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Homily for 33rd Sunday of Year A, 2014
Proverbs 31:10-13; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6; Matthew 25: 14-30
Freed by Gratitude
The story told by Jesus in today’s gospel sounds like the ultimate Wall
Street parable. The servants with five talents and two talents invest their capital
and reap a big return, while the servant with one talent buries it in the ground and
loses everything. Invest your resources wisely and you will be rewarded amply.
Play it smart with your money and you’ll get rich!
Is that what Jesus is teaching his disciples in this parable? One clue that it
isn’t is the meaning of the “talents.” In Jesus’ day, a talent was an amount of
money-- a very large amount of money. It was about the amount an ordinary hardworking person could earn in twenty years or so. Given life expectancies then, a
single talent was about what could be earned in one lifetime.
So this parable is really a way Jesus puts a question to his followers--what
are you doing with your life? Not just your money, but all you are and do. Is your
goal to protect yourself? Do you try to keep yourself safe, so you don’t risk losing
anything? Or are you willing to put yourself on the line in being my follower?
There is a second clue that indicates that the parable is not advice on how to use
your money to become rich. The man with one talent seems to regard his master
with fear, and this fear affects his whole life. Listen to his excuse when the master
returns: “Master, I knew you were a demanding person” (literally a “hard man”),
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“harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not sow, so out
of fear I went and buried my talent.”
Is this a good excuse? I don’t think so. The master has given each of the
servants extraordinarily great gifts. Each of them has received all they have--their
entire lives—as gifts from God. The one talent man somehow fails to realize the
generosity of his master, so he approaches his master in fear rather than gratitude.
His tragic flaw is that he lives out of fear even when he had been given everything.
Because of his fear, he doesn’t have the freedom to take even minimal risks to
make his life grow. He is a victim of his own fright.
Can we assume that the other two servants knew a different kind of master?
I think we can. And this is the point of the story. The other two servants knew that
the master had graciously entrusted them with everything. They knew God was
extremely generous. Awareness of how gifted they are makes them fearless
enough to take some risks. They are able to act with faith that their master will
deal graciously with them when he returns. In other words, the parable is urging
us followers of Jesus not to be timid and fearful, but to have enough confidence in
God’s generosity and love that we can take risks with what we have been given.
I think this parable is very relevant to an event we commemorate today.
Exactly twenty five years ago, six Jesuits and two women who worked with them
were assassinated at the University of Central America in El Salvador. I had the
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privilege of knowing two of the Jesuits. They were ordinary people. Their work
at the university was doubtless often routine, even dull. But when today’s parable
put to them the question of what they would do with their lives, they answered by
putting themselves on the line for God’s justice and peace for the poor. They
didn’t play it safe. They seemed to lose everything on the night twenty five years
ago when they were killed. And their deaths became a source of life for many El
Salvador peasants. Even more, the risk they took was the door through which they
entered into the eternal peace of God’s kingdom. Jesus has said to them, as he did
to the risk-taking servants in today’s parable, “come, share your master’s joy.”
They have a reward those who fear risk will never know.
Neither you nor I are likely to be asked to take such dramatic risks. But we
ARE asked by Jesus to risk giving ourselves fully to love and care for those
around us. Burying our lives in the ground to keep them safe won’t do. Caring for
the lonely, loving those who seem unlovable, seeking justice when it is costly--we
are called to do these things with our whole lives. If we take the risk, the reward
will be greater than we can imagine--“come, share your master’s joy.”
David Hollenbach, S.J
St. Ignatius Church
.November 16, 2014