 | CLM-0-122 s SG6: No Grounds for Boasting |
From: "Clergy Mail List"
Tue, 20 Jun 2000
Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 0-122
SG6 - From 'The Saviour's Gospel': a series of sermons on the
parables of Luke 15 - 17, by Paul Harrison
NO GROUNDS FOR BOASTING (Luke 17:1-10)
What a harsh little parable this last one seems to be! It presents
us with the picture of a boss who seems to be a proper slave-
driver, who takes his workers for granted - makes them sweat
through a twelve-hour day without so much as a word of thanks. Is
that how Jesus wants us to think of God? Is God just such a hard
task-master?
The answer is 'No.' For what this parable is about is not the
master's attitude to his servant, but the servant's attitude to his
work. If we are to see this we must follow the same simple rules
of interpretation that have guided us all through. Let us get the
feel of the story so we are sure where its thrust really comes.
THE STORY'S REALISM
Once again, as by now we should expect, this one too faithfully
reflects the social conditions in our Lord's day.
Slavery was simply a fact of life. From the book of Deuteronomy it
is clear that slavery was an institution as native to the Hebrew
way of life as it was to the Roman, though its conditions were less
permanent and more humane. But in both systems, Roman and Hebrew, a
slave was reckoned to belong to his master the same way a sheep or
a goat did. A slave had no right to any life of his own outside his
master's employ.
When we leave the office or factory at the end of the day, our time
is our own - but a slave's was not. He was at his master's beck and
call night and day.
Slaves were indeed often entrusted with considerable
responsibilities, even to holding what we would call managerial
jobs, so they were free to use their own initiative. But they were
wholly answerable to their masters how they did use it. They had no
right of appeal to any outside authority whatever, no matter how
harshly they felt they were treated.
These terms of contract between a master and his slave were so
familiar, and so accepted a fact of life, that the attitude shown
by the master to his slaves in our Lord's story would have
occasioned no surprise among His hearers. In telling it, Jesus was
simply appealing to contemporary experience.
'What man of you who has a slave will fuss over him when he comes
in tired from ploughing all day - prepare him a hot meal, run his
bath for him and bring him his slippers while he relaxes after
dinner?' No more would we to-day expect management to line up at
the end of the day, personally thank each employee as he clocked
off, help him out of his boiler suit, and hand him a cup of tea and
a bun buttered with their own hands! The workers have done the job
they are paid for and there is an end of it.
So with any slave-owners in the crowd. As Jesus told the story,
they would simply nod understanding agreement. None of them would
have felt they owed any great debt of gratitude to their slaves for
what they did, and certainly they would have been surprised if
their slaves expected it. If they obeyed orders - well, that was
what they had been bought for!
THE STORY'S POINT
'Now,' says Jesus, 'put yourself in a servant's shoes. A servant's
whole life is at his master's disposal. No matter how hard he
works, or how long, he can't render any service which is surplus to
requirements. Because the servant's relationship to his master is
one of total obligation to him, the very nature of the relationship
makes that impossible. That is exactly how things stand between you
and God.
Your relationship to God is one of total obligation. You can't put
God in your debt, no matter what you do, or how much you do, or how
well you do it. You can't render God any service which is surplus
to requirements. God is your Creator; you are His creatures. You
stand in a relationship of total indebtedness. To Him you owe your
body, your mind, your spirit, your strength - even the very breath
you draw. Time and your very life are His gifts to you. Your labour
and all the fruits of it are His by right. He is God! You have no
claim on Him! But He has a claim on you! Acknowledge it then!'
When we have fully discharged all our obligations to God (and which
of us ever does that?), that gives us no cause for self-
congratulation; we shall simply have done what it was our duty to
do. So completely do we stand in God's debt, so total is our
obligation to serve Him that none of us, not even the best of us,
can sit down at the end of the day, like little Jack Horner in his
complacent corner, and say, 'What a good boy am I!'
'So also,' said Jesus, 'when you have done all that is commanded
you, say 'We are unprofitable servants; what we ought to have done,
we have done.'' Have we loved and served God, with all our mind,
and all our heart, and all our soul, and all our strength - and our
neighbour as ourself? And if we have, what more have we done than
was commanded us? We have not gone beyond our duty, even then. We
have still not given our heavenly Master more than we owed Him, Who
not only created us, but when we were lost, bought us - with blood!
Here then, is the clear teaching of the parable. None of us has it
in his power to render God such an obedience as gives us any
grounds for boasting - or any rewards for special merit.
And it is worth pointing out that Jesus Himself practised what He
here preached. When He had run His course, having rendered His
Father a complete and perfect obedience, what did He say? He said,
(John 17:4) 'I have accomplished the work which Thou gavest me to
do.' He was the model servant from His own parable: 'I have done
what it was my duty to do.'
And what did He ask? 'Father, glorify me now, in Thine own presence
-' So He was looking for a prize then? No, no - 'Glorify me with
the glory which I had with Thee before the world was made' - before
He had done a hand's turn toward His age-long task with man. '- the
glory which Thou gavest me in Thy love -' He goes on to say; so
even that glory He reckoned was His, not by right but by gift.
'I have made known Thy Name' - that had been His task - 'and I will
go on making it known.' The only reward He in fact anticipated was
continuing service! The only glory He seeks is the Father's glory,
reflected in His service, for the sake of those He serves. Was
there ever such a slave in the Father's house, Son though He was?
This is our Master - and the servant is not above his master!
'Where then?' asks Paul, 'is our boasting? It is excluded.' (Romans
3:27) And there spoke the ex-pharisee, who knew only too well how
he and all his kind wanted their little boast, their little stock-
pile of merit, their recognition. But all such things he had once
reckoned as gain, he came to regard as no better than a heap of
rubbish. His only boast was the Lord: 'God forbid that I should
glory in anything save in the Christ of the Cross by whom I am
crucified to the world, and the world to me.' (Galatians 6:14) When
we get there - when our pride is not in our service, but in Him
whose service it is - then we shall have begun to do the thing for
which we were given birth.
When God calls us into His service it is of His mercy that He does
so, not of our deserving, for the only other service open to us is
the service of sin and death.
THE APPLICATION
Observe where the emphasis in all this rests: the parable
illustrates the attitude which the servant should have toward his
own service: not the master's attitude to his servant, but the
servant's to his own service. The question what sort of master God
is to His servants is another question - a question not under
discussion here.
Compare Scripture With Scripture
Jesus discussed that question elsewhere in fact, and Luke informs
us of it in his Gospel (12:37). There we learn that in fact God
does for His servants what no earthly master would dream of doing!
'Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He comes, shall
find alert and diligent. Truly, I tell you, He will gird Himself,
and make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them.'
What about that? He did it, too - quite literally, at the Last
Supper, where He took upon Himself the role of a slave, washing His
disciples' feet. 'If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your
feet (been a slave to you) you ought also to wash one another's
feet (be slaves to each other).'
Are we doing that? And if we are, are we resentful of the smell,
even yet - and counting ourselves extraordinarily fine fellows to
be found doing so much more than is really required of us?
'The Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve - even to
giving His life a ransom for many.' And as Dr. Beasley-Murray so
finely observed, 'when our Lord returns at the end, He will come in
the same Spirit, though it be with splendour. He will have His own
sit down at the Messianic Feast, and it will be His delight to
'serve' them with the fruits and treasures of the Kingdom. The
Jesus of yesterday is the same to-day and will be seen to be the
same still, in the to-morrow of His triumph.'12
Are we yet - truly - the servants of the Lord? Is it really His
service we are busy in? Or is it in some obscure way, ourselves
that we are serving, really - as we saw it, sadly, to be with the
elder brother in the earlier parable?
THE SITUATION
Remember the situation in which Jesus told the story.
It is the same day He told the stories of the Prodigal Son, of the
Rascally Steward, and of Dives and Lazarus. It is to the same
crowd, still, that He is speaking. In that crowd are the disciples
still - and the Pharisees. This story is His last word that day to
them all.
------------------
What had He been saying? Let us gather the threads together next
week.
(Continued in SG7)
------------------
Rev Paul T Harrison BD
paulh@eis.net.au
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copyright material, provided any written or oral reproduction
includes this notice to acknowledge Rev Paul T Harrison as the
author. Thankyou.)
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