Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Sunday Sit down
and here I'm here with Pastor Grant and we are going to be
diving a little deeper into passage from Luke chapter 12
that it's a little bit odd. I mean, we've had some odd
passages. This one is like the the
parables are, are just they're a little bit less obvious than
some of the others, it feels like.
And so I know we all had some lingering questions coming out
of yesterday, but, you know, I think it's worth just looking a
little deeper at a couple of these things.
And so I don't know if there's anything you wanted to say
following up from yesterday before we before we dive in,
but. Yeah, I think, I think the main
thing to remember is that Jesus is teaching in parables.
And so we're going to get more into that obviously in in our
conversation today. And what, what you don't always
have time for in a sermon when you're trying to preach, when
that's reasonably lengthed, like, like it's not, you know,
not into the 50, whatever, 6 minute, the time frame.
You can't do everything. Yeah.
So one of the things that that we had played with, like an idea
that we had played with for the sermon on Sunday was how much,
how much teaching about parables should we do at this point?
We're going to go into more parables in Luke.
Luke, we're into a section really that in the Gospel of
Matthew, a lot of this is included in the Sermon on the
Mount section. And so Jesus is teaching in
parables. He's using parables to teach
about what? The Kingdom of heaven is like,
so the Kingdom of heaven is like a is language that's more
commonly found in Matthew, right?
So he says the Kingdom of heaven is like in this parable case,
like a master who went away to a wedding feast and then when he
returned. So Jesus is trying to give us
snippets or like a vision of what the Kingdom of heaven is
like by using for his day modern day analogies, modern day
stories, modern day examples that everybody would be familiar
with. Yeah, so I think that's a
helpful place to start, just to say that Jesus is not, he's not
drawing like literal 1 to one connections all the time with
his parables. In fact, you kind of have to
zoom out and try to take like there's a nugget of truth here.
There's something very profoundly true about the
Kingdom that Jesus is trying to communicate.
But if you get too into the weeds on each parable and each
person and how do they line up, it can be really complicated or
really difficult, I should say, to then walk away with what
actually is that nugget of truth about the Kingdom.
So one really good example of that is you have this opening
parable where Jesus says, you know, be dressed and ready for
service, keep your lamps burning.
We talked about the imagery there calling back to Israel and
God's command to keep your loins girded about like your, your
cloak kind of wrapped up around your waist, tied in a belt,
ready to run, ready for action. Because then he says, because
the master is returning to the house at an unknown hour, like
that's, that's the, the So what the why.
And and so he's saying, OK, be like a servant who's ready for
his master to return in the night so that you servant can
open the door. O in that in that parable, are
we to think, OK, is Jesus, Jesus is the master, right?
And well, like the answer is yes and no.
Like Jesus is not a master of slaves in exactly A1 to 1 way
that the people would have been thinking.
But they can picture him though. So the reason I start off by
saying that is then if you hop down a bit, then it that it
turns and says, well, you know, if the master knew that what
hour at what hour the thief was coming, then he wouldn't have
left his house unguarded. So is Jesus the thief like other
verses talk about you, what Jesus is like, you know, deep in
the thief in the night. Yeah.
So like, what's going on? Is Jesus the master?
Is he the thief? Is he makes he metaphors?
Yes. So, so no, no.
And the answer is yes and no, right?
Because what he's trying to communicate is that they're So
what is certain that Jesus is returning, the Kingdom is
coming, right? That that the Son of Man is
arriving, that that is a already and not yet reality.
That's there's certainty. Jesus wants us to think, OK,
there's certainty to the fact that he is arriving, that the
Kingdom is coming, that the Son of Man is here and will yet also
come. But there's also uncertainty.
There's not uncertainty whether or not it will happen, but only
about the time. And, and, and Christians, I
would say, especially modern Christians can tend to fixate on
some of those things. Not, not all branches of
Christianity. I think there are some branches
that perhaps focus a little bit more than others, but fixate
perhaps even in an unhealthy way.
And, you know, it's a little bit more of a caricature, but you
even think about like that this past fall, we had a incorrect
rapture prediction yet again, you know, and but people get
really like, you know, I think there was like a book in like
the 80s was like 88 reasons why Jesus will return in 1988, you
know, like, and it was like they continued, right?
And people have been been like obsessed with this for decades,
centuries. And yet, like when even when you
go back into the Scriptures, there there is at least some
theories from from biblical scholars that like Paul, thought
that the the return of Christ was imminent in in his.
Day in his. Life in his lifetime, right?
And, and so like that is very, you know, like we here we are
2000 years later, right? And it's, it's just, um, we can
lose, we can lose the, the broader point, which things were
trying to say is like we can lose the broader point of what
Jesus is trying to say by fixating on one aspect or one
small portion. Yeah, so if you zoom too far in,
like too close to a parable, it starts to fall apart just like
any, like any metaphor, any analogy stretched beyond its
capacity is going to break. And so, yeah, I think really
what Jesus is trying to do is communicate truths about the
Kingdom using modern day to the to them, you know, modern day
stories and examples that people go, Oh yeah, OK, we know what
that's like. Alright.
He's saying there's there's it's this is important.
There's something important for us to do.
There's urgency here, right? OK, we don't know.
Like a servant wouldn't know exactly when the master was
coming back, but that kind of that adds to the urgency of it.
Yeah, right. Do your job.
Like do the right thing. Do the thing that, you know, to
be the good and right thing inside of the ecosystem.
And I think that one of the harder things to tease out is
and you will be rewarded. Like there's, there's some
measure of reward and punishment we can get to that, you know, a
little later. On and we will.
Yeah, but the, you know, I, I do think that this is a, a good
pause to remind ourselves that parables aren't meant to teach
us everything about the Kingdom, but they are meant to teach us
profound truths about the Kingdom and about our place
within it and role and responsibility about who God is
and how God is acting in the world.
But again, like, if you zoom too close in, you can start to go,
OK, well, what's like, is he, is he the master?
Is he the thief? Yes.
OK, what's that like? Can it be both?
Sure. All right.
But it's only both if you really kind of zoom out and go, yeah,
what's really what is Jesus trying to communicate here?
And I know for me, one of the, one of the tensions that I felt
as we were running through this text was even the, the imagery
of, of the master and slave, right?
Because a servant is in, in other translation translations,
it will say slave, right, which is a servant was a slave, right?
And, and, and I think that servants you can have a picture
of, I think what we talked about, we talked about like you
could have you have the picture potentially of like a, a Butler
or a house servant of some kind who's like a it was not that,
right? Yeah.
This was the, it was the institution of slavery that was
normative in Jesus's day. That was an assumed reality.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, with with the caveat and
not not to explain it away or just say, well, it's fine, but
with the caveat that it looks or looked very different than what
we tend to picture as slavery in like the post transatlantic
slave trade era, right. So indentured servitude,
elective servitude, um, all of those were different options
within. I think the thing that is
important to notice about the way the household was viewed in
Jesus's day. And again, not to say this is
right or wrong, but to say that servants were considered part of
the same household as their master.
So yes, and, and it's important to remember, yes, they were
polar opposites, yeah, of that household, but they were
considered part of the household and part of its management and
part of its proper management was to take care of these
people. So no, yeah, we, we have a, we
have a really hard time with, with like the master and slave
language and tend to either like hyper spiritualize it or throw
it out. And it's like, well, you just
have to, you've got to face it. And again, I do think there's a
similar to the parables realize that Jesus is trying to
communicate something truer than even the the household.
Like Jesus topples a lot of the household norms in in his day
without actually going in and like wiping it all out and
saying like abandon all these things.
But he does like that. I think the most important line
is that the master dresses himself as a servant and serves
the servants like So what Jesus does is he acknowledge like he
uses this institution, this household imagery.
He acknowledges the polar opposite ends that a master and
servant would be on. And they were, and for very real
and, and complicated reasons. But then he flips it.
Yeah. And he says, actually, at the
end of the day, what the Kingdom does is flip.
This flips this entire thing on its head so that the master is
the one who serves and the servant is the one who is placed
at the table and who reclines at the table.
Like that's the language. So I think the challenge for us,
and I just want to name this, I get the temptation to either
like hyper spiritualize it and and also the temptation to throw
it out. I think the you don't fully.
We can't comprehend that flip of like the master taking the role
of the servant without embracing the hard reality of the master
and servant power dynamic that existed.
And just leaning into that rather than rather than shying
away. And that's what I'm, I'm trying
to sort of like become better at.
That's just personally, I'm like, you know what?
There's a part of me that really does not like when we start
talking about those difficult institutions like slavery and
whatnot. And, and so I, I contend to want
to shy away from them and, and, and, but I think that we can
miss out. I can miss out on the beauty of
the flip of that image if I don't feel the the weight of of
the of the of the inverse, right?
Yeah, right. Yeah.
And and what it like what a way to say so for, you know, I don't
know if this is I don't think this is that, you know, happy
podcast feels on a Monday morning.
But like the reality is that the and and I don't have stats
immediately in front of me, but I believe it's true and we can
Fact Check this and put it in the edit if it's not.
But there are more people in slavery today then have been not
cumulatively throughout human history, but more today than
than many other generations previously.
And I almost want to say more period than there has been
again, not cumulatively over the years, but in each kind of era.
We just slavery looks very different now and it is masked
and hidden and, you know, hidden, hidden behind supply
chain management and a whole lot of different economic and I'm
using air quotes here like economic realities that we would
say, well, you know, do we know where our clothing comes from?
Do we know where our goods and services come from?
Coffee, the coffee that we drink, chocolate.
So, so two of the most unethically produced and traded
goods in the world right now are coffee and chocolate.
And I eat that pretty much every day.
So, you know, I think that what a beautiful way to be able to
say definitively no Christian follower of Jesus.
You need to live your way, your life in a way that pushes
against and firmly, like renounces any institution of
slavery, modern or ancient like that.
That is the reality. So to read this and to go, yeah,
well, there there was a there was a slave master relationship.
And that's just the way it was. That's not to condone slavery.
No. No, that's not to done the
relationship. It's to acknowledge the hard
truth that this is the way it was.
And here's the beauty like the beautiful turn that Jesus makes
is that the master will serve will take the place of a
servant. So how like how else are we
supposed to live now as followers of Jesus other than to
say those institutions categorically wrong?
We need to live our lives in a way that flips them on their
head in that, you know, if you've got power and authority
and you do feel like if you're listening to this podcast, you
have a level of, of power and authority, like of authority or
ability of financial ability would do something proactive
with your money. Yeah.
So how are you living in a way
that works to flip the current institutions of slavery on its
head? So one of the changes that we
made at the church, and this is like a very simple change and
it's like. We could do so much.
More, we could do a whole lot more, but a very simple thing
that we did was we said, hey, we are going to be very intentional
about where we're sourcing our coffee from because we know that
this is one of the worst traded goods in the world right now.
So we are going to go direct trade through a a Christian
organization that works directly with the farmers, that elevates
women to the level of like ownership of coffee farming and
we buy from ironically Justin. Different.
Buffet coffee. Justin has been to many of the
farms where we source our coffee beans from and that has just
been a really cool part of the last year that I think is a
simple for us, very simple. Yes, we can do more, but it is a
definitive like line in the sand or saying, OK, we know these
things to be true. We're going to work our hardest
to make sure that we are doing this in as ethical and
responsible a way as possible. And so I, I just think that it's
a good opportunity to say that as well.
That's great. And it also, I think when when
you look at, you know, Jesus flipping the script on, on the
power dynamic of of master and slave and as we seek to lean
into greater Christ likeness that we thought to use whatever,
yeah, whatever power we have, whatever authority we have to do
the same, right? I often just go, I go back to
Philippians 2 all the time where where it talks about Jesus
emptying his, his authority and power and and it's like, how can
we do the same? And I mean, there are other
great organizations that are not just doing, not just doing
things like creating, you know, sustainable coffee streams, but
also like, you know, like, I think of international justice
mission and like the work that they do to literally release
slaves, slavery and like wonderful Christian people that
do that, that good work. And, and so like, there's there,
there are indirect things and then like there are direct paths
toward that sort of thing as well.
I know we're slightly on a tangent here, but it's, it's
good. It's.
Yeah, but but I do think just to say I get so yes, tangent, but
this is part of part of what we're naming is I think for many
people would be the difficulty in this language.
Like. Stumbling block.
It can be a barrier, right? It's instantly you read it and
you're like, well, I'm out, I'm out.
Like I'm let's skip this part. Yeah.
Well, and, and equally as we get further into this passage, like
the language gets difficult again.
And, and and so, you know, Peter asks, he kind of leans in.
He's like, Lord, are you telling this parable to us or to
everyone? And Jesus kind of side skirts it
and and goes, goes with a different, you know, kind of a
different parable in some ways and toward the end.
So I'm just trying to pull this up here.
So if we go to like verse 45. But suppose the service has to
itself. My master is taking a long time
in coming. And then he begins to beat the
other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and
get drunk. So obviously not, you know,
exercising the authority that's been bestowed to him.
Very well. And then the master of the
servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and add
an hour he is not aware of, and he will cut him to pieces and
assign him a place with the unbelievers.
So it's like who like very intense, and I mean not like,
not dissimilar from some of Jesus's other parables, like,
you know, you think about like the, the like Lazarus and the
rich man and like some of these like that have very intense,
very harsh imagery. And this one in particular, he
will cut him to pieces. And and you made a couple
linguistic discoveries as you were looking, you know, at
commentaries and and and. Yeah.
Yeah, again, like this doesn't make the sermon.
Not necessarily right. Because it would it would be a
distraction. I think yeah, yeah, I think so.
OK, I think it's helpful to back up.
So Jesus starts by saying a faithful and sensible servant is
1 whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his
other household servants. So here's the one who has put in
charge. So so it's it's the master
elevates one again, this is household.
The role of household manager would be the language and yes
would be a servant, but would be in charge of all of the other
servants. Now, like Joseph from, yeah,
from the, you know, when he's put into slavery in Egypt.
And yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's that's a really
good example. So he, you know, the the servant
is put in charge. He's the one responsible for,
and I think this is important, the daily provision of food for
for the other servants like so his responsibility is actually
the well-being of the other service.
Not so again, like it yes, it's, it's a level of authority, but
what Jesus constantly does is challenge the idea of authority
and elevate it beyond just power and influence over people, but
responsibility for their care. And so that's the piece that is
so I, I think it's easy for us to jump to the punishment piece,
but we have to realize that what Jesus is saying here in some way
is that this is not, you know, this isn't, this isn't the
punishment for the servant who fell asleep.
And I was like, oh, buddy fell asleep, couldn't stay awake.
Yeah. And the master came home and had
to, you know, knock on the door and extra three times and the
serum woke up. Like it's not, that's not the,
the the part of the parable that we're at.
We're at a very different part where which is, no, I am as a
like I'm giving you authority. I'm giving you responsibility to
take care of these people. And this that serving goes out
and does the exact literal opposite.
Instead of taking care of them and their needs, he indulges in
his own like desires and over and like over indulges.
So he eats extra portions. That's the implication here.
He gets drunk. So he takes what was.
Here's here's the way I read this.
He takes what was intended for others well-being and uses it
for his own personal overindulgence.
Yeah, yeah. And so that's not only is he not
taking care of the people who have been placed in his charge,
but he is living in a way that actually is selfish and
self-serving to their detriment. Is the way I read this not only
just to their like, OK, all forgetfulness.
I'm going to go over here like I'm gonna go off into town and
do my thing and you guys still have what you need.
It's like the the implication here is that he's doing it.
What it what he is doing is actually harming those other
servants, not just neglecting them, like not just forgetting
about them I should say. Actively.
Actively hurting, yeah. So that is what Jesus commenting
on when then he comes back and says no, that that servant who
was given responsibility and trust over these people, the
punishment for that servant will be greater than for others who
just didn't do what was right because they didn't know.
Hmm. Or who, you know, we're trying
to do the right thing and like, no, if you willfully harm other
people, Jesus saying like that, that that is to an extra
measure, not the way of the Kingdom of God.
And there will be a reckoning for that now.
OK, what is that reckoning? So Jesus uses language that was
very common in the day. And here's the like, so we go,
oh, cut up into pieces. Like, I don't know if you
watched Dexter, but like, it's like don't, don't watch Dexter.
But like, that's like, like that's the kind of thing that
make documentaries about. Right.
Yeah, right. Curbing, I mean, yeah, my, my
mind went to, I think it's like toward the end of the book of
Judges and that, that, that that awful, awful story where like
the, the body gets cut up into multiple pieces.
And now that we're in like PG13 territory for this podcast,
yeah. And and gets like sense to the
12 tribes of Israel and like it. It was like, I don't know, it's
just it's gruesome. However you cut.
It so? So is it literal?
Is it? Is it not it?
Yes and no, right? Here's another example where I
think if you zoom too far in, you go, well, like what?
Like really? Like he's gonna, who's gonna get
caught up? Like that's brutal.
What does Jesus mean? Well, for starters, he says cut
up or cut to pieces and given a place with the unbelievers.
So that's a qualifying statement and given a place with the
unbelievers is qualifying what it means to be cut up or cut to
pieces. When you look a little
different, look like a little deeper in that to that like the
Greek word cut to pieces. What we translate cut to pieces,
it literally means bisect, cut off or cut away.
And so, you know, there is, this is still harsh language.
Yeah. I think about somebody who has
surgery to remove a tumor. You wanna cut off that dead like
tumor, cancerous cell mass so that everything else can live,
which is I don't think what Jesus is saying is that, hey,
you got to be worried that, you know, if you don't exercise your
authority properly, like when the Son of Man returns, he's
going to cut you up into little pieces in like 30 in a ditch.
That's not, that's not literally what he's saying.
Actually, I think what he's saying is a, in some ways a
harsher punishment, which is what Jesus is saying is, you
know, that that servant ought to be cut out of the household
entirely and banished, cut out and removed for the sake of
everybody else, for the sake of the other servants and their
well-being, for the sake of that household management.
You need to cut that one manager off and away so that they like,
for their protection. And so it's it's, it's cut off,
cut away, remove, bisect. But it's really this implication
of, you know, that that one will be cut away and removed for the
health of these other individuals.
So you think about it more holistically as opposed to like
the human being, like the single human being being the whole
thing about the household as being the whole.
So that household gets cut to pieces, right?
Right. And certainly, yeah, it
certainly makes it less gruesome, but obviously the the
reality is still harsh. And that the, the thing that I'm
thinking about, because this is a person who has abused what
authority they've been given and they have, they've harmed people
in their household. They've neglected their, their
responsibilities and duties. I, I think about, you know, and
I think we can look at our profession as, as pastors and,
and we all know stories. You don't have to look very hard
to see them whether they're in the news or whether they are,
you know, just anecdotes that you are aware of, like of people
who have pastors who have abused their authority in, in some.
Way. And then the question is always
what do you do with what do you do?
Like, should you throw out all the books that they wrote?
Should you like, yeah, should you continue reading them?
Like she listened to sermons? Like should we remove all the
sermons from a website? Can they be brought back into
ministry? Like, we wrestle all this stuff
out, like, in real time. Yeah.
And you don't need to look beyond, like, a month ago in the
news, yeah, to start to see some of these things.
Hmm. But the thing that I I'm
thinking about is that Jesus certainly seems to have a
there's an intensity toward the, the person who has been given
that responsibility, which you know, which lines up with for
everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it is proportionate to
your authority. Yeah.
And responsibility. Yeah, which is why it feels so
heinous when when someone who has been given this great deal
of authority and responsibility, when they when they abuse that
in in a profound. Way yeah.
So I like I do think that this is an extra warning to leaders
and especially leaders within the church.
So I, I like, I, I do also think that this is universally
applicable to all followers of Jesus.
So it, it can be both of those. I think this is an extra warning
to those of us who are in ministry and who have a level of
responsibility for a group of people like within the church.
I think this is an extra measure call to us.
I also think that you can say to yourself, who have I been placed
in authority over? I think this is parents to your
children. Yeah, I think this is
grandparents to your children and grandchildren.
Like I I do think that this is, you know, if you're a manager at
work, if you are in any type of leadership authority and I I
would almost argue that everybody has influence over or
towards influence over. Somebody maybe has some
challenging dynamics to it, but everybody has influence in their
life and I think any type of authority or influence that you
have, this is a warning for you. Yeah, well, and you could even
maybe this is a little silly, but like, even if you are
someone who you may not have authority in a, in a job or in
your household, but like, goodness, if you have a, if you
have a cat, like like if you, if, if all that you've got is a
cat, like how are you exerting your authority kindly over that
little creature that you know, is dependent on you?
You know, like that's silly. But I think that like just to
say like it can go from all the way from that to the the CEO of
an organization. Right, right.
And I mean also think that it has in some way something to say
to the way you lead yourself. Yeah, right.
The way you are toward yourself, hand toward, um, your own, your
own person. And, you know, we all know that
we can get into horribly negative cycles of like self
talk. So I think if, if yeah, if all
you have is authority over your own self, this, this is a
warning to you. I do think, and I wanna circle
back to this. I do think that it is an extra
warning to those of us in leadership within the church
specifically. And that is something that I
think you and I have talked about and like wrestle out every
single time you see somebody within the church either make a
confession about something or have charges brought up against
them for some abuse of authority and power.
But we all know, like the, the abuse of authority and power is
one of the like gravest, um, harms that one person can
exercise over another. So an extra warning, an extra
somber warning probably to those who have institutional power.
Yeah, over, yeah, people. Yeah.
So whether that's within the church, whether that's within
politics, whether that's within a school system, whether that's
within, you know, medical systems, any type of
institutional power where like an organization has given you
authority and power, this is this is a warning for you, for
us. Yeah.
So that feels like a bad place to end.
Sure. Here's one of the questions that
I think you could have. Yeah, reading this this parable.
Does that mean that if you mess up Justin that not you if you
mess up, but if if listener messes up?
You could ask me, it's fine. That that you are cut off from
the Kingdom of God, That this is salvation at stake that Jesus is
talking about? Because I think that's a logical
fear, which might not also be a great place to end.
But you know, is is Jesus, is Jesus saying that if you are in
leadership and exercise your power poorly to the extent of
abusing and harming others, that your salvation is at stake?
It it, I mean, it it what's hard is that it does say assign him a
place with the unbelievers, right?
Yeah, Like that's that's a hard one, right?
But but I have to, I have to imagine it, you know, again,
this is where you can go too far down the weeds of exploring
everything because it's really gotta be about, you know, is, is
the person repentant? Is the person going to going to
seek reconciliation as the person?
Like there's, there are so many questions we ought to ask in in
each scenario as it comes up. I I, I think in general, though,
like, I think one thing I would feel comfortable inferring from
this is that like, hey, that person that, that the, the
servant leader, whatever we want to call them, they're not gonna
be in that servant leader role again, even if they've reformed.
Yeah. Like that, that master is not
going to put them in that role. Yeah.
And to me, that is, you know, a sober warning for those of us in
leadership where, where if we have abused that authority, we
should never presume that we are going to be put in a position of
that authority again. Right.
And I've often that, you know, when I've been unpacking
certain, you know, like clergy abuse situations with people and
and someone will say, well, where's the grace?
Where is the great. Like there grace abounds.
There is grace, there is forgiveness, there is grace,
there is reconciliation. All of those things are true.
And I, I can feel myself getting very passionate about this.
This is something I feel very strongly about.
Yeah. Like all of those things are
true, and yet there is no reason why that person, if they feel
still called to ministry in some way, they can get a job at an
Amazon factory, an Amazon warehouse and they can and they
can, you know, minister to his coworkers or whomever.
You know. Like, there are so many ways in
which someone may be called to be participants in the Kingdom
after they've fallen as a leader in some way, but they're
probably not going to be in vocational, They ought not to be
in vocational ministry again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I think it's about leadership and authority, yeah.
So I would say, and I, I, I this didn't make the sermon because
again, you, you gotta go too far down a rabbit hole to even make
the point. And then sometimes making the
point leaves people more at like a place of unease or disease
then then just not making it. I don't think it's about
salvation. Even though Jesus has a place
with the unbelievers. I think he's using very harsh
language to show just how egregious the the the authority
and abuse of is. So I I think he is Jesus is
using language that shows very clearly just how far removed
this makes you or this sort of just how far the division is
that this servant manager has created with his actions.
But just like unbelievers for whom the door of salvation is
open constantly, it's not a salvation thing.
It's it's a, it's an authority thing.
So that's good. I yeah, I don't think that's
somebody needs to live in fear of if I mess up, does that mean
that I'm gonna lose my salvation?
Like, I don't think that's what Jesus is talking about here.
I think what he is talking about specifically is no.
For those of you who have been placed in authority, more will
be demanded of you. More accountability will be
demanded of you because you were given more authority.
And the, the one to whom more responsibility is given, the
more is asked of you. And, you know, I think everybody
feels that, you know, you know, the weight of, of, of
responsibility, right? The weight of be like everybody
who's yeah. And and, you know, I know this
touches on nerves, but everybody who's brought a child home from
the hospital knows like. You, you sit there.
Just. Like, like, Oh my gosh.
I remember being in the. Hospital for this child now.
Absolutely. I remember being in the elevator
in the hospital. It was me and it was one of our
kids. It was our first kid, but it was
me and one of our kids. And like I had her in the thing
and I'm like, and is anybody going to check this seat belt?
Like right. Like you who put me in charge.
Are you going to leave me alone with like?
Are you certain that I can like, walk, just walk her out to the
parking lot? Like this feels like stealing.
Is nobody paying attention to what's happening right now?
But you grow into that responsibility.
I think you feel everybody can feel that weight of
responsibility. And I think what Jesus is saying
is, hey, take that seriously, take the weight of
responsibility seriously. And so you follower of Jesus,
you have responsibility inside the Kingdom.
And what Jesus is saying is take it seriously, like be like that
dad in the elevator who's like, actually, I feel a little, you
know, over my head here, right? I'm, I'm a little bit off into
the deep end like that level of, of, of thoughtfulness or pause I
think is healthy. Yeah.
To go ohk OK, yeah, there's something significant here.
I've been entrusted with some. Big deal.
Let me take it seriously. Let me.
Yeah. So Jesus is saying, hey, take
the Kingdom seriously, take your place within the Kingdom
seriously. You've been given responsibility
regardless of the level of responsibility that is.
Do the thing that you've been called to do and, and take that
seriously and then enjoy it. Find life in it, give life
through it. Don't take life from others.
Yeah, be one who pours life into people.
So I think for all of our roundabout conversation today,
like that's that's what I want people walking away with is not
fear, but this this deep sort of challenge to take it seriously
in a way that breathes life into other people.
That feels like a better place to end.
Agree. That's good.
Well, if you are, if you are joining us over these weeks, we
hope that you'll continue to check us out on Sundays and also
the podcast as we go a little deeper into some of the things
we couldn't get to that were left off the the cutting floor,
so to speak, no pun intended from the actual passage.
But we hope that you'll continue to lean into some of the
challenges and joys that we find in these passages.
And so we'll catch you next time.