Faithful Over a Little

Matthew 25:20-23 – “Then the one who had been given five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed me five talents, see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And also the one who had been given two talents came forward saying, ‘Master, you delivered me two talents. Here I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’"

Those who have been faithful over a little are now being entrusted with more. That is the life of following Christ in a nutshell. Most of us don’t start out jumping into the middle of a movement or beginning a ministry without preparation. This test of his employee’s is part of the master preparing them for further responsibilities. These two employees passed the test.

However, to pass the test they had to cooperate with the economic system of the time. This meant oppressing the poor and vulnerable. You might say, as many do, “Well, they worked for it.” Yes, they did, but in a system that was designed to make success easy for them and almost impossible for others. They were those who had privilege in their society. True, for these men it was the privilege of their master in whose name they were trading, but that doesn’t remove the fact of their privilege.

Such a system in God’s eyes is immoral. That is why Jesus says elsewhere that it is almost impossible for rich people to get into heaven. I believe that saying holds true here in the US. The wealth that white people have created in this country was literally built on the backs of slaves. Yes, people work for their money. But again, to make that kind of money one has to cooperate with the system that excluded Black participation for centuries. And when Black people did attain some economic status, they were massacred. Think about the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wall Street. Or, think of the results of Donald’s tax reform bill. Most of the people profiting from that reform were rich, white billionaires, not the working or middle class.

White people didn’t want to compete with Black people. If they were unsuccessful, their ideas about the laziness, criminality, and animality of Black people would be challenged. So they set things up accordingly. Black people were excluded from FHA loans. And even when the program was open to Black people, they were redlined into undesirable neighborhoods. White people had a huge financial head start, and their children are reaping the money from the real estate that grew in value over the years. 

I live in an undesirable neighborhood. I see this happening with my neighbors. I see this in the local paper, in which our neighborhood and others like it are dismissed as being inhabited by criminals and thugs who don’t want to work. Whether the people who spout such sentiments are hard-hearted, they certainly are ignorant of the history of relations between white people and everyone else.

What about you? How are you preparing to pursue your calling? What about your neighborhood? What is its history? How is it viewed by others from the outside? Is it multi-ethnic? Are funds for public schools justly distributed? Are you being called perhaps to change things, to be faithful in a little?

Let’s look around our neighborhoods and see where we can make them better places to live. Let’s examine our minds for attitudes that hurt others or keep them at a distance. A good way to start being "faithful over a little" is to read about racism in the US. I’ll warn you, though. It isn’t pretty.

Book suggestions:

Debby Irving, Waking Up White

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law

Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

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