We just heard this long Gospel. Do you like it? What do you think?
I don’t much
care for it. It kind of frightens
me. The reason is more that I have to
preach on this Gospel, and I think it can be very easily mistaken to sound like
you need to earn your salvation; you
need to show a profit and that salvation is a reward for works
righteousness.
You worked hard,
invested yourself wisely, made a profit, SO….. welcome to the Kingdom of
God. OR You didn’t work hard and showed
no profit, like the third servant, and so then you are thrown into the outer
darkness where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.
One could,
rather easily I think, mistake this Gospel for an endorsement of salvation by
works. And that is a heresy called “Pelagianism”. And especially here in Texas, where we have a respect for
people who earn their own way and pull themselves us by their bootstraps, that sense
of self-sufficiency can subtly carry over into wanting to earn our own
salvation.
But being a
Paulist, I have a concern for St Paul’s insistence that salvation is a free
gift, that ALL is grace, that we are saved not by our goodness but by God’s
love for us in Jesus Christ, which makes us good. And I fear I could end up preaching a homily
exhorting you to strive to do good and invest your talents well, which I think
is NOT the real point of this Gospel.
I think the
key to understanding the Gospel is FEAR.
The third servant fails to act out of fear. Over and over again in the Scriptures, fear
is the enemy. The most repeated
injunction in the New Testament is “Do not be afraid.” Fear is the enemy.
The first two
servants act with confidence, boldness, daring, risk-taking, and they make a
profit. They do not act out of fear.
I really would
like to re-write this Gospel and introduce a fourth servant. And let’s say he gets three-and-a-half
talents, so we can distinguish him from the others. And this three-and-a-half talent servant went
off and invested his talents just like the first two. And he acted with the same boldness and the
same intelligence as the first two, BUT his investments did not turn out. Through no fault of his own, but due rather
to something way beyond his control - a natural disaster, a foreign war, a blight
on the crops - something he had nothing to do with and could not foresee, he
lost the entire three-and-a-half talents. He is broke.
How would the
master judge him? Because as everyone
who owns stocks knows, not every investment succeeds. And sometimes it is due to circumstances
beyond our control. However, this
three-and-a-half talent servant showed all the same gumption and ability to
take a risk that the five and the two talent guys showed. So how would the master judge him?
I would argue
that the Master, gruff and tough demanding curmudgeon that he is, would still
praise this three-and-a-half talent servant for his industry and engagement. He was involved in life.
You see the
real enemy is not loss, but fear. Fear
paralyzes us just as it paralyzed that one talent fellow.
Stinginess is
a type of fear, that immobilizes and freezes us up. Greed does the same thing. Racial prejudice, homophobia and dislike of
immigrants and refugees is a type of fear.
Self-centeredness is fear. And
all that stops us from investing the gifts, the talents, the compassion, the
concern, the love we have is FEAR.
The one talent
servant is not condemned because he failed to make a profit, but because he
acted out of FEAR.
Over and over
again the Scriptures tell us, DO NOT BE AFRAID.
Today we have
a very special second collection: for
the Campaign for Human Development.
There are those in the church and in society who are afraid of this
collection, afraid of the effort to lift up dis-advantaged people and help them
become self-sufficient, self-determining, and contributing members of
society. It is a shame. I ask you to overcome fear and respond generously
to our second collection today.
We cannot be
afraid. We have been given great gifts
in faith, in the promise of salvation in Jesus, and in the knowledge of God’s
love for us. {{At this Mass we welcomed
Majida into the Catechumenate, and Zachary, Clayton, Payton, Michael and Ryan we
welcomed into the process of becoming Roman Catholic.}}
We need not
to tell them, but rather to show
them, how not to live in fear.
We show our
faith by acts of hope and charity. Use
the gifts you have been given. Do not be
afraid.
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