When you make an investment, you’re concerned with balancing the chance of coming out ahead against the risk of losing. You might think first of brokers and bankers, but farmers make exactly these decisions continually… actually everybody makes decisions about risk and reward, and not only about money. With no magical crystal ball, we just have to think through the potential upside and downside, and make our best estimation, and hope for success.
This is the kind of decision at the heart of Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. In the world of money, it’s a matter of win, lose, or draw. You might risk and win, you might risk and lose, you might play it safe and just hold your own. In the world of money, there’s a time for each choice, a time to risk and a time to stay safe.
Like so many of our Lord’s parables, this one starts on familiar ground, and then takes something of a twist. Between the three servants we only see two results, because really there are only two choices. You can’t choose whether to win or lose, you can only choose whether to risk or not risk. Nobody in Christ’s parable loses what they’re given, and that seems to me like the first wrinkle as the parable begins to twist. Wouldn’t you expect the story to involve one winner, one loser, and one draw? A gain, a loss, and a no-risk deposit? But the way Jesus tells it, the first two double their money while the third just deposits and holds on to it.
In the world of risk and reward Jesus is describing, there aren’t gains and losses like on Wall Street. In this story the ones who invest - who risk - are winners, and the one who plays it safe - even though he holds his own - is the loser. When the master returns, he praises those who risked and invested and he condemns the one who played it safe. Because, of course, this story isn’t about growing a retirement account. It’s about our lives. And specifically it’s about whether we choose to really invest ourselves and make ourselves vulnerable in a relationship with God, or to play it safe and hold back out of fear or timidity: to risk or not to risk.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about your spiritual life as a risk, but it is. When we talk about “spiritual life” that’s just another way of saying “relationship with God,” and every relationship is a risk. In any real relationship, you make yourself vulnerable, you open yourself up, you allow someone else the power to hurt you. You cannot have a meaningful relationship without this risk.
So what about the risk of the spiritual life? Well, first of all there’s the investment. A lot of people are sleeping or entertaining themselves or out making money right now, and you’re here. You come here every seventh day to worship, maybe more. You contribute money, probably, to pay the bills and keep the ministries going. You contribute time, in a lot of different ways. And these things are a big deal, but there’s a bigger one still. There’s the choice to really open your heart to God, to pray to Him as a Father you trust, to let His Word guide you.
Have you ever felt that creeping doubt, that question, of whether that’s really a good choice? You see plenty of people who think it isn’t, who invest nothing in religion. Most of them might seem to be doing okay. Have you ever felt that shadow cast over your heart, that cold quiet fear that it’s all just the wishful thinking many people say it is? Have you ever been surprised by a sudden fear that you’ve been… fooled?
If you’ve ever felt that, I need you to know that it doesn’t make you a bad Christian, it just makes you human. If you’ve never felt that, I need you to know that someday you very probably will — so that you won’t panic, won’t despair, when it happens.
The lesson of the Parable of the Talents is that the risk is worth taking and, in fact, to take the risk is already to have won… and to play it safe is already to have lost. We need this lesson because playing it safe is a temptation we all feel one way or another. You play it safe by not getting too crazy about your religion, maybe you show up most or all Sundays, maybe you work some of the nice traditions into your life, give something up every Lent, stuff like that. It’s like you sit on the edge of the pool dangling your feet in the water. You get a little of the sensation and the feel, but it’s a long way from diving in.
You can play it safe by selecting carefully which teachings of the Church you’re going to follow. The day comes when, for the first time in your life, Christian morality requires a very great sacrifice, or when one of these teachings rubs you the wrong way. It looks like too much of a risk. It looks too much like losing.
You can play it safe by keeping things in your life that are contrary to the Gospel, but you think you need them. Investors call this ‘hedging,’ playing both sides so that you never risk a total loss. That sometimes makes sense on Wall Street. It doesn’t work with God.
You can play it safe by making your religion something that is external but doesn’t really penetrate your heart. You give God some time, some money, some attention, but you don’t really give yourself.
I think this is one reason it’s so good and so rewarding to get into the lives of the Saints. Because these are people who went all in, who risked everything on God, who held nothing back. In their stories we see what it looks like to really dive in, to do a spinning Geronimo cannonball into the deep end of grace.
Nobody ever did that and regretted it. Nobody ever did that and came out a loser.
And a final important note: when we talk about going all in in your relationship with God, when we talk about diving into the deep end of spiritual life, that doesn’t necessarily mean you drop everything in your life and go off to a monastery. It’s true that God may call you to change some of the externals in your life, but most people will do better to focus on bringing holiness to the life you have. Our first reading from Proverbs is a great reference: to do whatever work you have well and honestly, to share generously, to bring character and class to everything you do. To be focused not on fleeting superficial things, but on what really matters. To offer it all to God. That’s holiness, and it’s for everyone.
Every relationship involves us in a risk, and in some ways giving ourselves to God feels like the ultimate risk. You aren’t betting time or money, you’re betting your self. Do it. Bet it all on God. No hedging your bets, no dangling your feet, no holding back. God is calling you to a total gift of yourself, a response to the total gift He makes of Himself. Trusting Him is the safest thing in the world, but sometimes it feels so dangerous! But nobody ever took that risk and regretted it. Nobody ever bet it all on the God who is Love and came out a loser.
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