Nov 24 2019 Luke 19: 11-27 W

We do not want this man to rule over us.


Jesus is again telling a parable. This time, he’s talking about the man who leaves and gives three slaves money as he leaves. After he leaves, the people say they don’t want this man in charge. He returns, and asks the three what they’ve done with his money. One man invests and doubles the money. Another gets a 50% return. Another buries the money and gives it back, whole, admitting that he was afraid of the man. The man takes the money and gives it to another. Then asks for the people who didn’t want him to rule over them to brought to him so he could slaughter them in his presence.

These parables with evil kings are tricky. What are we to make of taking away and slaughtering. I heard a respected church scholar argue that we read into these stories based on our current understanding of story telling, but that things were different. This bishop who preached on one such parable was adamant that the literary tool of the allegory story post-dates Jesus’ time. So although we hear these stories about the ruler, and immediately think Jesus is talking about Jesus, perhaps not. I’m not sure, and haven’t done half as much study as the preacher I heard. But eliminating that presumption does open these parables up to a depth of meaning otherwise unavailable.

In this context, Jesus is telling this story because he was near Jerusalem, code-word for near his passion, and the people he was with believed the kingdom of God was going to appear to them immediately. For Jesus, fully human, to know that he was heading to his crucifixion, and for Jesus, fully divine to know that his compatriots were awaiting the imminent Kingdom of God, I can imagine Jesus was antsy to share something about the way things were really going to go, rather than their dreams and hopes.

So he tells this story about the ruler who returns and to his slaves he deals somewhat mathematically, meting out rewards or punishment based on their comfort with assuming risk with the ruler. Personally, I would likely have been most like the man who buried the money. You can never be sure.

This morning, I’m thinking about the extras in this story, the people who are described parenthetically as not wanting the ruler. Upon his return, after dealing with the slaves who’d invested well or not at all, he summons those parenthetical extras, and says they should be slaughtered in his presence.

I’m wondering if Jesus is trying to tell the people about their misplaced thoughts about the imminence of the Kingdom of God, despite their blindness to the presence of God in their midst. In Jesus’ time, they were awaiting the kingdom, as if it was someone else, and something else than Christ’s presence and love. Maybe what they were waiting for, was something that upon its arrival would behave more like the owner in this story, taking away, and slaughtering. Maybe Jesus was trying to paint a picture of a leader who played more by the rules his gathered crowd would understand. Tit for tat. Demanded allegiance. Maybe he was painting a picture of what the Kingdom was not going to be like.

And maybe I’m grasping. Bu that’s ok. Part of what I enjoy in writing is the opportunity to muse, and play with possibilities. At the end of the day, it’s time spent with Scripture and reflection and it’s all good.