4th February Trinity 2019, Inner Household

February Trinity

Luke 12: 35-48

Burnand

“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.

4th February Trinity

February 24, 2019

Luke 12: 36-48

The theme of this gospel reading is service. It is easy enough to apply this parable to our outer lives. For we all have interactions with people who serve us—waitpersons, public servants the grocery store clerk. Obviously, we are to treat them well. Likewise, many of us may serve and direct others in some capacity.

But the characters in the parable could also be seen as the various members of our own nature. We could think of our own “I” as the faithful and competent steward whom the Master has appointed to be in charge of the whole internal household of the soul. It is our duty to treat the various parts of ourselves firmly but well, to nourish them and coordinate their working, so that our inner house functions smoothly.

Our wills need directing; our feelings need to be wholesome; our thinking pure and engaged. Even our lowliest servant, the body, needs direction, nourishment, and care.

Juan de Juanes

Our own Self, our I, is itself the servant of the greater Master. To most of us, the Master seems to be away just now. But His arrival is imminent. “The Son of Man comes at an hour that you had not thought.” Lk 12:40

In the story, the Master may appear harsh to those who are not ready for him. But it is easy to overlook the fact that here, the Master himself acts as a servant. When He comes and finds that his servants are awake to open the door, he offers to nourish those who have served him, who have taken good care of the inner household for him. The reading says, “He will put on an apron and show them to the table and serve them.” Lk 12:37 For it is within us, in the house of our Selfhood, entered through the door of our wakeful heart, that Christ would dwell. And even today, we hear Him say: Take bread; take wine. Be nourished by Me, and I will give you my peace.”

8th August/September Trinity 2016, The Food that Fills (Redux)

8th August Trinity

Luke 17: 5-10

And the apostles said to the Lord, “Strengthen our faith!”

And the Lord said, “If you had faith as full of life as a mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine [mulberry] tree: be uprooted and be planted in the sea!  And it would obey you.

Van Gogh

Who among you who has a servant for plowing or for herding sheep, who will say to him when he comes home from the field, “Come at once and sit down at table?” Rather you will say, “Prepare the meal for me, put on your apron and wait on me until I eat and drink; afterward you can eat and drink too.” Does the servant deserve special thanks for doing his duty? Think of yourselves like that; when you have done all that you have been told to do, then say: “we are feeble servants, we have only done what we were obliged to do.”

8th August Trinity

Sep 11, 2016

Luke 17: 5-10

There is a children’s story about a lazy young woman, freshly married. Instead of sleeping in, she needed to step up and take hold of the running of a large household farming enterprise.  Other household workers were waiting for her orders. She had to learn to direct the household servants so that the whole enterprise, including the servants, would thrive and be fed.

Perhaps today’s reading is awkward for us. We don’t have servants. And we want to be kind. But perhaps we can look at the servant/master relationship as parts of ourselves that need to come into a healthy hierarchical relationship.

There are parts of our souls that are meant to serve us. Our desire life serves best when it serves the inner master, when it is harnessed for work and caring for others. The soul’s inner master is the I, that part of us which focuses and makes decisions about the work and the caring. Desires in and of themselves can’t be allowed to take precedence, like the lazy wife who desired to stay in bed.

Christ’s use of this metaphor, of course, goes further. It points to our own relationship as servants to the Master of the Universe, to the Lord of Karma. Our task is to offer him food first – then we will be fed. 

The Act of Consecration is the pattern for this. We offer him our noblest and purest thoughts and feelings, our loving devotion. He then has something to transform, to offer us in return as nourishment and strengthening. We bring these offerings because we need to offer him something positive in compensation for our natural errors, weaknesses, and failures. We are feeble servants, only doing what we are obliged to do. But we can have faith and trust that when we do our poor part, when we do our inner and outer work, when we serve Him first, we will, in turn, be nourished and strengthened. 

Albert Steffen wrote*:

Nicole Helbig

I walk through the tilled red land:

The seed sleeps.

I walk through green crops:

The stem shoots up.

I walk through golden fields:

The grain ripens.

I find the miller

And the miller says:

The earth is the face

Of the Son of Man,

And ‘he who eats my bread,

Sets his foot upon me’**

I kneel down

And he offers me the food

That fills, permeates, me

On my earthly journey.

*quoted in Rudolf Steiner's Gesamt Ausgabe (Collected Works) Vol. 36, p. 200 (in German)

** 'He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me,' Jn 13:18, Psalm 41:9

Visit our Website!