When I was 10 years old, my teacher called home to ask my mom to tell me to stop correcting her in front of the class. I was indignant: “but Mom! She’s using the wrong ‘there’ and ‘their,’ and ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ and she’s writing it on the board! She’s going to teach my class wrong!”  My family placed a high value on respect and good manners, but my 10-year-old spirit was so deeply anxious and fixated on my concern for “getting it right” that I had no access to anything else that may have mattered in that scenario.

This early memory of fixation on “getting it right” gives me compassion in my work as a campus minister as I walk with a great many students whose upbringing and faith formation have given them such a concern for right and wrong that they are paralyzed by shame and fear.

In the gospel passage for today, I see a story that helps us understand the ways that fear-based attempts to “get it right” can actually hinder our ability to faithfully prepare for life with God.  Jesus offers a story of servants awaiting their master’s return from a wedding feast to instruct his disciples on how to live faithfully in preparation for the second coming of God.

This parable is the third main movement in Chapter twelve of Luke, following the story of the Rich Fool who hoards his possessions and Jesus’s insistence to his disciples that worrying will not add an hour to their lives. As is often the case in scripture, the stories preceding today’s gospel paint a larger, more complex picture to help us understand the parable represented in the lectionary.

We see echoes of the parable of the Rich Fool when we read about the “faithful and prudent steward” who the master trusts to distribute food to the rest of the servants at the right time. The servant in this case is trusted not to hoard the resources for themself. Jesus paints a picture of the possibility that the servant who is put in charge of the abundance of resources may fall short of these expectations - delineating the various punishments that might befall the servant depending on how willful or harmful the servant’s actions had been.

In the NRSV translation that I used to prepare this message, one phrase stands out -- namely, the servant “who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted.” This phrasing does not immediately suggest to me that the steward squandered the resources. In my imagination and in the context of the preceding verses which instruct the disciples to not hoard resources, and to not be afraid, this servant might instead be one who knew what was asked of them but was so afraid of getting it wrong that they froze in place.

I think of the way that the pressure to “get it right” can be paralyzing - rather than try and risk getting it wrong, we stay still and do nothing.

My heart aches with the familiarity of this experience - both in my own life and in the stories I hear from my students. Most of the faith-affiliated college students I encounter need no instruction against the harmful behaviors described in this parable – they know that scripture instructs that they should not abuse people or drink recklessly. Instead, they tend to be concerned about following the rules to a fault. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. Yet this passage reminds me how the fear of getting it wrong actually hinders faithful following of God.

When I look at our current world, I see the same tendencies in the adult faithful as I see in my college students. I see the ways an individual’s rigidity about right and wrong starts to seep into expectations for those around them. The fear and shame that underlies a faith-based rigidity about right and wrong shows up in relationships - it does not stay neatly contained in the interior life of an individual.

In my most compassionate moments, I can see how this comes from a good place - it may be based in fear, but it seems to stem from a genuine desire to ensure greater access to eternal life with God for themselves and for others. At the same time, I see how this fear-based desire so often becomes a hindrance the moment life presents some complexity that cannot be neatly assigned to a category of right and wrong — it’s not dissimilar from the ways that my 10-year-old self was so focused on my teacher’s spelling that I couldn’t see that I was causing relational harm. When I witness people of faith imposing a fear-based insistence on “getting it right” on themselves or others, I see relational harm both in interpersonal relationships and in relationship with God.

Over and over again in scripture, we see reminders of God’s love for us. We also see the phrase “do not be afraid” repeated dozens of times.

While the parable of the servants awaiting their master’s return demonstrates ways the servants could fall short, it also addresses the ways that faithful trust of the resources and expectations provided by the master can lead to appropriate stewardship.

And so I think it is with us: when we trust God’s love for us, we tend to do our best to faithfully follow God’s invitations for us. It’s our fear that often gets in the way. Amidst many themes I could draw out from this Gospel reading, I think the most important for today is the implication that readiness for life with God is not achieved by sitting in fear, hoarding resources, and hoping that playing it safe will save us.

Fear keeps us still, while faithfulness keeps us growing. The world today needs people who acknowledge their fear and move past that tendency towards paralysis to instead do their best to live out the call of the gospels.

May we be encouraged, rather than afraid, of the conclusion of today’s gospel readings: “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” We have been entrusted with the unfailing love of God. Let us take some risks to live that love in our communities as an embodiment of our faith.