Originally printed in our monthly EYC newsletter:
One of my favorite Bible stories is Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. This parable has come up many times in our youth group, because I think it is an important reflection on what faith itself IS. In some ways, for me, it all starts with this parable. We are told over and over again that Christianity is first and foremost about faith, but until we get a clear view on what faith even is we cannot begin to really struggle with what follows from our having it. Recently, while reading the Gospel of Matthew, a new dimension of the parable became clear to me, and because it brings up some interesting issues in contemporary Christian life, I thought I’d share it with all of you.
Mainstream Biblical scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written long after Jesus died, and are at least in part reconstructed from an oral tradition. Snippets and stories from Jesus life were floating around within the early Christian community. These snippets are called pericopes, and likely when the gospel writers received them, they came in no particular order, and so it was on the writer himself to try to put the various snippets together into a coherent whole. The writers of Matthew and Luke put the Parable of the Talents in very different contexts. Because of that, I’d long read the Parable as a stand-alone, as a complete idea all its own. The other day, when I read the Matthean version in its broader context, something powerful struck me. Now I think that it must be looked at as part of a larger pericope, one that runs from Matthew 24:1 through Matthew 25:30, and that changes things significantly.
That larger pericope is concerned with how Christians will behave if Jesus doesn’t return very quickly. Jesus warns that people will return to their normal patterns of behavior, and quit living out the Christian life passionately and faithfully. I’ve long known that the Parable of the Talents is about a contrast between a life of risk and venture on the one hand and a life of security on the other. But now I realize that Jesus is directing this to future Christians and not simply His immediate followers. Jesus is telling us in essence that to turn religion into another kind of safety and security, into something that makes life easier and more comfortable, is to lack faith. Christianity, Jesus is saying, is about living outside of safety and security, and living a life of real risk. We are being warned that doing just enough to get by because we fear God is to live without faith. Going to church once in a while, and saying the right prayers, and believing the right things, is not enough. It’s not faith. The life of faith is one where we push our religion as far as it can go, where we take real risks with ourselves, and explore life in all its depth and breadth.
This is so hard for people nowadays, especially young people. They have so many things that they are committed to doing and being a part of, and much of it is such an important part of them making the kind of future for themselves they want. But for all of us, a sacrifice must be made somewhere, life must look different because we are Christians, and not just on Sundays. In the Parable of the Talents we have been warned, that it is so easy to get trapped by the structures, and to start living a life geared to making things as comfortable for ourselves as we can, and that’s not what Jesus intended. I am guilty of it, we all are, but that is just death in tiny steps. We must discover in ourselves the real adventure of following Jesus. Such an adventure can only come with sacrifice and risk. But the rewards for us, as it is for the faithful servants in the story, are boundless.
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