“Into each life some rain must fall.” It was American poet Longfellow who coined the phrase. Put like that (perhaps because of the 1940s Inkspots song of the same name), it sounds gentle and refreshing. But Longfellow himself experienced some tragic events in his life. Both his wives died prematurely – the first from a miscarriage, the second from burns sustained when her dress caught fire. Every life has its troubles, but the rain pours unrelentingly into some. It’s not fair.
Sunday’s gospel reading isn’t fair either. It is the parable Jesus told of the master who is going away and calls his three servants to him. Each servant is given a different amount of money to be responsible for until his return. The first is given five talents, the second three talents, the third is given one. The first two servants invest their money, probably fairly riskily because they each make returns of 100 per cent. Their master is delighted.
The third servant buries his talent in the ground and returns to his master precisely what he was originally given. His master deplores this lack of initiative. “Even just depositing the money in a bank would have yielded some increase!” the master yells. “I was scared,” whimpered the servant. “I know you are a harsh man with unreasonably high expectations.” “Me, harsh?” hollers the master, and banishes his servant to the outer darkness.
The master then takes his single talent and gives it to the servant who has the most. “To those that have shall be given more,” Jesus sums up. “And to those who have little, even what they have will be taken away from them.” Cheers for that, Jesus!
Yet we observe this life principle over and over. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. As James Baldwin remarked: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” Those with privilege or natural advantages attract success and prosperity, those without do not. It’s not fair. Our post-colonial 21st-century western culture has yielded fresh insights into this, as we learn to “check our privilege”.
American writer Frederick Buechner explores the parable of the talents in an interesting way. His thoughts were sparked when he was sharing with a group a sad story from his childhood. A man came up to him afterwards and remarked: “You have had a fair amount of pain in your life, like everybody else. You have been a good steward of it.”
Being stewards of our pain … When rain pours into our lives, what if we can find it in ourselves to view suffering as a resource to be invested? No one wants to suffer. Jesus himself didn’t relish the prospect. Yet I know from personal experience that the most luminous people – the ones who reflect most clearly the kindness and faithfulness of God – are those whose hearts have been broken and who have allowed their suffering to enlarge and deepen their empathy and compassion.
There are many ways of dealing with pain. We can capitalise on it, use it to get attention and sympathy. We can hide behind it, use it as an excuse for not trying. We can get stuck in it and relive it over and over. We can bury it like the third servant and his one talent – repressing and denying it, disconnecting ourselves from it, cutting us off from our deepest selves.
Or, we can offer it to God in a high-risk investment.
Suffering cannot really be imagined, only experienced, so there are dangers in thinking about it in the abstract. Everyone responds differently, has a different threshold and capacity, is called to carry different burdens. And life isn’t fair.
Nonetheless, as Advent approaches, this might be a good time to take stock of how we invest our pain. Ours is the only God with wounds and scars, who chose to suffer for us, our wounded healer. Can we offer our suffering back to God, trusting that nothing offered to God is ever wasted?