resistance

Day Seven
Steve split us into small groups to read that morning’s scripture — the Parable of the Talents — but before we dug in, he said, “I want you to ask yourselves how is this parable a parable of resistance? Read it through that lens.”

But first, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Matthew 25:14-30 (pause and go read it, if you want to really play along), here’s a summary:

• A master provides each of his servants a different number of talents (a single talent is 20 years worth of wages) based on their abilities, and then leaves.
• The first servant invests the five talents he was given and doubles the amount, and the second servant, who was given two talents, does the same. But the third servant, who was given just one talent, buries it in the ground.
• When the master comes back, he praises the first two servants, but with the third servant, the master is angry. You should’ve invested it, he says, and then he gives the man’s single talent to the first servant and casts the unprofitable servant into the darkness. 

I’d always been taught that this parable was about using our God-given gifts in whatever measure we’ve been granted to do good in the world (an explanation I’d always founds trite because wasn’t using one’s gifts to do good a no-brainer?) But listening to the parable that morning I was struck with an entirely different meaning. In fact, it was so wildly different that when Pokie asked us what we thought it meant, I hesitated to share. 

“We’re brainstorming,” Pokie said. “There are no wrong ideas.”

“I don’t think the master is God,” I said. ” I think the master is a master. And the servant who buries his talent is refusing to participate in the master’s system. Perhaps by burying the talent, he’s opting for contentment instead of accumulation? Maybe contentment is an act of resistance?”

Turns out, my gut reaction wasn’t far from the mark. When Steve called the whole group back together, almost everyone had reached similar conclusions: that third servant was refusing to participate in a system of death by keeping the money out of circulation. 

“But can’t a parable have more than one meaning?” one guy asked.

“Of course,” Steve said. 

“So it can still be about using your gifts wisely?”

“Sure,” Steve said, “but that’s not what this parable is about. If you think this parable is a story about using your God-given gifts, then you’re taking it out of context and turning it into colonialist theology.” 

“Listen,” Steve explained, “If I read myself into the narrative, then as a white, cis-gendered man from the United States, I am the colonialist. I am the master. The Bible isn’t written for us” — he waved his arms to indicate our group and himself, and grinned — “at least not directly. Capitalism says that righteousness is the multiplication of talents. Apartheid was a Christian movement using exploitative labor to sanctify capitalism. Apartheid theology is slaveholder theology. We have to ask ourselves who are we reading the Bible with? When we talk about good stewardship, what is the system to which we are being stewards?”

Suddenly, a parable that had always seemed meaningless to me felt nothing short of revolutionary. It had power. 

This could get exciting, I thought.

***

At Langa, one of Cape Town’s informal settlements, we toured a museum that focused on the pass laws. During apartheid, Black people were forced to carry pass books with them at all times. Not having one could result in imprisonment, or worse. 

The museum was housed in a former courthouse: pass books had been issued in the front room, and in the second room Black people had been tried for pass book infractions.

In 1954, men and women gathered in Langa to protest the pass laws, and out of that gathering, the women’s movement was formed. Less than a year later, 20,000 women staged a march to protest the pass laws and meet with the Prime Minister. He wasn’t there when they arrived, though, so they left petitions with more than 100,000 signatures for him and then stood silently for thirty minutes, hands raised in an open-palmed salute.

***

From there we went to the District Six Museum which commemorated yet another community which had been razed during apartheid, the people forcibly removed to different neighborhoods according to the race they’d been assigned. 

photo of a museum photo

Before we went into the museum, we were met on the street by Reverend Rene August, a student and close friend of Desmund Tutu’s. While we waited for our tour, she told us the story of the District Six street signs.

When organizers had first planned to build a museum, they put out a request for memorabilia from District Six. Not long after, one of the organizers received an anonymous call. “I’m the one who gave the order for the bulldozers to begin destruction,” said man’s voice. “I have something to show you — I think you’ll want it for the museum — but I will not give you my name. I will pick you up to take you to see the items, but you can not see my face.” 

Even though this organizer had been jailed and tortured during apartheid, he allowed himself to be blindfolded and folded into a car. When they arrived at the location, the nameless man opened a garage door revealing dozens of street signs from District Six. He explained that after the first day of razing, he’d picked up one of the street signs and took it home with him, even though it was illegal. From then on, collecting the signs became an obsession. Now he was turning them over to the museum.

^{photo credit: Andrew Suderman}

On the museum floor was a large map of District Six as it had been before it was destroyed. When the museum first opened, people flooded into the building, immediately dropped to their knees, and began writing themselves into the map. After a few years, the museum put a second layer on top of the floor map to keep it protected. 

An elderly woman gave us a tour of the museum. She’d been a child when the forced removals had happened. One of the hardest things for her was losing her beloved doll. But then, just a few years back, some people began unearthing artifacts (illegally, I think) and uncovered her doll. Nearly 60 years after the demolitions, her doll was returned to her. “I feel complete now,” she said.

After the museum, Rene led us up the street to the original site of District Six.

It’s just a barren field now, “a scar to remind us of what happened here.” 

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.20.23), a fun kitchen hack, the quotidian (11.20.17), apple raisin bran muffins, candid crazy, lemony lentil goodness.