Jesus tells this fabulous story about servants and talents and investments and holes in the ground. I love it. Almost always I love it.

Jesus says that one servant of this master going on a trip gets 5 talents. Because we such literalists at times, we think the talents are abilities. “Use your abilities,” we think.

We don’t understand that an ordinary laborer, the kind listening to this story, would have to work a century to get 5 talents.

The master is going on a trip and giving this guy more money all at once than he could dream of making in his whole lifetime. And it means that he could take that whole lifetime worth of money and put it to work.

Maybe he figures that if he makes enough, he can keep what he earns and give the rest back to his boss. It would make sense. We don’t know. We have no idea what happened in his head. We just know that he doubled the money. So did his friend who got only 40 years worth of money.

We do know what happened in the head of the third servant, the one who only got 19 years worth of money. He buried it. When the master came back, the servant said, “I was afraid of you, afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid that you would get mad at me for doing something wrong. I didn’t do anything at all.”

“I didn’t do anything at all.”

“I buried everything of value and lived my life as if I didn’t have a small fortune in my backyard. In attempting safety, I missed out on everything that I could have done with the abundance of life you gave me to use.”

Almost always I love it. Except when I’m pretending to be safe.