Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

You can see that we’re getting to that time of year,

deep into "ordinary time,"

when at least a couple of times a month,

the lectionary hands us an oddball text of scripture

and insists that we deal with it.

For one thing,

the first half of this reading has little or nothing to do with

the second half of the reading.

The first half is about faith,

and having or not having enough of it …

The second half is about slaves and masters,

and about slaves who are supposedly "worthless"

because they have only done what was expected of them.

It seems, by implication, to be about us and God,

and our tendency to forget which one is in charge

and which one is not.

And it’s this second half that I want to pay attention to today,

because, while Jesus is clearly correct that

we human creatures sometimes forget that God is God, and we are not …

he also sounds uncharacteristically harsh and punitive

as he makes this point to his hearers.

So one suspects that there is something else going on as well.

Let’s see if we can figure out what.

First off, we need to discover who it is that he’s really talking to.

The text misleads us a little,

because it begins with "the apostles" asking Jesus a question,

leading us to think that perhaps he is speaking only to them.

But in everything that has led up to this,

it’s clear that even though he may be responding to their questions,

he’s really addressing a much larger group that is also listening.

For example, back in chapter 16

where he tells the completely weird parable of the unjust steward:

it is introduced with "Jesus said to his disciples,"

but as soon as the parable is over, Luke tells us that

"the Pharisees, who were lovers of money,

heard all this, and they ridiculed him."

So this whole section of Jesus’ speaking and storytelling

has a bigger audience than we might have realized.

He isn’t just speaking to the inner circle,

the most faithful disciples.

He’s actually speaking to significant crowds of people,

crowds that include his enemies,

those waiting for a chance to entrap him in his words.

That starts to make more sense of last week’s reading then, too …

why would he tell a story about a rich man and a poor man, Lazarus,

only to his innermost circle of disciples,

who had become poor by choice in order to follow him?

The parable makes no sense

unless there were others standing by who were rich,

who were meant to overhear and consider.

Same thing this week.

Jesus may indeed be answering a question

that was posed by one of his nearest and dearest,

but he’s doing it in front of a much larger audience,

some of whom are not members of his fan club!

Given that, an understanding of the reading

begins to suggest itself.

Remember also,

that Jesus rarely uses the metaphor of servanthood or slavery

to describe what our relationship with God ought to be like.

He is far more likely to say something like,

"No longer do I call you servants,

for the servant does not know what the master is doing …

But I call you friends."

And no, it’s not just that we like those verses better,

so we remember them better!

When Jesus talks about our role in the reign of God,

we are workers, to be sure,

but it’s more like we are workers with him, not for him.

To use a more modern metaphor,

Jesus seems more like the kind of boss who

rolls up her sleeves and joins you tightening bolts on the assembly line.

So if Jesus doesn’t usually seem to think

that we are nothing more than God’s slaves,

why does he use that image in this teaching?

Whose attention is he trying to get?

Who is it among Jesus’ hearers

that were most likely to think of themselves as God’s slaves?

Who were the ones for whom

obedience was the key criterion of faithful discipleship?

Well, that would be … the Pharisees.

Really, the Pharisees have gotten kind of a bum rap from us Christians.

To be sure, they weren’t very fond of Jesus,

and there’s no getting around that.

But the Pharisees were people who,

in the context of being under the domination of Rome,

chose to emphasize their Jewish identity rather than to hide it.

Rather than trying to "go with the flow"

and get ahead in the society they lived in,

they chose obedience to a different law, a harder law.

And for them, the law was the most important thing.

It’s was God’s gift to human beings,

and they understood themselves to be obligated to keep it.

All of it.

Yes, they studied, commented, interpreted …

but God’s law was the center of their lives.

One can hardly see that as being a bad thing!

And yet, what disturbed them about Jesus was

that he sometimes didn’t seem to take the law as seriously as they did.

Which troubled them because, clearly, he knew the law as well as they did;

he just treated it differently, understood its purpose differently.

All of which is to say that

if you were looking for a group of people in Jesus’ day

who understood their relationship to God

as being very much like slave-to-master,

it would have to be the Pharisees.

And so, I suspect that,

even though Jesus may ostensibly be answering

a question posed by one of the Twelve …

he’s really addressing this part of his response

to a group that didn’t ask the question: the Pharisees in the back row.

So, Pharisees …

which one of you,

even if your slave has just come indoors from plowing all day long,

which one of you would invite him to sit down at the table,

and you yourself would serve him his dinner?

Of course you wouldn’t!

You would still expect the slave to serve you your dinner,

and then he could have his own dinner later!

That’s just the way the world is.

You don’t thank a slave for doing her job.

Well, then, the same must be true for you:

So what if you have done what you ought to have done?

Every slave should do that;

you’re still a worthless slave.

So what if you, a slave to God’s law,

have managed to keep every point of it, as you were ordered to do?

You are nevertheless a worthless slave;

you have done only what you ought to have done?

You expect to be rewarded for that by God?

Think again!

Slaves don’t get rewards for doing their assigned work.

Harsh? You bet.

I suspect he is desperate to get their attention.

By exaggerating, by stretching the metaphor,

he’s trying to break them out of their notion

that their job in life is to be the slaves of God and God’s law.

That’s not who God is;

that’s not who God wants to be in relationship to us.

How can Jesus get them to see it?

How can he get us to see it?

God is not hiring!

God does not want servants.

God wants friends.

God wants workers, yes, but co-workers,

those who will work with God to establish the reign of justice and peace,

not who slave to keep detailed obedience to hundreds of rules.

We work with God in a spirit of reciprocity,

in response to all that God has already done for us,

not out of some sort of contractual duty or obligation.

By making themselves the slaves of God,

no matter how faithful they may have been,

the Pharisees have robbed discipleship of its joy,

and have misrepresented who God is.

Jesus keeps pulling them – and us –

back to a God who is in the market for friends, not servants.

He tells stories about the kingdom of God being like a party

to which we all get invited.

He turns water to wine,

and hangs out with people who know how to have a good time

instead of the hard-nosed holier-than-thous.

He invites us to sit at the table with him, as his guests,

not to wait on him.

In fact, if you’ll recall,

at that last meal with his disciples,

he served them.

We are not worthless slaves;

we are not slaves at all.

God is not hiring.

God is inviting … you, me, apostles, Pharisees, everybody …

to come to this table as friends.

To remember, to rejoice, to celebrate.

And in response, to serve …

not because we are slaves,

but because we have been served.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

©2007 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org