“I Was Afraid”
November 16, 2014
Proper 28 A
Homily preached at
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass
When I
was growing up, my dear mother and father often quoted from today’s Gospel to
me. “To whom much is given, much is
expected.” I came to hate that
phrase. Whenever I boasted of some
accomplishment, desperate for parental and sibling approval, my mom quoted it to
set a higher standard. Whenever I failed
in the slightest degree, perhaps a B on test, or a slight scuffle in the
breezeway or on the playground that sent me to the principal’s office, my dad
quoted to bring me up short and make me realize the gravity of what I might
excuse as age appropriate behavior.
They wanted to make me feel how grievous for me were failings that might
pass in any other, less gifted child. At
least that’s how it felt to me. In
fairness, I should note that my parents were trying to gently break down some
of the arrogance and prissiness they saw developing in their third child. They applied the principle to themselves and
my other siblings as well.
Today’s
Parable of the Entrusted Money is called the parable of the talents in Matthew
and of the pounds in Luke. Despite some differences,
the underlying parable seems to almost certainly go back to the historical
Jesus.
When
he told it, like many of his parables, it was a non-too-subtle indictment of
the unfair political and economic systems of the time. That it is a story of the careless rich is
seen in the astronomical sums involved: five,
two, and one talents of silver, respectively approximately worth in today’s
money two million, 650,000, and 350,000 dollars. Thus Jesus is being highly ironic when he has
the master say to the servant who has doubled his million “you have done so
well with a trifling sum, I intend to
start giving you real money!” The
servants here are retainers of a great holder of lands and property—wealth gained
through extortionate lending to poor peasants who end up losing their surety,
the land. He expects the servants to use
such means to further grow his money.
When the third man simply buries his “paltry” $250,000, afraid of losing
the principal, the land owner’s response is guaranteed: anger, abuse at the “lazy” and “unprofitable”
servant for not having the sense of at least putting the money into low yield,
risk free ventures akin today savings accounts.
At least then some interest
would have been gained! On the lips of
Jesus, this was the parable of the extortionists. The third man, while perhaps not a hero,
represents the values of Jesus’ audience.
He alone represents solid peasant virtues, and the common sense to bury
money rather than risk losing it or engage in immoral business practices. By refusing to go along with the extortionate
system, he is a sort of whistle-blower.
And the story tells what happens to whistle-blowers: they get burned.
On
Jesus’ lips, the story is not only a critique of the system of land grabbing and
exploitation. It also might be a dig at
his religious competitors’ cautious efforts at keeping God’s commands by building
of a fence around the law and trying to maintain the ultimate in purity. Again and again Jesus in other parables
criticizes this approach to faith taken by the Pharisees and Scribes: a
fruitless fig tree, a barren olive tree, a gate closed to others by those who
refuse themselves to enter it. Such a
fearful approach to faith prevents us taking the risks necessary to do really
great things in God’s name, says Jesus.
The
Church, especially when it began to wait longer and longer for Jesus to return, turned the parable into a moral
exhortation of those waiting for his return.
“Lazy and unprofitable servant” lost its irony: now it meant overly cautious Christians whose
fear at going all out in following the Gospel limited their success in ministry
and “producing fruit.” It was in this setting that the Gospel writers appended
to Jesus’ parable the phrase that bothered me so much in my childhood, the
moralistic commonplace of the ancient world about those who have received much
being expected to turn a bigger profit.
No
matter how you read the parable—a crooked master punishing an uppity employee
for siding with the exploited peasants or a righteous master Jesus returning to
earth with judgment rather than healing in his wings—they both agree that the
third servant, the one who buried the money, did so out of fear. And therein lies the
point.
Fear
of scarcity means not feeling God’s abundance.
It means we stop or reduce our sharing.
Fear of rejection prevents some from ever truly loving, and making
themselves vulnerable to the beloved and running the risk of having their heart
broken. Fear of death means some people
never fully live.
The
opposite of love is not merely hate, it is fear of vulnerability. The opposite of generosity is not just
stinginess, it is fear of loss. The
opposite of wisdom and knowledge is not just foolishness and ignorance, but it
is fear of the truth.
FDR
said it well: the only thing we truly
have to fear is fear itself.
Many
of us, in receiving spiritual direction or doing what is called a moral
inventory have had a similar experience: we find that at the heart of most of
our negative emotions and unproductive or harmful acts lies some kind of
fear: fear of loss of self-esteem, of
money, of pleasure, of family, or of social standing.
Fear
separates us from ourselves and others.
It divides us from God. It makes
us sterile, unfruitful branches, lazy, unprofitable servants by any standard.
Andrew
King’s poem about the parable says it this way:
“I WAS AFRAID. . .”
by Andrew King
It could be me, standing there with the spade,
the crate of money beside me on the ground,
thoughts as bleak as the late-day twilight’s fade,
house lamps all lit but the darkness around
growing within, where fists clench my soul
and I know by the claws the cold-boned fear
that scrapes from my heart’s slender soil a hole
of its own, and leaves there, hidden but near,
shadows of despair. It’s fear of defeat
brings the shovel here, the fear of failure
that digs traps for faith on so many streets,
causes the loss of so much that is treasure.
Faith that fears loss and fails to try, can’t see
that such fear, not loss, is the enemy. And
this too I know: sometimes that has been me.
But maybe the story does not have to end
there – the one with dirt still on his fingers
standing alone in the darkness, the only
thing left to him regret, raw, lingering . . .
What if there’s One who pities the lonely,
the lost, the defeated; who, loving the failed,
the fallen ones, the ones who are broken,
allowed himself to know darkness; was nailed
to the cross; and who rose again, token
of a new day? In the shine of his light
we see all our sad failures overcome;
treasure – a buried soul – redeemed . . . and life,
once again, and not death, will have won
https://earth2earth.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/poem-for-the-sunday-lectionary-pentecost-23/
I
invite us this week to look at the things of which we are afraid: name them,
reflect on how fear colors our various emotions and actions.
And
let us pray for boldness, and confidence, and trust. Jesus will give us such gifts. He has promised us he will.
In the
name of Christ, Amen.
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