Parable of the Talents
I'll be back for Advent, but I heard such a wonderful homily this past Sunday at the James Madison University Catholic Student Center (I think it's actually the Catholic Campus Ministry, but I can't help thinking it of the CSC), that I wanted to talk about what he said - and some of the thoughts and struggles I've been wrestling with in my faith recently.
It's an odd parable that I am always eager to hear explained in one way or another - and while Father Jim Curran didn't explain some of the bits I don't feel I understand, he illuminated an angle of the parable that I had never considered. And one which I feel might be the key to all of my worries about it.
The story is of three servants who did vastly different things with the 10, 5 or 1 talent(s) given to them by their master while he was away. The first two risked and had return of more, the third buried his talents in the sand. We're used to hearing this as a "Don't hide your light under a bushel" or "We were given gifts to beget returns" story, but Father Curran asked a different question: WHY did the third servant behave so differently than the first two?
I started thinking as it was read how common a story it is - the person with fewer blessing unable to see that they have been given any. But that's not what I want to talk about this time, sad as that story always is. I have always felt my blessings acutely, so it didn't really strike a challenging chord.
Father Curran said that the three servants must have had much the same experience with their master, must have all known that he could be generous and merciful and that he was a "demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter." But they responded very differently. Two banked on the love and mercy of God and went out into the world to do good with what they had been given. One recoiled from fear of his judgment and hid his talents away so that the world could not spoil them.
Father Curran went on to talk about how we choose which experiences we let change us - which events of our lives we let become part of who we are. We choose if we will let anger rule us or love drive us, if we will let bitterness twist us or pain blind us. If we will let forgiveness and faith compel us. And I believe that whole-heartedly, I embrace it, and I struggle with how to live it. I've written this thought a lot in these posts - although rarely with so firm a Biblical base (thanks for the confirmation that I'm not totally off-base, Lord!).
But what I've been wandering about a lot lately is: why is my experience of God so different than so many Christians that I see around me? Why is my experience of God's love so different from the Mainstream view of Christianity so often twisted into hate in the name of politics or just convenience? Why is my experience of God so much more expansive and liberal than the Church's current doctrine? Why is my experience of God so much more accepting than the Church's?
I'm speaking mostly of homosexuality, but the list is far longer than that.
I am reading a book recommended to me by a good friend, and in it the author pointed out that basing our ethics on our own experiences is a flawed model. Because of original sin, our ability to determine right and wrong based on our own experience is doomed to fail because our perspective is distorted.
I've been thinking about the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And I've been thinking about how, whether or not God meant us to eat from the fruit, we have now. We wanted the responsibility of determining Good and Evil for ourselves - and so many times, I feel like people want to resign that duty. Throw it off and give it to someone else who seems better qualified. Spit the apple back out.
And I think about how the first thing that Adam and Eve realized was "wrong" was something that had never bothered God.
Which brings me to that same author's answer to the problem of our perspective being distorted: the Church is not. But then, the Church is. If nothing else, my knowledge of the history of textual transmission makes me worry about a strict, thoughtless, literal relationship with the individual words that make up the Word of God. And even a cursory glance at Church History makes me frightened to think that THIS is the closest to God's Ideal for our world that we have come.
If, because of the many things I have come to believe that the Church and its writers past and present have fundamentally wrong, I feel that I have a dramatically different experience of God than those who have written on subjects that I am questioning, to whom can I turn? If every experience of God were as valid, all three servants would have been commended. But one is condemned. And I am, of course, inclined to believe that mine is in the correct line - but then, of course, aren't we all.
But that brings me to this: who can I ask for advice, whose experience of God is like mine? How can I learn from the learned men and women of God when sometimes all I can think when I look at their words is how they would, just as eloquently, be condemning my sexual orientation? For the same reasons they spout in support of other moral issues? How can I figure out what comes from the same place - that place of hate and judgment, that demanding and frightening experience of God that makes you want to hide away from the world so that you remain untouched and pure of its taint?
So, my two readers, where do I find writings on Christian doctrine that come from an understanding of God as loving and inclusive and merciful?
And, perhaps more than anything else: what does it mean that there weren't 3 different stories told in this parable? A servant who went out into the world and succeeded, a servant who went out into the world and failed, and a servant who hid himself away?
I'd like to think but am afraid to believe: is it because if you believe in God's love and act on it, it's impossible to fail? Impossible, if you work hard because God does expect you to move mountains, if you trust in His Love and let it drive you, for you to come back to Him with less than you started with? If your goal is to bring Him greater glory and love in the world, can you fail? Even if you have it wrong?
Can you be wrong coming from a good place - and what does that do to your returns?
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