Luke 12:22-48

Trust in God – Clarifying Priorities

Luke continued Jesus’ reflection on the human heart’s exaggerated preoccupation to secure its future. He turned his attention from the crowds to the disciples.

Luke 12:22-34 - Do Not Worry

²² He said to his disciples, “That is why I tell you,

do not worry about your life and what to eat,

or your body what to wear.

²³ Your life is more than eating

and your body than clothing.

Jesus developed his comment about food:

²⁴ Look at the crows. The do not sow or reap;

they have neither storehouse nor barn,

and God feeds them.

You are worth more than birds.

Jesus expected that recognition of their powerlessness would lead his listeners to let go of their need to control:

²⁵ Who of you for all your worrying

can add a few inches to your height?

²⁶ If you cannot do a little thing like that,

why worry about the rest?

He then returned to his earlier comment about clothing:

²⁷ Look at a lily and how it grows.

It does not work or spin.

Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory

was not clothed like one of these.

²⁸ So if God so robes grass

that one day is growing in the paddock

and the next day is thrown into the fire,

how much more you,

people of little faith?

Jesus was not counselling against work but against fruitless worry and compulsive need to avoid all risk.

²⁹ So you all, then, do not go seeking

for what you will eat and what you will drink,

or be in two minds.

³⁰ The worldly nations are obsessed with all these things,

but your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

³¹ Rather, seek his kingdom,

and all these things will be yours.

The whole passage has been frequently quoted for its imagery and poetry. However, what Jesus was talking about is anything but easy either to understand or to put into practice. Once society moves beyond subsistence farming and nomadic lifestyles, people need to take account of their future. Jesus was not condemning the need to work and the need to plan. Worry was his concern. Things need to be kept in perspective. There is always some risk attached to life.

Jesus advised people to strive for the kingdom and to rely on God. However, just as worry can be taken too far, so too can an unwillingness to plan responsibly for the future. Life in the Kingdom presumes people who act in line with their dignity: who are able and willing to think and anticipate, and to accept responsibility for their own and their community’s well being. Jesus’ assurance that all these things will be yours is not a promise of God’s special intervention on the side of the pious or the lazy.

Jesus’ call to work for the Kingdom was not primarily an individual calling. He was calling for a re-imaging of social structures. When people interact in the light of the human dignity of every individual and structure society accordingly, there will be no marginalised, oppressed or forgotten. Justice and charity will embrace, and wealth will be shared appropriately. The material things that people need in order to live in dignity and peace will be yours, only when all (or most) people commit themselves to strive for the kingdom determinedly and unselfishly.

³² “Do not be frightened, little flock,

for your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom.

God’s Kingdom is certainly gift. It can never be achieved by human activity alone. Sin is abroad in the world and embedded in its structures. However, with the gift of God, such sin can be overcome. But that outcome calls also for people’s cooperation with the grace of God.

³³ Sell what you have and donate it.

Make purses for yourselves that do not get old,

treasure that does not fail,

in heaven where no thief draws near

nor moth destroys.

In effect, Jesus had taught:

Do not worry (12:22-31)
God will take care of you. Worry achieves nothing
So: Trust God. Seek God’s Kingdom.
Be generous (12.32-34)
God is pleased to give you the Kingdom. Heavenly treasure is what counts.
So: Be focussed correctly.
Be always ready (12.35-40) [The following section]

Jesus’ recommendations sound confronting to modern ears, and perhaps equally so to his hearers in his own time. Was he to be taken literally? Or was his comment an example of literary exaggeration to make a point?

The general thrust was clear enough:

³⁴ For where your treasure is,

there will your heart be also.

In order to achieve the heart’s liberation from disproportionate anxiety, was actual dispossession necessary? Or was life in line with the values of the Kingdom sufficient? The text is not clear.

Discipleship – Accountability

Luke continued his listing of life-attitudes for disciples. The passage was unique to Luke’s Gospel, yet reflected an earlier stage of the tradition when an imminent return of Christ was more generally expected. It may have been remembered, however, in the world of the Empire where slavery was common. In Jesus’ world people generally had servants rather than slaves.

Luke 12:35-40 - Parable - Watchful Slaves

³⁵ “"Strap up your clothes tight around your waist,

and have your lamps burning;

³⁶ and yourselves be like men

waiting for when their master gets back from celebrating,

so that when he comes and knocks,

they can open up for him.

³⁷ Blessed are those servants

whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes.

I truly declare that he will strap his tunic tightly around himself,

make them recline at table

and wait carefully on them.

³⁸ Should he come in the second or the third watch of the night

and find them waiting up for him,

they are blessed indeed.

³⁹ You can be sure that if the owner of a house knew

at what time a burglar would come,

he would not have let his house be broken into.

⁴⁰ So you, too, be ready,

for the Son of Man is coming at the time you least expect."

The idea of a return of Christ was giving way in Luke’s day to a recognition of the on-going presence of Christ, eventually to be climaxed and fulfilled at some uncertain but probably distant future time. In that context the call to be alert and ready was more recommendation to be sensitive to Christ’s actual presence in the world. Luke was calling his community to see beyond the surface level of events to their deeper meaning and their relationship to God and the Kingdom.

In speaking of the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus was not referring to his own personal triumph at the end of time. In line with the originating vision of Daniel, the Son of Man image also embraced the faithful, humble and persecuted “little ones of God”. It would be precisely the aware, alert, faithful disciples of Jesus who with him would share in God’s vindicating of their struggles across history.

(By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, the Christian community was familiar with the thought and language of Paul. Paul used the title Christ to refer to Jesus personally, but also to refer equally to the Christian community corporately. For Paul Jesus was Christ; the Church also was Christ.)

Jesus believed that the awareness for which he was asking led to a present experience of blessedness. Jesus had painted an arresting instance of reversal of roles: he spoke of himself taking on the role of servant and serving the disciples. What was unexpected, indeed unthinkable, in the storyline had become in fact the reality of the Christian experience. If only the disciple were alert and aware! A master who serves has made nonsense of role distinctions, and has become friend. To the disciple Jesus is friend; and discipleship is not simply a lifestyle, but a most intimate friendship with Jesus. The alert disciple is one whose heart is filled with wonder.

With the second image of the householder and the burglar in the night, Jesus reinforced the call to alertness. It was not warning but invitation.

Though it was not intended by Jesus, his mention of the unexpected time suggests to present readers not merely the ongoing encounter with Christ in the details of their daily lives but the inevitability of their individual death and their encounter with Christ at a wholly new level of experience. To enjoy eternal life they need hearts that have learnt to expand in love. That stretching can happen only in the present.

Discipleship and Leadership – Whatever the Cost

Luke 12:41-48 - Parable - Faithful and Unfaithful Servants

⁴¹ Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?”

The last time that the precise hearers of Jesus’ message had been identified, they had been the disciples. Certainly the invitation to be alert to the on-going presence of Christ in his world made more sense if addressed to disciples than to non-believers. However, in its original context, talk of an unexpected imminent return may have carried overtones of threat and served to arouse the interest of not-yet believers.

The following passage may have referred simply to ordinary disciples bearing responsibility for the world in line with their mission. On the other hand it may have been directed to leaders in the Christian community, though the context to date has not been life in common.

⁴² What steward would be reliable and prudent enough

for the master to appoint in charge of the staff

to give them their food allowance at the proper time?

⁴³ Blessed is the servant whom the master finds

doing precisely that when he comes.

⁴⁴ Truly I tell you he will appoint him in charge of all his goods.

The stakes had increased. In the previous story the master was prepared to serve the servants their meal. In this story, he would promote the servant to a totally new role and level of responsibility.

The reflection introduced and developed the theme of accountability. The message: accountability is proportionate to responsibility.

⁴⁵ But if that servant says in his heart,

'My master is a long time coming back,'

and begins to beat the male and female servants,

to eat and drink and get drunk,

⁴⁶ the master of that servant will return

on the day he does not expect

at an hour he does not know.

He will punish him severely,

and send him to the same fate as other unreliable ones.

The stakes increased indeed! Defaulting on responsibilities would lead to the defaulting servants being severely punished, and put with the unreliable!

The dynamic of the story might have called for an externalised sanction. Whatever about the exaggerated imagery (violent and even sadistic), the point remains clear. The reality, of course, is more human, and carries its own intrinsic outcome. Neglect of duty is destructive of the human dignity of the agent as well as of its victims. It is a failure of care and of love.

⁴⁷ The servant who knew what his master wanted

but neither prepared for it nor carried it out,

will be flogged severely.

⁴⁸ The servant who did not know,

but still did things worthy of the lash,

will be flogged less.

From everyone to whom much has been given,

much will be required;

and from the one to whom much has been entrusted,

more will be asked.

Responsibility is a factor of awareness (as awareness is a factor of self-knowledge).

Next >> Luke 12:49-53