I find myself reading this gospel passage in a completely different way because of the current crisis in the financial markets.  I would guess that many people are.  And perhaps many people think the guy who buried his talents was on to something.  There is some good economic news to report.    The average price of gas is now $1.81 a gallon in Missouri.  Now you can afford to drive past the bank that foreclosed on your apartment. ;-)

    Times are tough.  Make no doubt about it.  Some folks see their carefully stored ‘college fund’ for their children evaporating in smoke.  College seniors are wondering if there will be a job once they graduate in December or in May, and will they be able to repay their student loans.  Others see the tightening job marked and wonder if they too, will get the axe.  Still others see their easy living years of retirement pushed further and further off as their investment savings drop with the stock market.  How much will you be spending this Christmas?

    God does not cause a mess like this (You can't pin this one on God!).  But God will bring us through it and out of it.  That is the Good News in all of this.  As Paul writes: "We are children of the light!"  We need not live in the darkness of these times.  We can be alert and attentive to the GRACE available in all this:  how God is giving us God's own self in all of this.  A shake-up like this can give us new eyes to see what is real and what our possessions are about.

I find the present moment in our world’s economy a tremendous opportunity for so much good to happen.  (I do realize I have an advantage that many don’t have – job security.  Actually, my issue is not a question of job security, but HOW MANY JOBS –will I eventually have.) Still, from a faith perspective, there are many opportunities for us in this crisis.

   1) A college student at Washington University said this:  “This is lent for the global economy!”  It is a time of deprivation and choosing to live more simply.  It is a time of being honest with ourselves about ourselves:  admitting how greedy people at the top and bottom can become, how much in denial and illusion we can live, how, as my mom used to say, 'Bill, your eyes are bigger than your stomach'.  And we get in over our heads because we want this and that and that and we want it now!  (whether we can afford it or not)  Lent means self-discipline; so does this time.

2) We are realizing our global solidarity in a way that has never before been experienced.  We are all in this one together (wealthy and poor share the anxiety these days).  We are dependent on one another.  Even across globes!  What says it better than this?!?  So our prayer connects us to all the corners of the globe.  We have been knocked off our high horse of individuality.

3) There is going to be a lot of opportunities for us to practice love of our neighbor.  Lines are already up at food pantries.  Utility help is hard to come by.  People are hurting and struggling, and will need our generosity and love to pull them through.  What a great chance to put love of God into action.  In a time of government promised bail-outs, there will be many opportunities to bail out those at the bottom of the economy.  It would be beneficial to us to find someone in crisis and do something for them, even though we ourselves are in pain.  Stories that my mom told me from the depression were always about those who had the least to give helping those in need.  The Christian response to the current economic crisis is love and responsibility for others.  We need to use the talents that we have been given to help those in need and so that those talents can flourish as did those of the "good and faithful servants" in today's Gospel.  By contrast, if we turn a blind eye to the suffering, we will be like the servant who buried his talent.  He hoarded what he had and refused to share it.  For us, this is not a time to excuse our selfishness under the heading of a bad economy.  To pretend that our having less makes our greed somehow OK.  It does NOT!  Get out there and start helping!

4) We can hear one of the more often missed aspects of this gospel, the call to generosity.  Think about how extravagant the man (read: GOD) is in the story.  He bestows on the 3 men in the story the equivalent of $40 million dollars.  And he does it without batting an eye.  “Of course that is what I should do with my treasure.  Of course that is what I lavishly give to my own.”  And he is extremely confident in those he has entrusted such wealth with, that they will use it well.  That they will use it well. [As an aside, I was blown away the other day when a young couple whose vows I witnessed about 7 years ago, sent a donation to the Newman Center endowment.  He works for the state of Illinois.  She is a part time teacher.  They can’t be making that much. But they live modestly and intentionally simply. The check was for $5,000.  Talk about practicing generosity.  Talk about using what God has given them freely for the good, not of themselves, but others.]

You and I are recipients of so much wealth, so many gifts. The one question as we weather the storm: Is God’s trust in us well placed?