2 Timothy 1:1-14 | Luke 17:5-10
Jeremy Richards
Audio recording: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/10-06-19-children-or-slaves-freedom-or-obligation-jeremy/id1479727299?i=1000453223509
If you’re like me, you might cringe a bit at Jesus’ words this morning – at least the second part. The first part about the mustard seed isn’t so bad, but I’m guessing the verses equating the disciples to slaves aren’t the ones you’ll be posting on your Facebook anytime soon. I doubt this parable where Jesus makes himself, or at least God the parent, out to be a slave owner ever made it into a Hallmark card. And if your unchurched friend asked you what Christianity is all about, you probably wouldn’t say it’s like being a slave who does everything their supposed to but, in the end, is still considered worthless by their master. We’d opt instead for verses about God’s unfailing love, about Christ’s compassion, about reconciliation and restoration, about new creation, not worthless slaves.
These verses force us to slow down, as so many of Jesus’ teachings do. They force us to wrestle with the text, to compare it with other scriptures, to listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Surely there’s more to this than meets the eye, right? Surely Jesus isn’t like a slaveowner who requires us to literally slave away all day, only to return home, make the meal, and then, only after the master has been wined and dined and sent to bed full and satisfied, can we take care of ourselves. Jesus, after all, said that he came to serve and not to be served, right?
The second and third century theologian Origen of Alexandria said that the Spirit purposely put hard, uncomfortable passages in scripture in order to intentionally trip us up, make us think, and require us to invite the Spirit into our wrestling. Scripture shouldn’t be an open freeway, where we put on the cruise control and let our minds wander, oblivious to the scenery that rushes by. Instead scripture is like a winding canyon road, full of beauty, yes, but also full of sharp turns and abrupt edges. It requires our full attention.
Our reading today is just such a sharp turn and an abrupt edge. Together we’re hitting the breaks, slowing down, exploring what this troubling passage could mean. Origen also reminds us that the same Spirit that guided the writers of scripture, and guided Jesus himself, is with us as a community as we read and interpret, so let’s take some comfort in that.
First and foremost, as we begin this process, we should take to heart what Paul said in our reading from 2 Timothy 1:12, “But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust…” That is to say, we should remember we’re talking about Jesus, who most of us must be fairly fond of if we’re here this morning, so we should give him the benefit of the doubt. He has proven himself to many of us in many ways at many times, and so we should remember who is speaking, and that it is the one in whom we have put our trust, Jesus Christ.
Now, let’s jump in. In this passage, at first glance anyway, Jesus seems to accept the institution of slavery, which was different than the slavery that was practiced here in the U.S. from 1619 to 1865, but was, nonetheless, slavery. He probably seems, to us, much too comfortable using it as a fitting metaphor for God’s relationship to us. Much to our chagrin, this isn’t the only time Jesus makes use of this metaphor of slavery. Just within the Gospel of Luke, Jesus uses this metaphor in 12:35-38, 12:41-44, 14:15-24, and 16:13.
However, if we look closer, we’ll see that while Jesus does use the master/slave metaphor, the ways of the divine master stand in stark contrast to what we’d expect from human masters. In 12:35-38, unlike our reading today, the master rewards the faithful servants by serving them a lavish meal when he returns home. In 12:41-44, the master puts the faithful servant in charge of all his possessions. In 14:15-24, the slave has the honor of inviting all the poor, the blind, the crippled, and the lame to the master’s extravagant feast. The last passage mentioned, Luke 16:13, is perhaps the most revealing. Jesus says, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” In Jesus’ understanding, we’re always serving someone or something – in that sense we’re always slaves – it’s simply a matter of who we’re serving: God, the ultimate Good, the source of all life, or something contrary to God?
Paul also pick up on this idea of us being slaves to one thing or another as well in Romans 6:15-23, when he says that we are either slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness. He says, “But thanks be to God that you…having been set free from sin, have come slaves to righteousness.” Both Paul and Jesus (and, we’ll see in just a minute, others New Testament writers as well) seem to be picking up on a social reality that was prevalent in their day – slavery – and work with what they’ve got to make a point about the life of faith: namely, that “slavery” to God – which I think we could take to mean simply obedience to God, since, after all, we do get to choose if we’ll follow God or not – is freedom from the powers of sin and death, which we would otherwise be enslaved to. 1 Peter 2:16 might say it best, “As servants of God, live as free people.”
In case there’s any doubt, we can find many, many verses that assure us that life in Christ isn’t slavery as we know it, but is it’s opposite – true freedom. Also, these verses make it clear that God doesn’t consider us “worthless slaves.” Just listen:
John 8:32: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 15:15: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
Luke 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Romans 8:15: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Galatians 4:7: “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”
Galatians 5:1: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
The slavery metaphor is not without problems, and, if I’m honest, I would still prefer that Jesus and the other New Testament writers found a different metaphor, but we’ve got what we’ve got, and if we slow up, as Origen encourages us to do, we can see that while Jesus, Paul, Peter, and others make use of this slavery metaphor, the God of whom they speak is surely not about the business of enslaving us, but of freeing us.
That’s all well and good, but the question remains: what is this specific parable about? Because, while these other scriptures might make us feel pretty confident that on the whole God doesn’t want to enslave us but to free us, today’s reading is still pretty troubling.
Many of you know that I used to work in coffee. Most people assume baristas become baristas because they can’t find anything else to do, but anyone who knows about specialty coffee knows that’s not the case. When I finished college I spent 6 months trying to get a job at a specialty coffee shop. When I finally did get a job offer to work as a barista, my alma mater, Concordia University, also wanted me to become an admission counselor with a salary and full benefits, and I opted instead to be a barista.
For my first 3 months at Coava, I wasn’t even allowed to touch the espresso machine. After that, I spent another 3 months or so training before I could be trusted on the bar. I had to be exact in everything, and above all I had to be consistent. Every shot should pull the exact same, so I needed to do everything the same way every time. I had to dose every portafilter to exactly the same weight, I had to press the tamper with the same weight. If it was a milk drink I had to get within 5 degrees of the exact temperature (135 for cappuccinos, 145 for lattes) using only my hand against the pitcher to determine the temperature. I had to introduce the perfect amount of air into the milk before it got too hot in order to get that silky-smooth microfoam. And after all that, I had to pour symmetrical, visually pleasing latte art. If any of those went wrong, I had to start the drink over. And that’s a big deal, especially if there’s a long line of customers.
I had to do all those things in order to be a good barista. They were essential. You need to be able to make the drinks if you want to be a barista. And yet, if all I did was make good drinks, even if I nailed each of those steps, I wouldn’t be a good barista, because there’s more to being a barista than making the drinks (even though, again, you have to make the drinks). Being a barista was about creating an experience for each customer. It was about making sure they felt welcomed and cared for, it was about hospitality. I didn’t just need to know how to make a cappuccino, I needed to remember regulars’ names, I needed to remember details about their lives, their families, their work.
In order to be a good barista, I needed to do more than the bare minimum. You don’t get tips for simply making a good drink…well sometimes you do…but you don’t get big tips for that. You get big tips when you create an experience, when you go out of your way to make a customer feel valued, when you take time to teach them if they’re overwhelmed by your pretentious menu.
I think what Jesus is trying to say this morning is that a barista shouldn’t expect a bunch of applause or a big tip because they made a good cup of coffee. And neither should a Christian for simply doing what they’re supposed to do – which can be summed up most succinctly in “love God and love your neighbor,” which, admittedly, is no easy task.
Jesus is saying we have to walk the walk, we have to live lives worthy of Christ, but if we think it’s just about checking off a list of spiritual to-dos, then we’re like slaves running from one task to the next, missing out on the abundant life of faith God has for us. We’ve traded a life of fullness and joy for a life of legalism. Faith is more than going through the motions. It’s about a total change in who we are, how we relate to the world, how we care for the least of these. It’s about looking at a mulberry tree and saying, “You, be uprooted and planted in the sea.” It’s about doing the impossible, about belief in the miraculous.
I hope we all knew, from the beginning, that Jesus isn’t telling us we are worthless slaves. He’s telling us how not to be worthless slaves, because he doesn’t want us to live as slaves to the law, slaves to our perceived obligations. This is essentially what Paul’s whole letter to the Galatians is all about. God wants us to live as free people. Remember 1 Peter 2:16: “As servants of God, live as free people.”
If our faith is reduced to simply doing what we have to do, then it won’t free us, it’ll just be an additional set of rules and obligations to add to our already busy lives. Do we really think that’s what God wants for us?
Or does God want an experience? Does God want us, in the words of Paul from our reading from 2 Timothy, to have “a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline”?
Yes, that is what God wants. God wants us to live as free people, who freely choose the Good, who freely live lives of love and power and self-discipline. Faith is not slavery but freedom.
The good news, Jesus says, is that you don’t even need all that much faith to start out with. You just need a little faith, a mustard seed, is all, and it will take root and grow and spread, like a plant. It doesn’t come through in our English translation, but in the Greek, the implication of this “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” line is that the disciples do have that much – like if I said to all of you, “If you’re here this morning”…the answer to that “if” is obviously “Yes, you are here this morning,” the answer to Jesus’ “if” is, likewise, obviously “Yes, the disciples have a mustard seed’s worth of faith.” At the beginning of our reading, the disciples think need more faith – “Increase our faith!” they say – but Jesus says they already have enough. They’re on the right path. Just let the faith take root. Don’t get bogged down by all the things you think you’re supposed to do. Let the Spirit work.
This is what Jesus says to us as well. Don’t live like slaves required to follow the laws of God out of obligation. Live as free people, people of faith, people who, out of the liberty found in Jesus Christ, love God and love their neighbors. Amen.