As with preceding passages, Jesus is on about God's Rule when he tells of the master / businessman / whatever who goes away after 'seeding' his employees. The sums involved are huge. Beyond the dreaming of his hearers. Like the bonuses we read of company directors paying themselves, raked off by CEO's, ripped off shareholders & clients by failing mega- companies. Stewardship is a matter of moral responsibility, not business opportunism. Greed.
How are we, any of us, employing what God's entrusted us with, seemingly big, seemingly tiny? What do we have to show for it? What does God have to show for it? If we don't have a positive answer, it's our heads & our spirits we're burying in the ground.
The third slave is on the receiving end of that wrath that's the flip-side of God's love. The more love, the more wrath? Pain for both. Message: those of us who aren't hard at work being God's chosen ones, a) have a lot to answer for; & b) will be overtaken by others who are, whatever 'being overtaken' may mean..
As in earlier scenarios, even in the interests of faith / race harmony, we can't wriggle out of the fact that Jesus is at least upbraiding the Jewish leaders if not the Jewish people as a whole. Jesus is quite prepared to call a spade a bloody shovel when necessary! Besides, whose turn is it to be in the hot seat today if not us Christians?!
Jesus would qualify as a global economic commentator today. What he says is readily translated into a version of the rich getting richer & the poor poorer. Those who hear him know how the system works back then. Only too well. So do we still, wherever we are in today's pyramid. But it's not God who wrings economic 'progress' out of people & then discards them when they reach their use by date. It's fellow stewards who've changed their name to Greed, Globalisation, etc. Who've become such opportunists that they want what's been entrusted to their fellow stewards too. Greed is even more destructive than sloth because it wants to reap (or should that be 'rape') what everyone has sown. Even what doesn't legitimately (read 'morally') belong to them.
After two thousand years, there's still a lot of dark out there where 'losers' weep & gnash their teeth. What throws light on the whole scenario is us being good stewards by using whatever resources God invests in us to invest, in turn, in each other, including out in the margins. Not money, or not money before things like love, compassion, acceptance, reconciliation, healing, etc. God's business is neither capitalist, communist, nor anything in between. God's in the business of loving people, valuing them, including them, providing for them, growing them. God's investment in us is meant to be two-way traffic, not a one-way fast lane of self-interest.