The Worthy Slave and More

This sermon was preached on October 7, 2007, for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. It deals with the text of Luke 17: 5-10.

This text from Luke appears in the lectionary for today—and oh, my, is it a hard one. You could probably tell that from the fact that I didn’t have a title to give to Edith and so it appears today in your bulletin as “untitled sermon.” (which I kind of like, actually, it’s so multi-purpose!)

This text from Luke is so hard that after I told Pastor Greg I was going to take up the challenge of preaching on it, he asked me, “are you sure? You don’t have to!” It’s one of those texts that the New Testament scholars tend to skim over in their otherwise painstaking analysis, usually saying something like, “here is another in a string of Jesus sayings, seemingly unconnected to one another, in which the meaning isn’t clear.” In Greek, its original language, the grammar and imagery are a bit garbled, which makes things especially hard for us. In the words of one of the commentators I consulted, “This parable of the worthless servant is probably no one’s favorite.”

So that’s our challenge for today. I’m thinking that by the end of this sermon this passage still won’t be one of your favorites, but maybe—just maybe—we can try to move it up the list just a little bit.

One thing that makes this passage so hard for me is Jesus’ use of the imagery of master and slave. We all know that slavery was a fact of life in the ancient world. It was a fact of life in our own country until about 140 years ago, and it’s still happening today in many parts of the world. We rightly associate slavery with injustice, with cruelty, with inequality, with suffering. And we also rightly associate the good news of Jesus with breaking the bonds of slavery—with justice, kindness, equality, and wholeness.

So hearing Jesus speak of the master and slave relationship so casually, and more than that—speak of it in this parable as a model for the life of faith and a disciple’s relationship with God—honestly, it makes my teeth hurt. I don’t like it one bit.

But let’s all take a shot of novocaine and look at this parable. What is Jesus really saying? Here’s what I think.

Jesus wants the disciples to think about the life of faith, and so he uses as an example the relationship of a master to his slave—a relationship that all of the disciples, people of their time as they were, would have known about, seen all around them, and perhaps experienced themselves. This example would have resonated with the disciples’ life experiences in a real, personal kind of way.

Jesus asks them if, as masters, they would ordinarily welcome a slave in from work in the fields with an invitation to dinner? Of course not, he says. You as the master would remind the slave—your unpaid servant-- that his work for the day is not yet done. The slave needs to prepare the master’s food, serve him dinner, and clean up afterwards—before taking time to rest from his labors and take care of his own needs.

More than that, Jesus says, you as the master wouldn’t feel a need to thank the slave for his efforts—after all, serving you—and serving you first--is just part of his duty to you as a master. It’s expected. It’s ordinary. Absolutely not worthy of praise.

So, Jesus is saying to the disciples, the life of faith is like this. You, as the servant people of God, serve God, and your work will never be done. And God, as the master, doesn’t owe you a thing for all that work—certainly not wages, and not even dinner and a good night’s sleep.

Yikes! What a message. No wonder this parable is nobody’s favorite. And even though it’s true—because when IS our work for God ever done? And what DOES God owe us for a life of virtue and service—nothing, because God is God---even though it’s true, after thinking about this one for a while I know we, like Thomas Jefferson, would like to get out our scissors and cut this out of our Bibles so we never have to read it again!

As I was turning this parable over and over in my mind, trying to find something about it that seemed uplifting or even hopeful, I was privileged to attend the Chamberlin lecture over at Lewis and Clark College this past Monday night. The speaker was Rev. Peter Gomes, who’s the Chaplain at Harvard University. In a speech that spoke of responsibility for care of the environment as a spiritual task, he referred over and over again to the story of creation—how in the Biblical creation narrative God creates the world and puts the human being within it to be a steward of it.

And Rev. Gomes reminded me of something I hadn’t heard articulated in a long time: that “Stewardship” doesn’t mean “raising money for the church” or “taking care of your possessions” or even “contributing something to a greater cause.” Stewardship really means “taking care of something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Taking care of something that doesn’t belong to you? This would seem to go against every tenet of human nature as we understand it. One of the founding principles of our capitalist and entrepreneurial economy is that it is ownership that produces pride, and care, and concern—thus our tax breaks to encourage home ownership.

Who of us takes care of a hotel room? We just put the wet towels on the floor and leave the tracked in beach sand and the spilled Coca-Cola on the carpet. Who of us expects the rental house next door to be a neighborhood showplace? If it doesn’t belong to me, we think, why take care of it? It’s not my responsibility.

So as I thought about stewardship, and our role in the world--in God’s created garden, I began to see in my mind’s eye the slave in the parable setting a different kind of example for us, showing us a different way of being—showing us how we can care for, not trash, the things that don’t belong to us—whether that’s our hotel room, our rental car, or the whole of the world itself.

The slave in the parable is entrusted with the care of the estate and the house that don’t belong to him—the slave takes care of the fields, and the garden, and the kitchen, that are not his. This care for a place that doesn’t belong to him is his job, his duty, his responsibility, and his service. The slave is a steward, a caretaker, an essential part of the master’s plan for the maintenance and health of the estate. Perhaps this parable ought to be called the parable of the “worthy” slave, not the “worthless” one.

Perhaps we, then, are charged with that same responsibility toward our world and the people in it. Perhaps if we saw ourselves not as owners of the world and masters of our own fate, but as God’s servants, charged with the stewardship of God’s estate—both the physical world and our spiritual inheritance—we would be better able to live as God would have us live and do as God would have us do.

Perhaps if we saw ourselves not as owners with competing land-claims or faith-claims, but as co-stewards with everyone else in our community, our church, and the world, we would be more inclined to work together as a people and as a faith community for the health and healing of God’s garden.

Perhaps, if we saw ourselves as stewards of God’s good creation, of God’s love and faithfulness, of God’s many gifts to us and to the world—perhaps then we would know in a visceral way, in our hearts, that God indeed does not owe us thanks for our service. Perhaps, if we saw ourselves as stewards, we would see that no matter how much we give to God, we will always, profoundly, owe a debt to God—for God’s gifts to us of life, of love, of community, and of the world around us--for God's gift of His son, Jesus Christ.

So this passage tells us something about stewardship and how to rightly live out our relationship to God and to the world—a fitting message on this World Communion Sunday when we join with Christians all over the world—all over God’s garden—to celebrate our unity and our community in Christ.

So, now that we have an image of stewardship of the garden before us—what about that other thing that bothers us in this passage, that depressing image of unending, unappreciated servitude represented by the ever-working, never-thanked slave.

When Jesus tells the disciples that, despite a long day spent in the fields, the slave’s work isn’t over until the master’s dinner is prepared and the dishes are done, I believe that this is indeed a truthful vision of what the life of faith is and can be—and that it’s not a bad thing after all.

Because, after all, the life of faith is not a life of leisure, of kicking back, putting up your feet, gorging on dinner, and taking a long nap—and there’s no such thing as retirement in the life of faith, either! The work of faith, and faithful work, is never done. And, more importantly, we wouldn’t want it to be—because that would be for us a particularly dull, uninspiring, and meaningless way of life.

The amazing thing about the life of faith is that—like your garden, or your housework, or even your Netflix list—there’s always more to do, and one more thing to do after that—and, more than that, there’s always something that you can do.

I remember seeing a video of a woman who had lived her whole life paralyzed, confined to a hospital bed in a nursing facility, dependent on the visits and the care of others. In the video, she is resting all curled up in almost a fetal position, wearing oxygen and hooked up to a pain pump, her voice halting and soft. It is obvious that her body is starting to fail and that she is near death. A chaplain asks her, “What do you do during the day?” and this woman says, “I pray. I pray for other people and their needs. I figure that’s the purpose of my life, to be someone that prays for others. And knowing I’m helping other people makes my life worth living.”

Truly, the life of faith is never done, and should never be done. There is always something we can do here in God’s garden.

So. I want to leave you with a final thought. Just before Jesus tells his parable of the worthy slave, he speaks to the disciples about faith. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Now ordinarily I would interpret this as being about how none of the disciples, indeed none of us, has enough faith in God, and that we all need to have more faith. Of course that’s what it means, that’s obvious.

But today I feel led to tell you that I believe this little saying about the mustard seed opens up to us another aspect of the nature of faith. Not only does it help us understand what faith is, but it helps us understand what this whole 17th chapter of Luke is really about.

I believe that Jesus is telling us that one important, essential element of faith is—imagination. When we have imagination, we can picture a world where things are different. When we have imagination, we step out of normal rules and normal expectations, and can envision a different reality—perhaps even God’s reality. When we have imagination we can see visions and dream dreams and get a glimpse of the future God wants for us and for the world.

So important is imagination, in fact, that we include it in one of the vows that ministerial candidates and church officers take at their ordination. We ask: “Will you seek to serve the people, with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?”

Look with me at the images we see throughout the 17th chapter of Luke. In the passage just before our text for today, Jesus asks the disciples to envision a world where we can be forgiving, no matter how many times we are sinned against.

In the passage just after our text for today, probably what Pastor Greg will preach about next week, Jesus shows the disciples ten lepers, cured of their disease, and praises the faithful imagination of the one of those ten who figures out who and what Jesus is and turns back to thank him.

Now Jesus asks the disciples to imagine a Mulberry tree in the sea—surely an impossibility—to imagine it, as a metaphor for the power of faith and as a vision of what faith can accomplish in the world.

And in what we’re now calling the parable of the worthy slave, Jesus tells the disciples “Who among you would say to your slave ‘Come take your place at the table?’” What a task of faith it is to imagine that a slave could be invited to the table—and yet that is the very thing Jesus seems to ask the disciples to do. To imagine a different, more just, more compassionate reality.

Imagine a world where slaves are invited to the table with the master.

It’s not really so hard to do. In fact, we do it--we participate in this vision and make it real--each time we approach this table for communion. We are the slaves—worthy and unworthy alike--invited to table with the master, to partake of a holy meal that lifts our spirits, broadens our vision, sparks our sacred imagination, and brings us into communion with Jesus Christ.

As we approach this table today, let us remember that the life of faith is about stewardship of God’s garden. About believing that living faithfully with Christ is a never-ending, life-long, life-giving task. And about stretching ourselves in imagination to envision, with the help of the Holy Spirit, God’s new reality present among us—now, and unfolding forever into the future.

Amen.