What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? You would try something pretty risky, right? After all, if you knew you wouldn’t fail, why try something easy? What risky thing would you do? Would you write a novel or sail around the world? Would you tell someone, ‘I love you,’ or would you find the courage to leave? Would you go back to study, or leave your boring job and look for another? So many things in life are risky, and so often we stay hesitantly in a safe place, rather than step out into unknown territory.
In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus tells a parable of risk and rewards. A very wealthy landowner entrusts his servants with some money when he goes away. Two of them take a risk, invest it and return more money to the landowner when he returns. The third servant anxiously buries his money to keep it safe and brings the original amount back to his master. The two who took a risk are commended, while the third who took the safe option, is condemned.
Living the Gospel always involves risk. Loving is always risky. Asking for forgiveness or forgiving someone who’s hurt us is risky. Living life with faith, sharing that faith with others and trusting God to lead us and provide for us are all risky enterprises, and yet that is exactly what God calls us to do. As Christians, we know that in the gap between the place of safety and the unknown is God. When we do step out we hear the words of God ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
In peace, Mother Lynda