Jesus told this parable to his disciples: "A man was going on a journey. He called in his servants and handed his funds over to them according to each man's abilities. To one he distributed five thousand silver pieces; to a second, two thousand; and to a third, a thousand. Then he went away. Immediately the man who received the five thousand went to invest it and made another five thousand. In the same way the man who received the two thousand doubled his figure. The man who received the thousand went off instead and dug a hole in the ground where he buried his master's money. After a long absence, the master of those servants came home and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five thousand came forward bringing the additional five. `My lord,' he said, `You let me have five thousand. See, I have made five thousand more.' His master said to him, `Well done. You are an industrious and reliable servant. Since you were dependable in a small matter, I will put you in charge of larger affairs. Come, share your master's joy.' The man who had received the two thousand then stepped forward. `My lord,' he said, `you entrusted me with two thousand, and I have made two thousand more.' His master said to him, `Cleverly done. You too are an industrious and reliable servant. Since you were dependable in a small matter, I will put you in charge of larger affairs. Come, share your master's joy.' Finally, the man who had received the thousand stepped forward. `My lord,' he said, `I knew you are a hard man. You reap where you did not sow, and gather where you did not scatter. So out of fear I went off and buried your thousand silver pieces in the ground. Here is your money back.' His master exclaimed, `You worthless, lazy lout! You know I reap where I did not sow, gather where I did not scatter. All the more reason to deposit my money with the bankers, so that on my return I could have had it back with interest. You there, take the thousand away from him, and give it to the man with ten thousand. Those who have will get more until they grow rich, while those who have not will lose even the little they have. Throw this worthless servant into the darkness outside where he can wail and grind his teeth.'" (Matthew 25:14-30)

What are we going to talk about this morning as far as a homily goes? In one of my weaker moments I thought about speaking about Chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs--the picture of the ideal woman, the ideal wife. But then I remember an admonition that my mother gave me many years ago when I was ordained. She said, "Now listen, follow the words of Scripture carefully when it comes to topics like that. Don't be a fool that enters in where angels fear to tread." So we shall not talk about women this morning.

Let us see what we can garner from the Gospel. Like so many of the parables that we have been reading in the Gospel selections these last weeks, it's a judgment parable. Judgment parables have, as you probably know by now, certain characteristics or certain parts. There is always a king or a master, or someone who gives a commission, who entrusts somebody with something. Then the master or the king goes away for an undesignated period of time and then eventually the master or the king returns and asks that an accounting of stewardship be made. They are judgment parables that apply first of all to the people to whom Jesus is speaking: the scribes, the pharisees, the chief priests, the elders, his disciples, those who are not his disciples who are listening in. They apply also to us as individuals. But they also apply in globo to the Church. The church has been given a commission, a task to do, and then an indefinite time is designated to carry out that task. Eventually the church, which is we, are going to have to answer: "Have we done it?"

But let us look at it even further: Our translation, which is supposed to be putting the Gospel into popular Americanese, is not the best translation that exists; you've heard me say that before. How many times do you say to one of your children who misbehaves all the time and is sort of mischievous, "You worthless, lazy lout!" I've never heard anybody say that in ordinary speech. But this idea of five thousand, what it means is talents. The word "talent" can have various meanings. The first meaning it has for anyone who is listening to Jesus of Jesus' own time, a talent was a coin. It was a certain amount of money. Generally we think it was about a month's wages for an individual, an ordinary laboring person. But "talent" can also mean time, that a certain time is given. So if you look at our lives, you can say that each of us has been allotted so much time--indefinite, we do not know the end of the time; for some of us it is shorter, for others it is longer. Or you can also say that "talent" can mean an opportunity or opportunities, opportunities that come our way.

I'm reminded of what we used to call, when I was studying Renaissance literature, the "emblem books." They were sort of cartoon books done in the 16th century. And they would always give at the top of the page, a kind of proverb, a common saying in English. And one of them I remember very well in relation to this is "Grab opportunity by the forelock." And then below the proverb was a cartoon much like the Dennis the Menace cartoons you see in the funny papers every day. There was a woman, standing on a wagon wheel, in a very tempestuous sea, with a lock of hair coming out, and the rest of her head was bald. And then under that cartoon was a sonnet that described, if you don't grab the opportunities when they come along, then the lady who presents them to you is going to sink into the sea, never to come up again. So a talent is an opportunity, an occasion for doing something or not doing something.

But talent can also be an individual gift or an aptitude that an individual has. No one of us has the same gifts or the same aptitudes. Paul calls these charisms. One of us has one, another has a different one. What is intended here is that this commission is given by God to use these talents, these gifts, this time, this opportunity. And there will come a time when God is going to ask each one of us, as he will ask the collective church, how have you used the opportunities, how have you used the time, how have you used the gifts that I have given to you? How have you used them for yourself, for others, and for building up the Kingdom of God? And of course what is implied in this is trust. Now we often think about our trusting God, or our trusting other people. But one of the things that we have to do at times, and perhaps more often than not, is turn the coin over and notice that it is God who has trust in us. It's God who places trust in us by giving us these commissions, or these talents or these opportunities. And one of the things about doing this is that we don't violate the trust that God has in us, in you and in me.

If you read the Old Testament, the history of the Jews, and if you read even the New Testament, is not this one of the things that God is constantly complaining about, that the trust that he has in people has been violated. They have not regarded his trust. You have that from the very beginning of Adam until the very end. Now when God in trust gives us a commission or opportunity or time, to use that, to carry it out involves risk. Life is full of risks.

I remember one time we were in the chapter at the monastery and our college had over a million dollar debt because of poor management and because of cash flow. And I was presenting to the community a plan of several steps to take care of this debt. And I remember one of the monks got up and asked me, "Father Abbot, what absolute assurance do you give us that this will never, ever happen again?" And I said, "I don't give you any absolute assurance. I can't. I can give you the kind of assurance that if things are done within reason, if the college is managed as it should be, prudently, I hope it will not happen again; but I can't give you an absolute confidence." "Well, you're asking us, Father Abbot, to take a risk." "My dear young man," I replied, "Life is full of risks. You wake up in the morning and say, my leg is asleep. I better not get up; I might fall and break my leg. Or, I have to go to Seattle today. I better not drive, I might get into a car crash. But if I take the train, the train might slide into Puget Sound." You see, life is risks, and God knows this. And God takes a risk with us. But he also has faith in us, and trust in us. And of course one of the great risks is that I might flunk, I might fail. But that aspect of the Christian life is written right into the Gospel. Jesus says, if you want to save your life, you've got to lose it. Whereas if you set out to save your life you definitely are going to lose it. You see, there's the risk of living the Christian life, and as God takes a risk with humankind, with us, he expects us to realize that we have to take risks.

Two people who are going to get married and live the rest of their life together take a risk with each other. One might not be faithful. One might become incurably ill. One might die. But that's the risk, life involves it. So we have to weigh that. But what is the failing of the third servant? He refuses to take a risk, he refuses to act. You see that in the kind of language that is described for the first and second servants, the one who receives the five thousand and the one who receives the two: they immediately move out, they invest, and they make money. But compare that to the third servant. He goes away, he digs a hole, and he buries it. Why? He's afraid to take a risk. He's afraid he's going to lose it, and he's afraid that he might not be secure, that he might incur the wrath. So what his fear does is to bring him into complete immobility. It paralyzes him into inactivity. Security becomes so important to him that he isn't going to take a risk; he's going to save his own skin and save the money. As a result he loses both.

I often think in relation to this parable of the foundress of the Holy Names Sisters. Most of you have had experience with them in this diocese. Years ago, when the Bishop of the Washington Territory asked Mother Mary Rose from Montreal to send sisters to this community for the education of young women, the community was not even ten years old, and they had only 26 sisters in their community. This was certainly a long way to travel, and there were a lot of things that could have happened to the sisters between Montreal and here, especially in the way that they had to travel, and especially with Indian wars and so forth. But Mother Mary Rose brought her community together, the 26 of them including herself, and she said, "You 13 go to the Oregon Territory; this 13 will stay." And look what happened. She took a risk; it paid off. And that is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do in the spiritual life. It's one of our great dangers in the spiritual life, say when we come to pray, we're afraid to go into a new kind of prayer because we're afraid we're not going to be comfortable, we're not going to be secure, and therefore we end up going through a lot of exercises, but have we really prayed? It's what the church can fall into. It doesn't want to say what it should say, it doesn't want to stand up for a moral position because it might lose government funding. But maybe it should lose government funding. Maybe it should not depend on government funding. Maybe it would be far better off if it stood up for a moral principle rather than to kow-tow. I think that's one of the major problems in religious life, religious communities, today. We are so concerned about our security that we have failed to take risks, and therefore many young people don't want to have anything to do with us.

You can apply this parable even to Jesus' life. If you think about it, and it's not sacrilegious to think about it this way. The father took a great risk in sending his son. Jesus in his human nature had free will. He could very easily have said in the garden of Gethsemane, "Sorry, Father, I don't want to lose my life." And where would you and I be if he had said that? Jesus might not have wanted to take the risk. He might have wanted to be secure. And again, where would we be if Jesus had sought security? It's a great lesson in this parable. And each of us has to ask himself or herself, what talents, what time, what opportunities, what gifts have I received? How am I fulfilling God's trust in me? Am I willing to take risks? Am I willing to possibly lose everything, so that I might gain everything? Those are questions we have to ask each day of our lives, and those are the only questions that really are important in life.