3rd February Trinity
Luke 12: 35-48
“Be dressed and ready for service and keep your lamps
burning. Be like men who are expecting their master back from the marriage
feast, so that they can open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are the servants whom the master finds awake when he comes! Yes, I tell
you, he will put on an apron himself and show them to the table and serve them.
And if he does not come until the second or third watch of the night, and yet
finds them awake: Blessed are the servants! You know: If the master of the
house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would not let his house be
looted. So be ready: the Son of Man comes at an hour that you had not thought.”
Then Peter said, “Lord, are you telling us
this parable, or is it for all human beings?”
And the Lord answered, “Imagine a faithful and
competent steward whom his master appoints to be in charge of the whole staff,
to give to each one what he is entitled to. Blessed is that servant if the
master comes and finds him carrying out his duties. I tell you, he will entrust him with all his
goods. But if the servant says in his heart, ‘My master will not be coming all
that soon,” and begins to mistreat the other servants and the maids, himself
all the while eating and drinking and becoming intoxicated, then the master of
that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour
that he does not know. The master will virtually tear him to pieces; he will
treat him as those deserve who have not proved faithful.
A
servant who knows his master’s will but does not act according to it and so
does not carry out his will, deserves the severest punishment. If he does not
know the master’s will and then does something that deserves punishment, he
will escape more lightly. From one who has many gifts, much will also be
expected; and from one who has been entrusted with much, much more will also be
demanded.
3rd February Trinity
February 23, 2014
Luke 12: 35 – 48
The world of the angels is ordered in a hierarchy. Each
order of angels serves the one above, and all ultimately serve God in love.
Demonic beings were once angels who refused to serve.
Today’s reading is a story of good and poor servants. They
can be seen parts of a single human being. There is a part of us which, like
the angels, wants to serve the Master faithfully, even in his apparent absence.
And there is another part of us that would like to devote itself to instinctual
or even destructive behaviors. Christ makes it clear that succumbing to the
latter will eventually destroy our integrity and tear us to pieces. Doing so
consciously and willfully hastens the process.
Christ is the Master of the House. We are the stewards in
charge of the house of the body. We are to become competent over our own
impulses and behaviors. Part of that competence involves giving to our array of
inner ‘staff’, as Christ says, ‘what each one is entitled to.’ (Luke 12:42) They
too are servants. We are neither to beat them nor starve them. All of our inner
parts need sufficient nourishment and just treatment in order to fulfill their
tasks. The chief steward is not to become intoxicated with its own importance.
The steward task is to maintain order in the house while watching for the
Master of Love, the Master of the Heart, to return. Ralph Waldo Emerson says:
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
.…
’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,….[1]
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