Tuesday, August 13, 2013 Let’s
Celebrate Together!
“The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful
servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will
give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!” (Matthew
25:21).
Parable of the Three Servants - Matthew 25:
14-30
Today we read the parable of the
Three Servants which is another advent parable. That is, the parable is looking
to the future coming of the Kingdom of God and how God’s people are preparing
to receive their Messiah. Some translations of the Bible may refer to this as
the parable of The Talents. That can be a bit misleading as the word talent
connotes to us something to do with skills and abilities. In Jesus’ time, the
word translated talent was a unit of measure of money, roughly the amount a
laborer could earn in fifteen years. Understanding that reveals the meaning of
this parable. The three servants are not being judged by their master for how
they used their particular abilities to care for his property. What then is the
master expecting when he returns? He is simply looking for good and faithful
disciples of Jesus.
If we stand back and look at the
whole of Matthew’s Gospel, we can see continuity in Jesus’ invitation to come
and live under the reign of God. In this parable you can hear echoes of the
Sermon on the Mount: “But anyone who
hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a
house on sand” (Matthew 7:26).
Jesus is saying that ultimately,
the only important thing in life is how we perceive God. If we perceive God as
generous, gracious, loving and faithful, we will then embrace the Gospel as
truly Good News and joyfully enter into the Kingdom of God; we will become good
and faithful disciples of Jesus. If, however, we believe God is an evil task
master, tough and uncaring, then our destiny will be to live our lives in fear.
The editor of the New York Times
wrote an article a few years ago that reveals how the servant with one talent
thinks in today’s culture. He noted that of the Republican presidential
candidates, one was a Mormon, two were evangelical Christians and one was a
conservative Catholic. He wrote that this “raises concerns about their respect
for the separation of church and state, not to mention separation of fact and
fiction” (Bill Keller in the New York Times Magazine, August 28, 2011). Mr.
Keller has a very dim view of people who believe human life is more than billions
of years of evolution and survival of the fittest. Such a worldview hardly
motivates people to get out of their comfort zone and take risks with their
time and possessions in service to others.
Jesus is saying I get to choose
my future. He is saying that if I choose to live under the reign of my generous,
gracious, loving and faithful God, my mission is to live my life in such a way
that Mr. Keller and all the others for whom the love of God is still a stranger
will find in me a generous friend.
Sē’lah
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(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my
correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about
these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. In addition to this BLOG
they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to
this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by
subscription
Publications by Alex M. Knight:
·
Seeking the
Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at
Amazon.com. The Kindle version will follow soon.
·
The second
edition First Think – Then Pray
has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
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