On Christ the King Sunday, the Gospel reading from Matthew 25:14-30 delivers a direct challenge to the culture of compliance. The parable of the talents — where servants are entrusted with resources and judged on whether they multiplied them — is not a gentle story about personal stewardship. It is a demand: use what God gave you, or lose it. The master calls the servant who buried his talent "wicked and lazy" — the same adjective applied to those who hide their light under a bushel. The founders understood this. They didn't bury the liberty and self-governance they inherited. They risked everything to multiply it. That's the tradition believers inherit today — not a call to quiet compliance, but a mandate to build, to produce, to refuse the fear that keeps men in the ground.
HotAir's Ed Morrissey reflected on the reading, drawing from his own brief stint selling Encyclopedia Britannica — a week-long failure that taught him a lesson about gifts and their proper use. He noted that the parable's harsh verdict — "from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away" — cuts against the modern impulse to hide from responsibility. The servant who buried his talent out of fear received the harshest rebuke: not for destroying the money, but for refusing to risk it.
Meanwhile, Northern California is bracing for another storm — the third in a week, with KCRA reporting rain returning Sunday and a heavier system arriving Wednesday. Chain controls remain in the Tahoe area. The storms are real. But so is the call to stand in them.
The establishment wants believers buried — compliant, dependent, waiting for the state to provide and to dictate. The parable says otherwise. The talent was given to be invested, not hoarded. The founders built a republic on the conviction that rights come from God, not government, and that the duty of the faithful is to exercise those rights vigorously. Christ the King Sunday reminds us: the one who reigns is not Caesar. The state is not God, and the call is to faithfulness — not to the state, but to the King. The question isn't whether storms will come — they always do. The question is whether you'll be found faithful when they do.
