unworthy servants

Luke recounts a surprisingly edgy story that Jesus told. Actually it was more of a "get real" life example. As we know the disciples were rather obsessed with self importance and were even caught out on a squabble about which of them was most important! The mother of two of them lobbied Jesus for preferred positions for her boys in Jesus' new cabinet. Jesus pushes this to the limit and imagines a scene where a servant has finished his daily tasks and Jesus asks if his master is then likely to invite him to sit at the table, relax and enjoy the evening? He points out that this would be a ridiculous scenario and that at the end of the day the servant is prone to say "I've done all my work and I remain your faithful servant, unworthy that I am."
          We spend much of our lives pursuing our sense of purpose and meaning - in fact our sense of importance. What is "my place in this world" as the song puts it. Do I matter? Does what I do matter? Does anyone notice? What's the point?
          What was Jesus getting at in this scenario? And hadn't he recently told a story about a satisfied master who in gratitude for his servant's watchfulness, in fact, did invite the servant to join him at the table? Jesus was surfacing the brilliance of his own demeanour and powerful presence. In John 13 we have a commentary that is profound. It is bound up in the simple word "so." John tells us "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist." The genius of Christian piety is humble servanthood that arises from a Godly grasping of our identity and destiny - who I am and where I'm bound. In fact Whose I am is the key. I do not seek meaning or importance from lesser truths than my identity and a child of God, a friend and follower of Jesus whose treasure map is of a distant land.

The Stories He told - second chances

Did you ever need a second chance? Did you ever have to ask someone for a a second chance? While such a request may take a great deal of courage and may be accompanied by some soul-searching and regret over past actions or failures, when it is met by a listening ear and a ready heart with a positive reaction, it is like a tremendous breath of fresh air to your soul!

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the stories Jesus told is the surprise twist that he often wove into the plot. The story about the unfruitful fig tree is like that. Here we hear of a gardener who looks for figs on his tree for three growing seasons without any success. So he decides to do the obvious which is to have the tree cut down. He orders his gardener to make it so. The surprising plot twist is that the gardener protests and asks for second (well, actually fourth) chance for the tree. He promises to cut it down if it doesn't yield figs by the next year. He says he will give it special attention, fertilizing and looking after it. We're not told anything about the outcome - figs or none? So we wonder what the point of the story is. It is beginning to appear that Luke's purpose in his selection of stories is to present a caricature of God that Jesus presented through his life and teaching that is distinct from the common image of the religious leaders of the day. We might say that there was no "second chance" in their vocabulary or practice. 

Parables don't seem to need worrying down to the meaning of each detail - they tend to be simple stories with one point. The point of this story is that if you need a second chance then the best person to ask for it is God!

Meeting Jesus again for the first time.

In these days of tremendous flux and change we long for some constant, unchanging realities to fix our lives on. We seem to have abandoned the middle and polarized to extremes right and left in so many areas - politics, religion included. What if in our religious thinking and believing we could meet Jesus again and for the first time. What if we could peel back the layers of our religious history, accumulated over thousands of years, and meet Jesus as though it were for the first time? Would our thinking, unaffected by the structures of church, politics, economics, sociologies be the same about him or quite different? Jesus’ friend John helps us to remember one of the interesting ways Jesus presented himself. He often used the words “I am..” Who is it that we’re meeting when this is his chosen introduction? Here are some of his words: I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door of the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the true vine. I am the way, the truth and the life. In the next few blogs we’ll drill down on these ideas.