The risk factor

Today’s readings: Proverbs 31, 10-13. 19-20. 30-31; 1 Thess. 5, 1-6; Matt. 25, 14-30.

Israel’s history as narrated in the Scriptures is about a people constantly facing changes, threats and challenges. The way Israel res­ponded to this proved constructive or destructive of its faith in God.

This also apples for our times and for the challenges we face. In our faith-relationship with God there is always some risk involved. As Soren Kierkegaard writes, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

In his book Risk Society, sociologist Ulrich Beck suggests that the post-industrial society views risk differently from the pre-industrial world. In the pre-industrial world, society’s fate was shaped by naturally occurring hazards like disease, flood, and famine. Today our fate is increasingly bound up with deliberately undertaken risks.

These two facets of risk provide a framework to help grasp a deeper meaning of today’s gospel parable.

We have three men with different opportunities, as the gospel says, “each in proportion to his ability”. The first two deliberately took the risk of investing their potential and it gave a fruitful return. The third, out of fear and passivity, dreaded the risk and this proved fatal for him.

The parable is basically about Jesus’ outlook on life. Its meaning goes much deeper than just how we make use of the talents God gives us.

It is a story that continues to repeat itself in the way we look on faith as adventurous and enterprising. In fact, the gospel story clearly says that where faith is concerned, the more we seek to settle down in our comfort zones, the less communicative and meaningful we become.

The talents of the parable may be seen to stand for the faith tradition we have received from past generations, and the attitudes of the first two men and of the third reveal our way of living it and facing present-day challenges. The story tells how false and risky (in the negative sense of the word) fear of the Lord can be.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, written at a time when Jesus’ second coming was believed to be imminent, Paul urges Christians to live lucidly and responsibly.

Even the gospel story diminishes the problem of the end of the world. That can only instil false fear, which is never a sign of Spirit-filled people.

Though Jesus’ second coming is an integral aspect of faith, we need not shift our attention from the here and now to the end of times. Christians are called to be accountable not only to God, but also to society.

We believe in the Lord who is all-present, not just past and future. Accountability needs to enter our frame of mind as believers because ultimately we are called to give account of our hope to whoever asks that of us. Respect, credibility, and relevance are not givens; they need to be earned.

Our commitment, in line with the gospel parable, is to develop our potential, to invest intelligently and so to ensure meaningfulness as a return.

In Surfing the Edge of Chaos, a book by various authors, it is written that “When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it. This places it at maximum risk.”

This can easily be applied to our Church which needs to open up to new horizons and soften borderlines. Fear of innovation can be risky in the negative sense of the word. It lacks a sense of outreach, it kills initiative, it provides a security that may overnight turn out to be false.

As Paul writes in the second reading, the worst can suddenly happen. And it is happening indeed. We see it and feel it, and it is instilling in us all the feeling of insecurity, that same feeling that turned the life of the third man in the parable into a tragedy.