"We are unworthy servants"

7"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? 8Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? 9Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' " Luke 17:7-10

This is not exactly the kind of passage that gets books and Bible studies built around it: "Twelve Weeks on Being an Unworthy Servant" doesn't exactly sell at your local Christian book store (not that they carry any books anyway--books take up too much room and there are important Christian trinkets to be selling). But as I read this passage this morning and prayed over it, I thought it might offer us an important insight on our relationship with God.

This passage comes after a series of stories that Jesus has been telling--including the Prodigal Son. So first off, it's crucial to read what's being said here in context. Our relationship with God as Father and Jesus as Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Healer, Shepherd, King, Friend is a complex one. So throughout his ministry, Jesus gives us tons of parables, illustrations, stories, and titles to use for it--none of them are fitting alone, all of them correct each other.

One student I worked with a long time ago talked about how he was discovering the wonder of God as Father. Initially this was a wonderful image for him, deeply affirming and a rich blessing. The problem was that his own dad was a bit of a softie, conflict avoidant. He was nice but not strong. So the exclusive use of this title began to make his perception and experience of God as nice but not powerful enough to do much real work to heal the brokenness in the world or in his own life. He needed the corrective work both of the Scriptural description of "Father" and of the other words that Scripture uses to describe God.

Jesus uses the illustration of master-servant quite a bit when he's talking about our relationship with God. Again, this doesn't feel warm and fuzzy so we don't talk much about it. But I do wonder that if Jesus seems to feel quite comfortable using master-servant language what we're losing if we forfeit it's use.

My thoughts from this morning: in a culture that is so hung up on our own rights, this particular parable is quite freeing. Entitlement culture wrecks our ability to lay our lives down for one another and for Christ. If we will not lay our lives down for the sake of the gospel, we will lose them. And so our feeling of entitlement, of being owed something, must be ruthlessly uprooted from our souls, or we will die along with it.

I think that God would much rather have us be glad children who do his bidding because they know the heart of the Father. But if in our obedience we feel that we are then "owed" something, we are quite mistaken. If we must boil it down, God is God and we are not. There is cause and reason to obey him quite apart from any love or grace that he has shown us.

If this were the only parable we had to describe our relationship with God, it could be quite difficult for us, indeed. But as a part of a greater whole, it's a helpful corrective to our overly-entitled sensibilities.