'Ain't got none,' was the reply.
'Didn't you plant any?'
'No,' he said. 'Afraid of the boll-weevil.'
'How's your corn, then?'
'Didn't plant none. 'Fraid there weren't going to be no rain.'
'How about your potatoes?'
'Ain't got none. 'Fraid of the potato blight.'
'Well, what did you plant, then?'
'Nothin'. This year I figured I'd just play safe.'
This was the third servant's policy. He figured that he would just play safe. The irony was that he was playing very dangerously indeed. In trying to avoid the wrath of his master, which he said he feared so much, he was actually incurring that wrath to a far greater degree.
‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn't you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’ (Luke 19:22–23).
The master responds that even if he was the cruel tyrant the servant wanted to make him out to be, he had not acted accordingly. The servant had not even lived by that partial and distorted knowledge of his master that he had. His problem was not that he feared the master too much, but that he did not fear him half enough. If he had, he would have done something with that mina he had given him, even if it was only putting it in the bank. The truth was that he was a wicked servant, looking for an excuse for his sloth, negligence and irresponsibility.
What did Jesus mean when he said that the servant could have gone to the bankers with the money? Some, no doubt, will see this statement as New Testament approval for the stock market and for finance houses.
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