Risk Tolerance
Sermon from Sunday, November 19 by Pr. Michelle Sevig + Second Sunday of Advent + Lectionary 33
My family has been discussing money a lot lately. But perhaps you do, too, as prices for certain things–even the basics–go up. In our home, we’ve been navigating both college expenses and retirement funds. Next year we’ll have three kids in college and one of us (not me) plans to retire. To help us, we’ve been working with Alec, our new financial planner. He’s helping us handle today’s expenses, those of the next few years, and look into the distant future.
Alec has pointed out some pitfalls in the way we currently have savings, pensions, and retirement accounts allocated, and he’s helped us to reallocate our investments in ways that will work for us to fund future college expenses and retirement plans.
During this process, we’ve been asked about our “risk tolerance” which is less of a science and more of an art. Markets go up and down, of course. To gain the most, you have to subject yourself to the possibility of significant losses. How much are we willing to risk, at this point in life, in order to gain the most? How can we diversify our investments to maximize our returns so we have the best possible outcome for our goals? This is all made more complicated by how we can be socially responsible with our investments, and what our current budget should be–including the pledge we make today to our faith community.
Perhaps this money shuffle and worry is true for you, too. Most of us think about money a lot, and pay attention to rising inflation as we balance budgets and try to take care of the basics for today and what we hope to have tomorrow.
In today’s gospel text from Matthew, Jesus tells a parable that features an investor who gives his servants charge over his funds while he goes away for a while. Rather than give them equal amounts he assesses his risk tolerance and employs a diversification strategy and divides the investment according to their ability. And the money they are given to work with is no small amount. Just one talent is worth an astronomical amount of money–20 years' worth of wages. In the U.S. today the average income is fifty thousand dollars, so just one talent is a million dollars.
Imagine all that cash piled in front of you, a stunning amount that doesn’t belong to you, but is now in your care. Of course the servant dug a hole and buried it to keep it safe! The third servant simply waits for the master to come back, so he can return it, every penny accounted for, just as he had left it. He was not going to risk even one penny.
And yet, when the master returns, the prudent decision of the servant is not rewarded. It seems there were some better options for how to pass the time while the master was away. The first two doubled their money, and they were rewarded. The third one was scolded and immediately begins making excuses and offering explanations. He was afraid to do anything but hide what he had been given in the ground. And the result isn’t pretty. The master is harsh, calling the servant lazy, saying he at least could have put it in a basic interest-bearing account.
It’s a hard story to swallow. It’s not like the third servant squandered these funds away on gourmet dinners and fine wines or spent it all on a Black Friday shopping spree. He just maintained what was there; a reasonable and safe venture.
This is a story we usually associate with stewardship. As in God has entrusted us with “talents” (money assets, abilities, strengths), and God expects us to invest those talents boldly and creatively for the sake of the kingdom. So it’s no surprise that this parable appears on Generosity Sunday. This sermon could preach itself… give abundantly to Holy Trinity and our ministry, and you’ll be rewarded!
But it's not that easy. Interpreting parables is much more complicated than “If you do X, then Y will happen.” Now, we’re still going to ask you to make a financial commitment to our ministry, but certainly not as a threat... Instead, we’ll invite you to participate fully in our shared mission to share the good news of God in Christ Jesus, to work together for justice and peace in all the world, to share in the gifts of sacraments and community, worship, and service.
So back to the parable…for me, the metaphor of God-as-wealthy-slave-master just doesn’t align with the gracious and justice-oriented God Jesus describes throughout the gospels–the God who privileges the poor, blesses the meek, frees the prisoner, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, liberates the slave, and protects the orphan.
Biblical scholar, John Buchanan reflects on this parable in this way:
“The point here is not really about doubling your money and accumulating wealth. It is about living. It is about investing. It is about taking risks. . . The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is not to risk anything (at all), not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, to give your heart away and in the process risk everything. The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is to play it safe, to live cautiously and prudently.”
The third servant had the opportunity to take what had been put before him and do something bold. Instead, he dug a hole in fear. As one pastor put it, “This parable is about more than just what you can do, or what God has gifted you with, it’s a parable about what are you going to do in those moments where you clearly know what it means to represent Christ and you don’t do so.”
In the 1940s, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with this in his writings during the Holocaust. He wrote “that the sin of respectable people is running from responsibility,” as he wrestled with his own sense of responsibility to speak out against Hitler and the Nazi party. Running from responsibility looks a lot like digging holes.
Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” said something similar; calling out the white moderates, not the KKK or other racist groups, as the biggest threat to black liberation because we hide in fear, don’t speak up, do not stand solidly with those who are facing discrimination. In a nutshell, do not take risks, but instead dig holes of complacency and safety to protect our own well-being.
The middle ground, you see, the ground of inaction and passivity of the third servant, is no ground to stand on at all. This pattern infiltrates our daily lives as well. Fear overtakes our desire and ability to do the things we know are good and right. We don’t speak up when things don’t seem right because we don’t want to create waves. We hesitate to volunteer because we aren’t sure if we have the abilities, or are selfish with our time and afraid it will take away from the other things we want to do. We don’t want to be inconvenienced. The holes we dig for ourselves are all around us.
The good news is we have this challenging parable to inspire us, call us out from our fear of failure, take a risk, and see God’s abundance doubled as we live our faith boldly in the world.
As people of faith we do not do this alone, we are called to take risks together and not dig holes. As a community of faith, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is working together to boldly proclaim that the kingdom of God is drawing near. We invest our lives in service to one another and in assisting those who are more vulnerable than we are. We lean into reparations work and invest in repairing the damage done by generations past. We’re drawn to call out racism and demand an end to violence. We are called not to dig holes and bury ourselves and our gifts, but to take some risks and boldly proclaim, not only with our words and our prayers but also with our actions, that Christ is not only coming again but is here with us now.
We are Advent people eager to welcome the good news of Christ’s coming. We gather around signs of hope–word, water, bread, and wine–Christ among us now, to point us to a loving and generous God. May the light of Christ shine our way, so that we may be risk-takers and bearers of light to the world.
