When we begin with the conviction that God is the one who calls to us in the garden, or the good shepherd who takes off after us when we stray, and if we believe the kingdom of God is a realm of gift and grace, not scarcity and fear, we might pause before assigning every characteristic of the master in the parable to God. And in that pause we may notice that fear of the master is what caused the man to bury his talent in the ground. Fear is the problem here, not the point.
What this passage is really about is hope – the hope of the unity of the living with the dead in Christ. The image of being caught up in the clouds with Jesus, reunited with those we love can be a beautiful one, whether it’s real or metaphorical. It invites us to wonder: are there ways we can be caught up in the clouds while still here on earth?
If we truly let our hearts and minds absorb how Jesus says blessedness can actually manifest in a life, well maybe we’d be present enough to our neighbor to help lift her poor spirit and satisfy her hunger and thirst in deeper ways than the ones that just reinforce our own virtuousness. Maybe we’d also receive the next unfolding moment of our lives for the unmerited gift that it is.
Love is the simple and even obvious answer, but we also know it’s not the easy answer. That’s why we keep looking around at the burning world and wondering, what are we really supposed to do about all this?
I think Jesus still calls us to drop the illusion that the things that matter most in this life are scarce and that our true worth is not a gift and a given but something that each of us must earn for ourselves. These are the illusions the empire of money depends on. Jesus calls us away from that realm because it’s a realm that’s just too small for the abundant life the human heart was created for.