fear prevented him from taking risks and being creative, he’s committing a real slander against the person who gave him a billion dollars with no strings attached. He totally misreads the master’s intentions—to get him in the game in a big way, to give him a chance to prove his worth, and to try out some exciting stuff.

What if God is like this? What if God has given us each a billion dollars? Or 5 billion? Or some other treasure (not necessarily money) that is extravagant? What if God is taking a risk with us and wants us to take risks with what we’ve been given—to try out new things, to enjoy the ride, to delight God with the creative things we can come up with? I think that’s the image the other two servants had of their master—someone who trusted them and challenged them to do great things—and I think that’s how God is for us. Thanks be to God!