Today’s Gospel shows us three servants who were expected to trade with their master’s money to bring him profit. While not encouraging fool-hardiness, Gospel trading does require a certain amount of risk-taking. We have to let go of what we have in order to receive what is yet to come. Thus, the servant who hid his master’s money out of fear was condemned. The following poem seems to typify the plunge into the deep that Gospel living is:

“Nascence

What becomes of those

Who never live by dying

Who never burn away

Illusion and false hope

Walking barefoot on

Soul-tindered coals?

The wind skips stones

Across their placid surfaces;

Buoyancy tips them

Sunward at a glide,

Interpreted as favor.

Yet it’s the deep dive

That takes the others down

To uncertain drowning,

Pearl-diving for the truths

That, gasping for breath,

Let the world be born.”

Debra L Jarvis, quoted in Presence, June 2011