“35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds
them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. 39 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
41 Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?” 42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
47 “That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.””
Do you remember when you first learned there is such a thing as negative numbers? I’m sorry if I spoiled the surprise for some of our younger listeners, but you can have negative two apples. Do you remember learning that there is a z-axis in geometry? You go from a bit of mathematical confidence plotting points up and down, left and right, and suddenly you are in a third dimension moving from squares to cubes and circles to spheres. In math, you won’t mature unless you are willing to add new dimensions to your thought—negative numbers, a z-axis.
So it is spiritually. One of the more famous examples of this need to add new dimensions to your thinking to understand is the seeming contradiction of Proverbs 26:4-5, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” You can’t understand you bump into enough people behaving foolishly and understand the wisdom of both. Martin Luther wouldn’t add dimensions to his understanding of faith and works and so wanted the book of James cut from Scripture. He just couldn’t see that James and Paul understood those terms very differently and so his thinking in that area remained two dimensional and flat. He was a genius regarding everything in those two dimensions but his failure to mature intellectually in that regard kept him stunted as to what else was out there.
Jesus wants us all to mature in our thinking and so he tells multiple parables to help us think in multiple dimensions. We do the parables a disservice when we try to make each of them say everything as if there was nothing more to life than the goodness of the Father, being found in your lostness, or continually repenting of self-righteousness—the three parables we just studied. Each parable is meant to communicate a different aspect of life because there is much more to life than we will ever understand. We’ve been seeing that it’s all grace. Now we see that we are servants with obligations. We must be responsive and ready as we wait for the return of the Lord; that’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in two points. First: a readiness parable. Second: a readily parable. First, in verses 35-40, we consider a readiness parable. Second, in verses 41-48, we consider a readily parable.
We begin to see this requirement of readiness and responsiveness in our first point: a readiness parable. As this passage opens we see Jesus training his disciples to think in multiple ways at once. He has just taught them not to worry and now in this parable he warns them. So, “don’t worry, but I’m warning you…” There is a tension there and holding both sides of that tension requires a willingness to, perhaps, think in ways which you haven’t before.
The warning is that we believers are servants who must be ready and responsive to meet our master and failure to do so has grave consequences; verse 35, “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.” Wedding feasts in that culture could last for up to a week so these servants had no idea when the master might return. They needed to be ready to get a meal ready and open the gate or door even if he came back at 4:00 am; that was their service; they were servants and so are we—yes we were lost but now are found, yes we are children of the generous Father as we’ve been studying, and we are servants; it’s all true; verse 38, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night.”
Servants serving goes well; verse 37, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them.” If we behave appropriately in light of Jesus’ return, we will be rewarded. The idea of the master waiting on the servants was an exaggeration in that culture—“In the Middle East the traditional roles of master and servant are well-defined,” as Bailey explains. “For a master to serve his own servants is unheard of!”—but not so with the Lord. The new creation is pictured as a party—a banquet—and the Lord is the host. So, yes, we are servants, but we are servants who, if faith-filled, will be invited to celebrate and be served by the God we serve. The message here is that the wisest way forward in regard to the coming judgment is to be ready for the master’s return.
That is, in some ways, more difficult for us today than for these servants because they may have waited for a week while it has now been about 100,000 weeks since Jesus told this parable about him returning. The point of this parable, though, isn’t about the length of waiting but about the suddenness of the return. Suddenness is always how a return happens. If you are babysitting and the parents are late, the car still pulls into the driveway suddenly. The knock at the door in the ancient world would always come unexpectedly even if you were expecting it.
Since this is how the return of Christ—and so final judgment—will come we would be wise to be ready. This stands in the tradition of the “day of the Lord” which runs throughout the Old Testament. Events like the flood and the fall of Jerusalem as well as the birth of Isaac and the return from exile involved waiting, seeming delay, doubt as to whether it would even occur, and then it all of a sudden it was upon them. “Though it linger, wait for it,” wrote Habakkuk; “it will certainly come and will not delay.” So it will be at the return of Christ; verse 40, “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
Those servants would have been fools to spend their time in conjecture as to when the master might return rather than simply being ready whenever he returned, but this is how many prepare for the second coming—in conjecture. Church history is littered with it. The Crusades were, in part, a misguided effort to secure the return of Christ. Luther thought that the Reformation was a sign of the end times and so was grievously disappointed when the Jews didn’t respond as he thought they should from prophecy and so turned against them. Different leaders and groups thought 1843, 1844, 1936, 43, 72, and 75 would be the year of Jesus’ return. Harold Camping, a long time CRC member, thought he had cracked some sort of code that told him that 1994 would be the year and then with adjustments 1995 and then two dates in 2011.
To put the best face on this, let’s say it was all done with the motivation of being ready. I remember Camping’s billboards back in 2011 calling everyone to be ready for Jesus’ return. That, though, according to Jesus is not readiness. Readiness is recognizing that Jesus’ return will be unexpected and so sudden and so all are always to be ready. That’s the analogy to the thief in verse 39, “If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” If you’ve ever been robbed the event was sudden and unexpected. Jesus is saying that his return will be the same. He’s not implying anything nefarious about his purposes by likening himself to a thief. It’s not gracious to push a speaker’s intentions beyond intentions which are actually theirs.
The call in this first parable is to believe; believing dictates behavior. The servants believed the master was coming at unknown time and so they behaved appropriately. If you truly believe Jesus is returning at an unknown time, you will behave in appropriate ways. It’s not your role to open the door for him; that’s what the master told those servants to be doing. It’s your role to be doing what the master tells you to be doing. That’s how you are ready for Jesus’ return. You do what he told you to do. You do the commandments we studied this morning with the law. You trust that he knows what he’s up to. You behave as if you believe.
That’s just as much part of Christianity as recognizing that you once were lost but now are found, that you are a beloved child of a kind, good, generous Father, that what matters is your responsiveness to God’s word, and all the rest of the parables we’ve studied. You want to avoid the temptation of prioritizing any of these dimensions above the others. Christians fixated on the end times prioritize today’s parables to the point that they tend to miss the point of the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Christians fixated on the parables of the lost sheep and coin are mystified by the judgment in the parable we are about to study. Their thinking winds up flat, as mine is doubtlessly flat by any number of dimensions. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” as one writer once put it. Jesus doesn’t want us to have little minds and so he gave us yet another parable on this matter: a readily parable.
Questions are for understanding. We humans sometimes turn questions into forms of attack, ways of avoiding the truth, and nearly anything but what they were designed to be, which is tools for gaining understanding. You see Peter get it right by asking so as to understand in verse 41, ‘Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”’
Peter wanted to know how he fit into what he just heard, which is an excellent reason to ask a question. Peter wanted to know if everyone needed to be ready for his return or primarily he and the rest of the twelve? He wanted to know whether he had extra responsibility and so Jesus, as we’ve seen him doing over the past few weeks, ups the illustration. He moves from servants to a master of servants—increased responsibility, the very matter Peter is considering; verse 42, ‘The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.”’
It isas if Jesus said, “okay, Peter, let’s say that you do in fact have more responsibility than others in the kingdom; you being ready, then, is you readily doing that responsibility. Then I won’t just feed you a meal as in the last parable but I’ll put you in charge of everything. I’m much more generous than you are afraid I might be. I don’t give responsibility to break you. I give it to bless you so readily do your service, servant.” That’s why the last was a readiness parable and this one is a readily parable.
What does it mean, though, to do your service this readily? That matters for sensitive consciences. As we saw with Galatians, the flesh doesn’t know how to handle the word “enough.” What is, “readily enough?” Jesus answers this by way of contrast; verse 45, ‘But suppose the servant says to himself, “My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.”’
The servant doesn’t fail to readily do his work by failing to do it perfectly just as we don’t fail to be ready for Jesus’ second coming by failing to make the world or ourselves as perfect as it was before the fall into sin. Failure looks like forgetting that the master is returning at all and so acting as if you are the master. That’s how Jesus describes failure to readily do the tasks before you. “Rather than doing his job, [this manager] abuses his position and acts self-indulgently,” as Bock explains. When we humans fail to consider God—be in Jesus’ return, the Father’s sovereignty, the Spirit’s regenerating and sanctifying work—we put ourselves in His place and things fall apart. We humans have some sense of what is needful in life and we will put our flesh or something else in perceived gaps to make life work, but that will never work because only God can make it go.
Such foolishness can only be avoided, and so failure avoided, by remembering God. That’s what was needful in the last parable about readiness and that’s what is needful in this readily parable—remember that the master is returning. It really is that simple but failure to do so has grave consequences; verse 46, “the master of that servant will come on a day when [the manager] does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.” Servant though this manager is he is “placed with the unfaithful because of his complete lack of faithfulness,” as Bock put it. Perhaps he is cut in half because has become divided in his loyalties—he was for the master, now he is for himself. Either way the scene is purposefully grotesque to show you the grave danger of us refusing to do the task the master assigns.
Judas is a picture of this. Like that manager, Judas had a real responsibility to fulfill but his failure was stemmed from an unwillingness to treat the master as the master. Failure to treat the master as the master when absent, as we see in this parable, isn’t much different from Judas’ failure to treat the master as the master when present.
We servants show we are ready for the master’s return not by—as we saw in our last point—trying to calculate when he will return but by—as we see in this parable—readily doing what he puts in front of us today; “to give them their food allowance at the proper time,” as verse 42 put it. The wise manager did that and we servants are to do the responsibility put in front of us. “Surprisingly, the focus in looking for the return is not the sky; it is a table,” as Bruner described this manager feeding the other servants. You ready yourself for Jesus’ return by readily raising up your children in the way they should go. You ready yourself for Jesus’ return by learning to pray as Jesus’ taught you to pray. You ready yourself for Jesus’ return by being readily findable, readily trusting that the Father is kind, good, generous, and readily believing you aren’t better than others but are gravely in need of mercy to bring back the dimensions of the past three weeks. It’s not any more mysterious than being ready to open the door at 4:00 am was or than feeding your fellow servants.
It is to be done, though, as verse 47 makes clear, “That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows.” What’s clear from this is that blatant disobedience is worse than ignorant disobedience. A fifteen-year-old punching their sibling is worse than a five-year-old punching their sibling. Both are wrong but in very real way the fifteen-year-old should know better.
Peter had questions about increased responsibility and so Jesus’ moved from a servant to a manager; now he explains his point; “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” This isn’t meant to crush. Remember that increased responsibility also brings increased reward—moving from the generosity of being served a meal by Jesus to being put in charge of everything by Jesus. The possibility of negative and positive consequences increase with responsibility—from a meal to the everything and from a few blows to many. It depends on you and whether being readily ready matters to you.
The question for Peter and for me and for you is what will we servants do with our responsibility in light of the fact that our master is coming? Will we note his absence and try to take his place? Will we behave as he is the master and we are his servants? That’s as much a part of the kingdom of God as once being lost and now found. It’s as much a part of the kingdom of God as trusting that your Father is kind, good, and generous. It’s as much a part of the kingdom of God as remembering that God makes the kingdom go and grow. All the parables have their point so be readily ready. Amen.