Good and Faithful Servant

Imagine that you work for an International Company and they gave you an assignment to spend a few months at an overseas branch. A close friend of yours has had a change in his living arrangements and so he volunteered to housesit while you are gone. After being away longer than originally expected, you return to your home only to find it a complete mess. The yard is overgrown, the gutters are full of leaves and the inside is even in worse condition. The carpets are all stained, the trash is overflowing and stinks, there are empty food containers everywhere, and your previously beautiful dining room table, that you inherited from your grandmother, is covered in scratches and water marks. Besides being furious it would also make you wonder two things 1. If your friend really believed that you were coming back. And 2. If he is really your friend.

Jesus’ parables remind us again and again that we are not owners. Even the things that we think are ours, come from Him and are ultimately His. We are just housesitting. His parables also remind us again and again that we will have to give an account for how well we kept His house. Therefore the words that we should be living to hear one day are “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master.” In order to hear those words we need to be clear about what we believe and about how we should live. 

What do we believe? We say it every week in the Nicene Creed. “….and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.” We see today in Matthew’s Gospel a snapshot of what that will look like. “and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”His return will not be a secret. It will be obvious to all and He bring with Him all of the company of heaven. 

What will happen to those who are still alive at His return? Verse 38 “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

For any who are still alive everything will change in a blink of an eye. But when you read this passage in its context you see that the Left Behind teaching about the so-called Rapture has it completely backwards. Matthew points out that in the days of Noah it was the wicked that were swept away and it was Noah and his family that were left behind. In Luke’s version of this passage the disciples even ask where they are taken and Jesus’ response is “where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” That doesn’t sound like a place I would want to be. The Lord sweeping away the wicked, as He did with the flood, will result in the meek inheriting the earth. So Christians need a bumper sticker that instead of “In case of rapture this car will be unmanned” will say, “In case of rapture, may I have your car?”

If we truly believe that He is going to return and that we will be called upon to give an accounting of our stewardship, then that belief should have a profound impact on how we live our lives. Jesus said, “To whom much is given, much will be required.” Thus it would be wise for each of us to ask, “What markers in my life would identify me as a good and faithful servant?” The Scriptures point to several.

A first and most obvious mark of being a good and faithful servant is that you have only one Master. We read in our lesson from Romans “Owe no one anything, except to love each other….” This practical command has profound spiritual implications. Why? Because following this command secures our freedom as Proverbs 22 tells us, “the borrower is slave to the lender.” Add to that Jesus’ words, “No one can serve two Masters… you cannot serve God and money.” Ultimately how we use or misuse our money has a direct impact on who or what rules our lives.

I recently heard the saddest call on a Dave Ramsey podcast. A guy called in who had completed all the years of college and medical school but he failed the comprehensive exams three times and was expelled from school. He had $400,000 in student loan debt and was currently employed as a high school science teacher. Dave tried a number of avenues to help him but it was clear to me that this borrower would be a slave to Fannie Mae forever.

But when you owe no one anything, when you finally kick MasterCard out of your life, then you have only one Master and you are free to follow wherever He leads. He can call you to the mission field, He can call you to seminary, He can call you to be a chicken farmer and because you are free you can answer His call. 

A second mark of being a good and faithful servant is living in a state of readiness. Jesus is unequivocal that no one knows when the Day of Judgment will arrive. He says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” So any time you see a preacher pull out a chart or claim to have a biblical formula for figuring out the datejust say “Bless your heart” and move on. 

But it is precisely because we don’t know the day or hour that we are to live in a state of readiness. We are to live as if His return could be any day, perhaps even today. That was Jesus’ point when He spoke of the people in the days of Noah eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. It’s not that there is anything innately wrong with eating and drinking and marrying. What Jesus was pointing out was that they were clueless. A great flood was about to come and they were living like they didn’t have a care in the world. 

Do we have this condition today? Consider Sundays in America where our churches are half full but our sports stadiums are overflowing and the Wal-Mart is packed. I’ll never forget, when we were still meeting at Lancaster Academy, driving to church on a crisp Easter Morning. As I drove past the Wal-Mart I saw enough cars to fill about 3 churches. On Easter morning! Or consider that this year we spent $8.8 billion on Halloween while 1 in 7 kids in America does not know where his next meal is coming from. What Jesus was pointing out is that when you are clueless your priorities are catawampus, so get a clue…wake up…pay attention!

I think that it is important, however, to distinguish between living in a state of awareness and living in a state of fear. Jesus says “Therefore stay awake” He does not say “Therefore stay afraid.” We are not meant to live as if the sword of judgment is hanging over our head, because it isn’t. Jesus’ atonement has removed that sword. But we are, as a collect from Morning Prayer puts it, to remember that we are ever walking in His sight. St. Paul also uses the image of being awake when he says, “the hour has come for you to wake from sleep….the night is far gone; the day is at hand.” We are to wake up and stay awake and live in a state of readiness.

A third mark of a good and faithful servant is that they live according the Master’s rules. Do you remember when you were a kid and you said to your parents, “Well at Johnny’s house they let him do thus and so…” What was the universal parent response? “Well this isn’t Johnny’s house and as long as you live under my roof you will follow my rules.”

That needs to be our mentality as Christians. It doesn’t matter what they are doing in the world, our citizenship is in heaven and so we are to follow His rules. In verse 13 St. Paul describes how the world lives and it’s not pretty. Orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, sensuality, quarrelling, jealousy. That is chaos. That is darkness. St. Paul says that we not to live this way. He says “Let us walk properly as in the daytime.”

Following the Master’s rules should inform not only our personal ethics but also our social ethics. It doesn’t matter how many times the Supreme Court says something is constitutional or how many laws the Legislator pass, something that is wicked cannot be made righteous just because it’s now legal. 

There needs to be a consistency between what we believe personally and our public voice, particularly on major moral issues. The Church should stay out of politics but the individual Christian should be a leading voice. I think of William Wilberforce who became the tip of the spear to abolish slavery in Great Britain in 1807. And don’t listen to the old saw about keeping your beliefs to yourself and not imposing them on others. If you are silent they will impose theirs on you. You are the salt of the earth. Be that salt. Can you imagine someone in the 1940’s saying, “Well I am personally opposed to the extermination of the Jews but who am I to impose my beliefs on the German government?” German Lutheran Pastor and Martyr, Dietrich Bonheoffer, is a model for standing against wickedness no matter the cost.

Finally a fourth mark of a good and faithful servant is that they follow the Master so closely that they become an extension of the Master. How do we do that? In verse 14 St. Paul says, “But put on Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Fr. Chris and I have laughed many times over a YouTube video of a frustrated preacher rebuking his congregation. He yells, “You guys….don’t be a jerk…you’re making me look bad in front of God. O look it’s Jesus. What does He say? “Stop it!’”” 

While the video is funny the sad truth is too often that “just stop it” approach is how many Christians live. They make a long laundry list of things they are not supposed to do and they work on that list. That works about as well as the past government campaign to stop drug use by “just say no.” It doesn’t work because your dominant focus becomes the very thing that you are not supposed to be doing. If I said, “please don’t think about a pink elephant” then you will immediately think of a pink elephant. 

St. Paul points us in a more positive direction. He shows us a way to live under grace rather than under the law. He not just what not to do but he tells us to put on Christ. One commentator said of this expression, “The metaphor of putting on clothing implies more than just imitating Christ’s character but also living in close personal fellowship with Him.” (ESV footnotes p.2180). 

How do we live in close personal fellowship with Christ? Obviously we do it through the reading and study of the Scriptures, through prayer, and through the Sacraments. But there are a couple of other means of grace that I would like to underscore.

First we live in close personal fellowship with Christ as we maintain close personal fellowship with one another. You are His Body and that is why we need one another. If you hang around godly people you become more godly. The opposite is also true. In 1 Corinthians we read, “Bad company corrupts good character.” So Christian fellowship is key.

Another way to stay in close personal fellowship with Christ has been shown to us by our spiritual ancestors. During the Middle Ages there was a very popular devotional book called the Book of Hours. It was written for the laity but patterned after the Divine Offices that were observed in the monasteries. The idea was to stop at various times throughout the day to offer private prayers and to reflect on the life of Christ. This is the kind of pattern that Dorrence and Kelly Stoval keep as third order Benedictines. They could tell you more about it. 

But also know that you don’t have to join an order to keep this discipline. The 1979 and the 2019 Books of Common Prayer have brief devotions that can be done throughout the day; Morning, Midday, Early Evening and at the Close of Day as well as Compline. The pattern is to stop at various times throughout the day to refocus on Christ and say some brief prayers. It is a way, as Brother Lawrence put it, to practice the presence of Christ.

We believe that He will come again and when He does that we will have to give an accounting for what kind of stewards we have been. In the wisdom of the Church this penitential season of Advent is designed for us to ask ourselves the hard questions and to seek His grace to make the necessary changes to be good and faithful servants. But please note, and this is key, it is a work that we do not do FOR Him, it’s a work that we do WITH Him. St. Paul writes, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” May that day come soon. Amen.