Talent and Joy

 

Blessed be God who animates our lives and offers us enough always. To realize this grace is our deep joy. AMEN

Today’s Gospel is about the challenge of being faithful. Not to a master who has profited by using others but to a God of grace and abundant life!

I would like us to focus not so much this morning on all the characters of another confusing parable but to focus on the third slave or servant, the one who hides his talent in a hole. For I believe this is the servant we are being called to identify with and learn from. 

I would also like us to keep in mind the context of this passage from Matthew. It is one of three parables which draw Jesus’ teaching time on earth to a close before he enters Jerusalem and journeys toward the cross, the tomb and Resurrection.

As such, even in its confusion like last week’s bridesmaids, it deserves our attention and perhaps the context itself offers clues for interpretation. 

I cannot believe that Jesus is endorsing the coveting of material wealth and creating certainty. It would only be consistent with the Gospel to interpret with a lens of spiritual abundance, deep faith, and preparedness for the end times.

It is an eschatological passage. It is speaking to us of the end of all we know on earth. It is spiritual not material. It is of the Kingdom not of this earth.

Dorothy Day the dedicated Catholic Social Worker said: Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful.

Therein lies the rub. The third slave thought he was being careful and effective.

We, albeit faithful disciples of Christ, try to rationalize our faith in something mysterious and unfathomable with acts of certainty and control.

We to whom much is given act from our concern and fear, from a place of scarcity.

God and Jesus in his parables call us out of our fear to a radical daringness. 

God and Jesus call us to the Gospel of abundance wherein generosity, not hoarding, is the mandate.

The good news in this parable of the talents may be that the third servant while reprimanded, refused to play the master’s greedy game.

The bad news is that he thought he needed to hide and control his talent instead of sharing.

One step at a time...for ours is a merciful and patient God.

We live in a world in which we try on a daily basis to hedge our bets against the possibility that an eternal life of abundant joy which is coming, might not.

We live in fear that at any moment we will not have enough. That we might be thrown into the outer darkness where there will be gnashing of teeth...

Of course this outer darkness is a human construction and not necessarily God’s.

What would it look like to live in just the opposite way? To live not out of fear but out of abundance. To live into the joy of the Resurrection and the promise of salvation instead of the pursuit of earthly happiness and goods which we cannot take with us!

One of the great Fathers of the Church St. Gregory of Nyssa considers this question and the tragic gap between what he calls a soul oriented toward finite things with the soul who seeks the infinite God. 

He likens the soul seeking the finite and material to a person trying to climb a hill of sand. So much effort and energy used in order to constantly advance then slip back sometimes even farther. No progress. At least not progress as we would measure it.

We who believe in the Living Christ continually progress so long as we live in faith and do God’s will. We have been saved by grace which might be likened to a pulley attached to God which secures us and which helps us with the sandy slope. We define progress differently in cosmic terms.

The paradox is that our soulful desire for God can only grow in joy because the infinity of the object loved increases and rejuvenates in it for all eternity an impetus that tends toward an end that cannot be attained. (see Miroslav Volf)

Whenever we are confronted with a parable such as the one of the three talents we are reminded that paradox is how Jesus teaches and the “answer” to the riddle is always the love of the eternal abiding indwelling God.

We might reconcile the action of hiding in hopes of protecting what has been given to us by retrieving and offering to God that which has been given to us. We might put aside our fears and doubts and act as though all is God’s and all is good. We might be writing our own parable of talents.

I invite you to take heart in this difficult world and resist the temptation to hide your talent in a hole. In sleepless nights or moments of worry doubt or fear of not having enough, listen to the constant voice of the Holy Spirit reminding us, assuring us, our ultimate salvation and fulfillment is only...only.. and absolutely in the Mystery of the infinite God. Not in any thing or good. We already have enough. Truly knowing that is the challenge of faith. Truly living into that faith is the deepest joy.