A Risky Investment

God has invested generously in you and me. The risk is real, and so is the reward.  

I’d like to begin by asking you What risk would you be willing to take if you knew you could not fail?  For me, it would be flying. To actually soar in the sky like a bird, or Superman.
 
It’s fun to imagine all the wild things you might do if fear were not an option. But just the thought of leaping out of a plane without a parachute or safety net, congers up fear, anxiety, and doubt. At some point in life everyone has learned failure is all too real.  And because of this, we tend to keep our imaginations buried in the dream phase.
 
Frank Logue writes, “Few great discoveries were made by playing it safe.”  He goes on to point out that if we ever want to feel love, or raise a child, change career, or mend a broken relationship then we have to risk something.
 
To live life fully and completely we must come to the understanding that failure is not optional, it’s guaranteed.
 
Risk always requires an amount of vulnerability. Which is why faith is so risky.
 
Think about it like this, when Jesus tells the parable, he’s in the middle of his own high-risk venture. He made the decision to leave the safety of rural Galilee and go to the big city of Jerusalem to proclaim the good news. Whether he knew it or not, this  would eventually lead to his betrayal and death.  
 
Like always, it helps to put his parables into perspective. First there is a master who entrusts three servants with a rather large portion of his finances. One gets five talents, another gets two, and the last one gets one.   Now a talent was a rather sizable chunk of gold that was worth roughly fifteen years’ wages for a common laborer. Let’s say you earn $100,000 a year. That would make each talent worth 1.5 million dollars.   
 
So let’s revisit the question. How much would you risk if I were to hand you 1.5 million dollars to invest for me?
 
Traditionally this parable is preached on tithing or using our human talents and gifts that we bring to God’s kingdom. While that is a powerful message, I think it misses an important point. The story isn’t about the talents or the money. It’s about the risk we are willing to make.
 
Second, the master in this parable doles out the money and then goes away. There are no instructions, just one expectation.  Grow this investment to best of your ability.  Jesus gives us a look at a generous and giving God who invests in us according to our ability. And not only that, God also gives us the freedom and space to go on our own high-risk venture. What we do and how we grow God’s investment it is up to us.
 
A few years ago, Amy Frykholm wrote a wonderful article in Christian Century magazine about the LaSalle Street Church in Chicago. Back in the 1970s, LaSalle Street and three other local churches invested a small amount of money and a whole lot of sweat equity to help build a housing complex in their urban neighborhood.
 
Being wise investors, they retained a 2 percent share in the building.  In 2014, when the building was sold, the church received a check for $1.6 million dollars.  With so many active ministries in the community, the members began to dream up all sorts of ways to spend the money.
 
Do you think they took a risk with that money? Or played it safe?  
 
After much joyful celebration, the elder board held a secret meeting and decided to take $160,000 from the windfall. What they did next was radical and completely unheard of. They give every active member in the congregation a check for $500. The only caveat was they had to use it, in whatever way they chose, to do God’s work in the world.  Talk about faith, and trust.
 
On the Sunday that the checks were handed out, the minister at LaSalle preached this parable to her congregation, and left them with this message: “The master isn’t worried about the money. He’s worried if the servants were going to take a risk.” Faith, trust, love, justice, compassion…these amazing qualities of God all take risk. And so must we.
 
God has invested generously in you and me. The risk is real, and so is the reward.  
 
God calls us to live life knowing we have already been given great abundance so that we might invest God’s grace and love into our communities, and throughout all creation.  
 
What God has invested in us through Jesus is something we can never repay. But the good news is we don’t have to pay it back; just pay it forward. Put it out into the world, double down on kindness and generosity, and make love grow. 
As the parable goes on, we see that two of the servants invest wisely. One does not. He buries his talent in the ground out of fear of losing his masters fortune. And as a result he looses the great reward that is waiting for him.
 
It turns out the greatest risk of all is not risking anything.
 
Perhaps Jesus senses his disciples are becoming more afraid the closer they get to Jerusalem. And so perhaps he tells them this story to help them build up their faith for when he’s gone.  Just as much as this story is about what Jesus hopes and expects of his disciples, so too is it a the story about you and me, in the way we live, love and share fearlessly and faithfully...just as he did.  
 
Jesus invites us to be his disciples, to invest our life in God’s mercy and grace, to risk God’s love through concrete actions toward others, and to expand the depths and horizons of our faith; giving it away all that was given to us.
 
I will leave you with this advice to take with you as you gather with family and friends for Thanksgiving. It comes from Mother Teresa said, “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” 
 
Invest in love; knowing that when you take the risk, the Spirit of God works through you, and does all the heavy lifting.
 
So give love as if you will never run out. Love as if you cannot fail. Through his own glorious resurrection, Jesus has assured us the rewards of such love is greater than any risk we are asked to make.
 
 
Work Cited
Bartlett, David, Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Westminster John Knox: 2011) pp. 309-313.
Frykholm, Amy. LaSalle St. Church Makes Use of Abundance. (Christian Century: September 30, 2014).
Logue, Frank. Love is Risky Business. Downloaded from episcopaldigitalnetwork.com on November 16, 2017.

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