Risk

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
November 19, 2023

28 Proper A 

          At a conference a number of years ago, I was asked to speak about a risk my congregation had taken.  The options for a topic were fairly infinite as urban ministry just comes with risks.  But the one I chose seemed to most clearly walk the fine line between bold and stupid.  We had the opportunity to purchase two houses at the end of our parking lot.  Acquiring the land next to the church is generally considered a wise move, and Christ Church has done that several times in our history.  Many, many meetings and conversations later, we decided to buy the property.  Each house had three apartments which we turned into low income housing.  The first house was rented to clients at Clark County Mental Health and their rent was paid with Section 8 vouchers.  The second house was loaned to an organization a lot like Family Promise to be transitional housing for folks who needed help getting on their feet.  We hoped the rent from the first house would cover expenses for both and at no point would the income from the rental units ever subsidize the expenses of the church.  We took a risk, invested a good bit of money into the houses, and hoped to provide good, clean low income housing to those who needed it.  To this day, despite all appearances to the contrary, I believe that we made a good and faithful decision.  However, after many years of owning the houses, countless repairs, and an ongoing bug problem that we could not solve, we had to tear down the houses and create a tiny plot of green space where they had once stood.  We took a faithful risk but at the end of the day, we lost. 

          I thought about that little adventure in rental property when I read Jesus’ parable this morning, a parable that has nothing to do with rental housing and everything to do with risk*.  A man going on a journey summons his servants and gives one 5 talents, the other 2 talents, and the third gets 1 talent, each according to that person’s ability.  A talent was a tremendous amount of money-somewhere between 15 and 20 years worth of earnings for the average laborer according to the commentaries.  Two of the servants took the money and traded with it and doubled the investment.  Trading does not come without risk and whatever risk the two servants took paid off.  Both were commended and invited to enter into the joy of the master.  But the third servant was afraid of the master who was apparently known to be a harsh man, although how the servant knew that is a mystery. The third servant buried the talent and returned it to his master taking no risk whatsoever.  And for his lack of effort, he was cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  That seems a little extreme but that is par for the course in Jesus’ parables.

          I do not think Jesus is giving investment advice here, and while many stewardship sermons have been preached on this passage, I have doubts that the passage is actually about money at all.  The line “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” tells us that this parable has nothing to do with gospel economics in which the rich are poor and the poor are rich.  We are going to have to dig a bit deeper to figure this one out. 

I wonder if the meaning of the parable hinges on the line “so I was afraid.”  Throughout the gospels, the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear.  The first two servants acted on faith, both faith in their master that they would not be punished if they tried and failed, and faith in their abilities to use what they were given to make more.  They were invited to enter into the joy of the master.  I honestly do not think the master would have been angry with them had they tried and failed just as I do not believe God was angry with us when our rental housing risk failed.  The third servant acted in fear of the master and in fear of the servant’s own abilities.  That servant did not even try and he ended up in outer darkness, that place where there is no joy.

A talent was worth so incredibly much money that I wonder if the talents actually represent something else.  I wonder if the talents might represent the immeasurable love of God.   Some days we may feel like we have been given a full measure and rush out in faith and joy to share or invest that love and grow the Kingdom of God, regardless of what risk might be involved and knowing that we won’t always be successful.  Our efforts are rewarded with joy.  Other days, such as in the midst of war, or deep national division, or racial injustice, or whatever personal challenges we face, we may feel like we have a smaller measure and be tempted to keep that to ourselves, even though the reality is that the love of God is immeasurable and we each have been given God’s love in abundance.  There’s not much joy in hoarding.  However we might be feeling, whatever challenges we face, we are called to act in faith, not fear, and invest God’s love in the world rather than bury God’s love in the ground. 

          The Good News in this disturbing parable is that, as humans, we are loved immeasurably by God, and as humans who follow Jesus, we have not only a call, but a responsibility to step out in faith and make that love known in the world, even and especially when times are hard.  In the midst of war, a country where hate crimes are on the increase, a government that struggles to govern, a community in which there are people who struggle to feed their families, we have a responsibility to invest God’s love in the world.  God loves humankind too much to let us simply bury that love in the ground where it does no one any good just so it can be dug up and returned someday.  We can get hung up on what happened to the poor servant who acted in fear and was cast into outer darkness, or we can be people of great love, taking a risk and stepping out in faith, working to make a difference in the world, so that one day we will hear God say to everyone “Enter into the joy of your master.”

 

* With thanks to Amy Frykholm at https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2014-09/lasalle-street-church-makes-use-abundance?utm_source=Christian+Century+Newsletter&utm_campaign=444370135b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2023-11-13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D