In the past year and a half, I have been relearning Spanish as a hobby. And as part of my learning project, I’ve been listening to a bilingual podcast produced by Duolingo. Recently, I listened to the story of Eréndira Sánchez, a Mexican woman who eventually fulfilled her dream of becoming a professional skydiver.
It all started when she turned fifteen. As is the custom in Mexico, Eréndira was thrown a quinceañera by her family, although hers was not a typical celebration. Hers was held at a skydiving training camp where her father worked. After everyone was gathered, her father fastened a parachute over her white quinceañera dress, and she soon found herself 10,000 feet in the air, inside an airplane with her father, waiting to jump. And jump they did, together, sharing the same parachute. For Eréndira, that day was a moment of vocational clarity when she realized that she wanted to spend the rest of her life skydiving.
Eréndira said that when skydiving, “many persons feel free. I feel happiness. When you jump from an airplane, you feel as if you are far from every worry. Suddenly, the things that seem important on Earth, look very small and insignificant from the air.”[1]
It strikes me that this is not only a helpful perspective for handling the anxieties of life but also a valuable spiritual lesson. Sometimes for me, it’s necessary to look up at the night sky or at a beautiful sunset to remind myself that my own petty worries and preoccupations are next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. I’m only one small part of a vast world where there are far larger preoccupations than my own. My usual inclination is to look at the world from ground level, where there’s so much fear. But zooming out brings me a bit closer to a perspective of abundance and freedom.
And yet, I think there’s also something more in this image of skydiving. The joy of floating in the air comes only after enormous risk. Skydiving is not for the faint of heart. It takes a gigantic leap of faith (pun intended) to jump from a plane hovering at 10,000 feet, and it takes another leap of faith to trust that when you open the parachute it will indeed open after all. At its most basic level, skydiving can be a matter of life and death.
Floating in the sky, especially at 10,000 feet, offers both a visual and spiritual perspective. Once the fear of heights is mastered and you’re soaring through the clouds, it does seem as if worries are far away. It’s as if we are seeing things from the vantage point of God.
This seems to be the primary point of the parable of the talents. A talent in this parable might be a sum of money, but in my view, this parable is primarily not a parable about money. This parable invites us to try and see things through the eyes of God by ascending to God’s vantage point.
And if we use our imaginations, we find two points of view: one is from 10,000 feet, floating in the clouds, where the things that seem so important on Earth begin to seem less significant from the sky. The other perspective is on ground level, where there are worries around every corner and the general picture is grim.
At 10,000 feet, we find God. In the parable, we might say that the master of the servants is meant to stand in for God in a human kind of way, without literalizing the allegory too much. From 10,000 feet, the master is almost certainly aware of problems in the trenches where his servants labor, but he seems far more interested in making decisions based on his abundant sense of trust. But to a casual observer on the ground, the master seems a bit foolish. He entrusts a huge sum of money to each of the servants, although those amounts vary according to the capacity of each servant to do something with the money. The master then leaves the scene, taking a massive risk that he will indeed lose everything he has handed over but feeling hopeful that he hasn’t made a mistake in the end.
Skydiving from 10,000 feet in the parable are the first two servants, who are making decisions from their awesome vantage point in the skies. The cares and worries of Earth do seem rather small and insignificant up there. Or if they aren’t necessarily insignificant, at 10,000 feet they seem to be part of a much more complicated picture.
So, the first two servants take the frightening risk of jumping out of the plane. The first servant acknowledges the trust and freedom given to him by his master, and he immediately makes five more talents from the five he has been given. Sure, the investment could have busted, but he believes it’s worth the risk. And he’s rewarded as he floats through the air after taking the leap of faith, experiencing the freedom that comes with braving risk. By the time he’s safely on the ground, the master has returned to settle accounts. The servant’s perspective on life has broadened. He has been spiritually opened up. He has already experienced the joy of which his master speaks.
The same is true for the second servant, who jumps from the plane, too, feels the freedom of freefalling in the air, lands safely on the ground, and is also praised by his master. He, too, has known the joy of being generously bold.
But at ground level is the third servant. From ground level and perhaps to us, he seems responsible and prudent. He’s overly concerned about the risk of investing his one talent. He doesn’t have the courage to take a plane to 10,000 feet and reorient his perspective on the universe, and he certainly isn’t risky enough to leap from the plane by investing the one talent entrusted to his care. Consequently, he misses out on the wild freedom of floating in the skies. He anxiously remains on Earth the entire time, and when his master returns, all he can do is hand back exactly what he was given, which he simply buried in a hole in the ground.
The principal message of this parable is really not about money at all. It’s about acknowledging who God really is and letting that form who we are. It’s no coincidence that the careful and least productive servant is the one who is afraid. And it’s no coincidence that this servant believes his master to be a hard man. Because he’s so afraid of his master, he’s not brave enough to risk the master’s displeasure or his own failure. He plays it safe, and he misses out on the 10,000-foot view.
But the first two servants operate from a 10,000-foot vantage point of generosity and abundance. They see from the outset that their master trusts them enough with a large sum of money, and they are inspired. They can do nothing except be fruitful with what they’ve been given. They understand that to receive a gift truly, it must move beyond the recipient and bless others. A real gift has a dynamic life of its own.
Where are we in this parable? If we’re at ground level, we will only be able to see things from a place of fear. If we have made God in our own image, then God is a perpetually wrathful and angry person in the sky who is just waiting for us to mess up again. And if God is like that, why in the world would we ever take a risk of faith to invest ourselves, our gifts, or yes, even our money in a risky enterprise that might change the world for the better?
But if we are more like the first two servants, we will have a different view of God and see that no matter how much we are made in God’s image, God himself is not a mirror image of our own imperfect fears, worries, and resentments. God is no wrathful person but the creative Source of all life. And God has taken an enormous risk in creating us to be utterly free. God allows us to climb onto planes, ascend to 10,000 feet, and run the risk of yanking on a parachute that might not open. God allows us to jump from planes every day in the trust that it’s worth doing to experience God’s joy.
We are rightly horrified at what we see on ground level—war, poverty, hunger, brutal violence on our streets—and these are hardly insignificant. But if we ever desire for true change to happen, we must get our heads out of the ground, where we’re burying our one talent in perpetual fear. We need to see that even one talent is a tremendous amount of money and precious gift that can change the world. We need to be risky and trust that God is actively and creatively working for good in this world, and God is doing so through us.
If we could only ascend to 10,000 feet, we might see the horrors of ground level in a different way. We might see that each of us is being called to a scale of generous living that we never thought possible. And if we can summon the courage to finally jump from the plane by trusting in God’s gracious provision, we would find that we’re as far from fear as we have ever been. We would find that we are truly free.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 19, 2023
[1] Duolingo Spanish podcast, Episode 44: Estar en las nubes “Head in the Clouds”), January 1, 2020, translation of the Spanish.