If you watch sports on TV at all, from all the advertising you might come away with the impression that all of us Americans are gambling all the time, or want to be. That we love taking risks, betting on things that you can’t possibly predict the outcome of, that we all think it’s great fun. There may be people like this, maybe even here today. But I really wonder how many of us in real life like taking so much risk. Maybe a few dollars here and there we don’t mind losing. But in larger things, where we really feel the possibility of being hurt or losing something, I think we’re not such risk takers.
Just to take a few examples, most of us would always rather keep the situation or the job we have even if we’re unhappy, since we can’t be 100% sure that a new one would be better. We’ll often keep an old professional or personal relationship going longer than we want to just because it seems so different and risky to move on. And businesses, and even churches, generally like to operate the way they always have, since they worry that a change might mean some level of failure. They think it’s safer to do nothing, even if doing nothing isn’t going to work either.
Today’s gospel, in a way, is about our attitude toward risk, because risk, it turns out, is something God wants us to take. This is a surprising thing we learn about God in this gospel, that God has a real appetite for taking risks, and having us do the same. Although when you think about it, this makes sense, God is a creator, creating things is how God expresses his love, God clearly likes a constantly changing world with people embracing and responding to change, and doing it with a courageous confidence in God’s overarching goodness.
That brings us to this gospel about the wealthy man going on a journey and I guess maybe we could call them the three vice-presidents he leaves in charge. He wants them to go out and be creative, invest themselves, take risks with his money. This, after all, is how this rich man defines success, putting his gifts to work to make even more of them. And third vice president here, the one to whom the rich man gives the least amount of money, the one who has the least to lose, he would rather bury the money in the ground, keeping it safe, than risk getting fired for losing it. He seems to think that his boss would prefer complete safety to an actual failure, but he’s wrong.
So what does this parable have to do with us trying to live a Christian life? What are these risks God wants us to take? I think the risks God is looking for us to take are all about love. Everything God asks of us and offers us is based on love, inviting us to move outwards, and toward God and toward others. And we resist, we resist because we don’t believe in it, we are not sure it will work.
The fact is, love involves risk. That’s just always true, there aren’t any exceptions to this. If we love someone we put ourselves at risk, the risk of being let down, the risk of being left alone in the end. If we help a stranger, or a refugee, or a beggar in Penn Station, we have no idea what will happen, or if we will be let down or betrayed, if it turns out was all an act.
And yet what God wants us to understand in this gospel is that the risk is the point. We can’t hang back, and avoid anything that we think may not work out. In this parable, that way of living is like burying ourselves. There is a definition of sin by a Catholic moral theologian that calls sin the failure to bother to love. And unfortunately we all find ways to do this, not to bother. We think about projects we might join that would be some small part of this kingdom of love we are trying to build, and we decide that we’re not ready for that right now. We think about some work we might feel called to that might be too big a change for us, so we hesitate. We see some person who our help might make a difference to, and we allow our worries about whether it’s the right thing to do or not to take over and we let the opportunity pass us by.
It could be that these all these risks we take or don’t take, these risks are what our lives are for, they are the drama of how we find our salvation. Not to take a risk is to risk burying ourselves alive, the way the third man in the gospel buried the money, and in a way buried himself.
So this gospel is actually pushing us pretty hard to see in what ways we have held back from the game, the game being the game we see in this gospel, where we try to find new places to invest what we’ve been given by a generous God who loves us, and wants love to grow.
Let’s think about it this way. What today’s gospel really wants us to put aside is fear — the fear that paralyzed the third investor in the parable. Why was he so afraid? Why was he so nervous about his rich overlord that he was too discouraged to do anything? His moment arrived, and solely out of fear, he missed it.
There are times when it’s our moment, some kind of moment that God has been preparing us for, time for us to take a risk, motivated by love, that we would never normally take. When you know it’s your moment, today’s gospel says, don’t ever let it pass you by. God has assured us that with every risk taken for love, in the end, you can’t possibly lose.
Matthew 25:14-30