a lawless blog

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time A
November 13, 2011

Reading I: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
Responsorial Psalm: 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
Reading II: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6
Gospel: Matthew 25:14-30 or 25:14-15, 19-21

Jesus told his disciples this parable:
"A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one--
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master's money.

After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, 'Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.'
His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master's joy.'
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
'Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.'
His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master's joy.'

Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
'Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.'
His master said to him in reply, 'You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'"

Last week's parable about the careless girls at the wedding was a difficult one. In contrast this week's story has a modern flavour. It could be about three employees in a finance company trading on the stock market. If you're not game to take risks you're no good to anyone. In the story the master is more than disappointed. He is so annoyed that he punishes his employee for putting his own interests before his duty to use the capital to make profit. He tried to keep himself safe by avoiding risk, and the master damns him for being mean and selfish.

A couple of points. The word 'talent' came into our language from this story. In the original it means an amount of capital that could be invested, a very large amount, as it turns out. The talent was a measure used in trade, around 32 kg, or double that if it was the 'heavy talent'. LINK The key to the parable doesn't depend on the actual value of the talent, but if, for argument's sake, it was of some precious metal, then these traders were given a very substantial amount of capital to work with. Even one talent is a large sum.

It is very surprising to see that the Lectionary offers an option of reading just part of the story, even though that would give a lesson totally at odds with the intent of the parable. "When I read the short form of this gospel, I rubbed my eyes in astonishment... Hopefully the long form will be used lest the reading lose its whole point." [ Reginald H. Fuller, Daniel Westberg LINK]

In a supplementary comment last week I suggested that we draw back from the end-of-time, last judgement, personal death scenario, and find a way to make this lesson useful for us rather than another frightening threat. We might try that again.

In the kingdom of God as we know it, in the ekklesia, in our community, are there some (many?) who feel they have nothing to offer? Why are they this way, and how can the community encourage and motivate them? Once again, since this is a parable about the kingdom it must be a community issue, not just a concern for the individual.

In the gospel story the person said he was afraid of his master. This fear is the key. It may be a selfish fear, fear for one's own safety rather than fear of losing the master's property, but it is a reality and the community has to take account of it. In fact, it is in everyone. We all fear failure.We are all anxious about our personal security.

This reminds me of those sayings of Jesus: Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for the kingdom will save it. If you're so frightened of losing your life that you put all your energy into protecting it, you will lose it... Those who follow the way of Jesus are called to overcome that fear, to step outside their safety zone, to forget themselves, to take risks for the sake of the kingdom.

"For the sake of the kingdom" What does this phrase mean? For the sake of a world in which truth and justice and love are winning. That's all. To contribute to that: is it worth the risk? If only I could overcome my fear!

In doing practical things it's not so hard to get pretty well everyone involved one way or another. But I wonder if there's not some special thing about religion. Is there something embedded in "religion" that results in people being scared to use their brains, to think their own thoughts, to work through their own ideas, to contribute their thoughts to the community thinking?

Clearly this was the atmosphere Jesus lived in. He was criticised by the "temple police" (as we call them today) for interpreting things in a different way, his way. Many of today's 'faithful' seem to have had it drummed into them as children that in religion there's no place for 'your' ideas.

One person I know, whenever a topic comes up touching on religion, if it is a bit debateable, will say: "Well, I don't know anything about that!"  It's like a mantra, a defensive reflex, and I often wonder where she learnt it. Was it when she was doing typing and secretarial jobs for the priests of the parish?

If the community is to flourish everyone has to contribute. A community of faith needs the faith of everyone, not blind obedient subservience dressed up to look like trusting commitment, but real personal involvement. Sharing the work, sharing the risks, sharing the setbacks, sharing the joy of the harvest.

It would not be wise to wait for change to come from the top down to our level. We, the common folk, the ones with only one talent, are the ones who have to take the risk of thinking for ourselves and pursuing our goals.

As an exercise, a group could set up a situation in which each person can contribute something of themselves. The sharing is going to be of personal thoughts: “This is the way I see it.” “To me this is important because....”  "This is how it makes me feel."

It is necessary that every person is seen as equal and every idea is worth hearing. There is no shadow of authority brooding over the group. The ones who are skilled at working things out and can express their thoughts easily need to keep quiet, and listen to those who don't have so much confidence, who feel that they can't express themselves clearly or make themselves understood. And it is most important to acknowledge each contribution. We need to know we have been heard.

www.catholica.com.au is a good example of this. Many contributors have said that they have been encouraged to have a go, and they've found their voice because in our community there is a healthy level of acceptance and respect.

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From my experience, what may be holding us back from innovation is our attitude towards failure. It might sound counter-intuitive, but big innovation and failure are intimately intertwined. Any innovation is essentially a market experiment and as with any experiment, it carries considerable risk and high failure rates. Innovators in America, and particularly Silicon Valley, understand this only too well.

The moral taint of trying and failing in Australia is high, and because you cannot innovate without failure, many great ideas do not even get off the ground.

As a culture we need to embrace failure as much as we embrace success.

At Google, an appetite for failure is built by the way we do things. We are in an incredibly competitive industry and you need to keep innovating or you will become irrelevant to users and the market. How we deal with that is through our culture of innovation, staying agile, taking risks, tolerating failure and learning from every mistake.

Failure doesn't have to be expensive, it can be cheap and fast. At Google we have a saying: “Fail fast and iterate.” This is something we need to train all entrepreneurs to do. This creates an environment where people are encouraged to tackle large problems and take those big bets. If you have a work culture where bringing your mistakes to the table every week is a normal thing to do, it feels less like failing and more like learning.

Jesus risked everything in his efforts to wake us up - and lost his life for it at an early age. In fact, his motto might have been "Fail fast and iterate!" Only thing is, he wants to "iterate" through us!

If we're not game to take a risk we're no good to anybody.