The Taskmaster - Luke 17:7-10

Some parables are quite hard to understand on first reading. At least I think they are. Let’s look at this one …

Lk 17:7 “Will any one of you who has a servant ploughing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8 Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterwards you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

 I’ve find this parable hard, because it makes the master seem to be a very hard taskmaster. And I am sure that the hard taskmaster was all too familiar an experience for the Jewish peasants Jesus talked to every day. But the attitude of the master is assumed by Jesus to be normal.

I do not want to encourage laziness – but it seems as though the expectations of this master were tough. After sweating with the crude farming tools of the day, in Middle Eastern heat, I am sure that I would have been absolutely shattered at the end of the working day, and the last thing I would have wanted to do, or even be able to do, would be to get into a clean set of clothes and prepare and serve a meal to my master.

What is harder to me still, as far as I understand the parable, is that it seems as though the master in this parable, is the Lord himself and the servant is we the Christian servant of the Lord. Clearly it is just a parable – and we don’t want to draw to hard on it literally – but that final line that: ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty,’ is very true no matter how we understand this parable.

Is the Lord a hard taskmaster? Is he a tough employer? This is one college where you need to work this question through before you start a career in missions. If you resent God’s call on your life – there is going to be a problem.

This parable may have caused some sensitive souls to burn out in Christian work in the past – convinced that every minute of every day had to be given over for Christian labour of some sort or other and that they can never do enough. The last line of the parable that: ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’, taken on its own that line might be quite depressing. There seems to be little joy or grace in this parable to serving that Master.

I don’t believe God is a hard taskmaster. In fact the first worker protection laws are found in the Old Testament. Although I do believe we should give our life in service to God, the life of a Christian is not one long drudge until we go to glory.

But as so often in the Gospels, I think the key to the interpretation of parables is the context of the parable in the whole Gospel – here, this parable is immediately followed by the story of the healing of the 10 Lepers in vv11-19 which Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, places here, is a key to our understanding of the parable of the Master and his servant:

11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

These lepers were healed by faith in an act of pure unmerited mercy by Jesus. All of them! They did as they were told – while still suffering from leprosy they set off to go to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests. It was a journey of faith and huge effort because many lepers are often seriously disabled and while they had leprosy they would not have had access to the priests. They persevered. And miraculously all 10 were healed as they went up to Jerusalem, but just one of them turned back to give thanks to Jesus for his healing: “Praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.”

We are merely healed lepers, riddled with sin but now through faith are cleansed by the mercy of God alone in Jesus Christ. And we praise God for this mercy with worship and thanksgiving – with a loud voice. Yes, we do serve him in his fields – tending his sheep caring for the flock; yes we do serve him ploughing his field and then we come into his house to serve him personally – in worship and thanksgiving. In the context this parable his is not a call to burdensome labour but worship. Why our church worship times are sometimes called ‘services’,

When Norman Grubb, the son-in-law of C. T. Studd, first arrived in Belgian Congo in 1919 to work with Studd, Grubb tried to persuade his father-in-law that there was a need for more prayer and worship in the mission. But Studd resisted this idea because it would cut into the working hours for evangelism – so Studd insisted that if they did hold special prayer times, they had to start their prayer and worship at 4.00 in the morning before they started what he considered to be their real work of evangelism at daybreak.

I believe Studd was wrong. Prayer and worship is the work. Let us take every opportunity to worship him, to praise him, to give thanks to him with our whole heart, mixed in with everything we do. Prayer and praise is every much part of our Christian service as working in any Christian work.