The gospel for this week is the parable of the 'talents'. A man lent his three slaves money before going away on a journey. Two of them made a profit from his investment; the third made no attempt to do so and was deemed wrong for not having tried (Matthew 25:14-30). The most familiar interpretation of the parable is that we should use whatever "talent" God has given us. Herzog (1994:150-168) offers an alternative explanation: the third servant is the 'good guy' refusing to play along with someone whose only interest is in making money. The master is described as a 'harsh' man: someone who was willing to 'harvest where he had not sown'. In the minds of those listening to Jesus this could have suggested an absentee landlord: someone willing to charge high rent and to confiscate people's lands (and hence their harvests) when they could not pay. The third servant refused to collude with his master's greed; he exposed the sham of how the other servants had behaved in allowing themselves to be used for his exploitative purposes. The master was angry but the servant had made his point because the power of his gesture lay in what he had not done. The lesson for us is that sometimes doing nothing is the strongest statement we can make.

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