Reflection
Parables are generally meant to shock, to startle, or to challenge us. Parables strike us with vertigo by turning our conventional wisdom upside down. An unexpected element of a parable aims to break through our defenses and force us to rethink our comfortable assumptions and behavior.
All these characteristics come into play in today’s gospel parable.
Before we continue, however, we need to place this parable within the context of Luke’s broader gospel, if we are to better understand the parable.
Jesus had just concluded instructing his disciples about four topics involving true discipleship:
Avoid scandal, learn forgiveness, and become people of faith, even if that faith is barely the size of a mustard seed, and lastly, embrace servanthood.
After Jesus concludes his teaching on discipleship, he delivers the knockout punch — the parable of the hardworking servant and the ungrateful master.
Jesus asks his disciples to think of themselves, not like the hard-working servant, but like the demanding master.
After working all day, under a hot sun, plowing the field, and tending to the sheep, the servant returns to the master’s house at mealtime. One would think the master would see the weary servant, dirty, sweaty and bone tired, and invite him to sit and relax while the master serves him a nourishing meal. That is what our sense of fair play, our conventional wisdom, would conclude.
Instead, Jesus delivers the shocker. Jesus looked to his disciples and said:
Jesus said to the Apostles: “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at the table’?
“Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished?
“Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'”
The master expects the servant to do his various jobs and to carry out what was commanded. Thus, the servant quickly prepared the master’s dinner and cleaned up the table. Only then is he allowed to tend to his own needs.
Jesus is teaching his apostles what true servants and disciples must always avoid:
First, they must avoid spiritual pride and the temptation to think highly of themselves because they have been chosen by Christ for a special ministry or because of all their good works.
Second, they are to avoid any sense of entitlement. Jesus’ parable makes clear that his disciples are to wipe away any thought that God owes them something because they have been faithful disciples, selflessly serving others.
Spiritual writer Ronald Roleiser put it this way: an entitled, prideful person will gladly carry your cross — then send you the bill.
The point is not that God does not reward obedience, but that our obedience never puts God in our debt. Our salvation is always dependent on God’s grace, God’s undeserved favor, God’s gift. We stand in need of grace every day. We would be foolish to stand before God at Judgment Day and request to be judged on the basis of justice instead of grace.
True discipleship calls for a spirit of humility. A humble servant recognizes that genuine servanthood is not about earning God’s favor. No. Genuine servanthood acknowledges our debt to God and doing what is asked of us out of love.
Indeed, if we look closely at this parable, we will see quite clearly what a good disciple, a good servant, a follower of Christ is expected to do.
The servant plowed the field, that is, tilled the soil to spread God’s word. He tended and cared for the sheep, the people of God.
And lastly, he waited on table, that is, he serve the spiritual and physical needs of others. For priests, that means giving food and drink at the table of the Eucharist.
Jesus modeled the kind of servant-ministry to which he calls us, not sitting on a throne, but hanging on a cross.
If any of us here is disturbed or scandalized by today’s parable, if any of us has a quarrel with the demands of discipleship, then we must take up our objection with the one who modeled the kind of sacrifice he asks us to make — Jesus Christ.
