Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Well done, my good and faithful servant.” Mt. 25:21
Helen Keller, the woman born both deaf and blind, once said:
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
I think Jesus would agree with her.
Take today’s gospel reading for example. It is loaded with all kinds of meanings and interpretations. There are so many that Jesus once again uses a story format to teach us – the story design called “parable.”
Now, admittedly, this teaching style can be frustrating. Why doesn’t Jesus just speak in a clear classroom, lecture style? Then there would be no misunderstanding. Then we’d all be singing out of the same hymnal. Simple, clear, no questions asked.
But Jesus is a risk-taker.
Like Helen Keller, he wants us to enter into a “daring adventure.” He wants us to go deeper, embrace the danger, and plunge into a story that will not just inform us, but, much more importantly, surprise us, shake us up, challenge us, and maybe even indict us.
In other words, the genius of Jesus’ teaching through parables, or short stories like in today’s gospel, is to cause one particular thing to happen within each of us: to make us see the world in a different way.
And, according to Jesus, the best way to do that is to challenge each of us to uncover hidden aspects in our own life and see what values we truly can call our own.
Consequently, Jesus is suggesting that you and I might be a whole lot better off taking a risk – the risk of thinking less about what a story means, and far more about what that story can do: confront us, disturb us, provoke us, astonish us.
Take the risk, Jesus tells us, because “life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing at all.”
Now, if we do take the risk of diving into the depths of today’s story, what do we find? So much, too much to sum up quickly.
So I propose looking at just two main premises featured in this story: 1) be open to the grace that transforms fear into trust; 2) be open to the grace to share whatever talents we have for the common good of all.
Let’s begin with FEAR: the number one defeater, the number one hostage-taker, the number one preventer of living life as a “daring adventure.” Listen to what fear does to the third servant in today’s reading: “out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.” Scripture is so respectful of fear and so opposed to it “driving the bus of our lives” that it repeats this one phrase 365 times throughout all its books and chapters: Do not be afraid!
One psychiatrist describes neurotic fear as “… a disease of the imagination. It is insidious and invisible, like a virus … It steals its way into your consciousness until it dominates your life.”
Jesus’ response to the enslaving power of fear is to teach us to trust – trust in God and the infinite love he has for each of us.
Perhaps nowhere in all of the Bible is this better stated than in Jesus’ plea as presented so beautifully in a translation called The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language:
“Do not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Do not be afraid …. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.” (Lk, 12:25f)
Simply put, Jesus is telling us that the way out of being held hostage by fear, the way to escape “burying our talents in the ground” is to trust, to take the “daring adventure” of throwing ourselves into the arms of God and resting in the conviction that he really means it when he says: “You’re my dearest friends.”
Once we escape the bondage of fear, then we’re free to embrace the second major teaching of today’s gospel story:
Being open to the grace of sharing whatever talents we have for the good of all.
Albert Einstein put it this way: “A ship is always safe at the shore – but that is not what it is built for.” Again, we’re not built to feel safe out of fear of the unknown. We’re built to be risk-takers. We’re built to move out of ourselves and our own little ego-needs, and move into the deep waters of life.
It’s the risk-takers that we honor. It’s the risk-takers that we memorialize. Why? Because they refused to allow fear to dominate their lives. They refused to just stay safe in the harbor.
Instead, they understood that great and often unforeseen opportunities come from risk-taking. They found that they learned from risk-takings, especially the lesson that taking risks greatly helped them overcome fear.
Do you know that Jesus talked about wealth and poverty more than any other issue except forgiveness? Think of that.
Because of Jesus’ unparalleled sensitivity to the horrible suffering caused by the disregard for human dignity shown to people barely managing to eke out a living, economics – solidarity with the poor – is second only to Jesus’ plea for mercy all throughout the gospels.
Today Jesus is daring us to enter the “risk zone”: the risk of faith, the risk of sharing.
We are invited to the challenge of a different way of living: the way of taking the “daring adventure” of sharing our many talents, the way of risking the loss of fear, the way of becoming like our God – a God who calls each of us “my dearest friends.”
The same God who, like Helen Keller, announces that “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
11/16/17
