The Twist-Ending--August 13, 2025

The Twist-Ending--August 13, 2025

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves." (Luke 12:35-38)

I just about do a double-take and spit water out every time I read the scene Jesus describes for his disciples in this passage, no matter how many times I come across it. And even though these words are still fresh in my ears from hearing them this past Sunday in worship, I have to believe that when Jesus first painted this verbal picture for his followers, their jaws hit the ground.  This story does not go the way anybody expected.  Even when the tables are fictional furniture in a made-up story, Jesus is still turning them.

Here's what I mean.  This passage starts out with a clear direction to be alert, awake, and primed for work.  Jesus asks us to imagine ourselves as servants in a household, all tasked with their labor and chores. And of course, when the head of the household is out--in this scene, he's at a wedding banquet--the understanding is that the rest of the staff are supposed to be doing their jobs.  Some are sweeping the kitchen, others doing dishes. Maybe someone is folding laundry in search of the elusive missing sock. In any case, we are supposed to imagine that they are all at their work, and then Jesus raises the issue of what happens when the master of the house comes home.  And I'll bet a good number of the people in Jesus' audience expected the scene to end with a stern warning--something like, "You'd better be busting your hump when I get home, because there's gonna be trouble if I come home and see anybody just standin' around or puttin' their feet up!"  You can imagine that plenty of people in the first century world of the Roman Empire had seen the way masters treated slaves--whipping them, beating them, berating them, or working them to exhaustion.  It would have been easy for those in Jesus' audience to expect the same description to apply to God: "You better be working hard enough when the Day of the Lord comes, because if he finds you and you haven't been doing enough, you'll be thrown out into the outer darkness and struck with a lightning bolt for sure!"  Everything in the culture of the day would have pointed in the direction of a tyrannical master who gets to go out and party at the wedding reception while the servants sweat and groan, like Cinderella longing to go to the ball when her wicked stepmother leaves her behind.

But Jesus isn't like that. And neither is God.

Jesus upends our expectations yet again in his little thought experiment--because in his vision, the master doesn't barge in and start barking orders. He doesn't threaten anybody or even do an inspection.  The belt doesn't come off as a warning of a whipping for laziness--just the opposite.  In the wonderfully upside-down vision of Jesus, the head of the household fastens his belt, has the servants sit down at the dining room table, and the master serves the staff!  As Jesus tells it, the mark of true greatness is not barking orders or shouting threats but serving the servants and welcoming them to the table. The master in his story has only asked the staff to stay awake and watch for him so that they don't miss out on being served!  He told them to be ready for action and dressed, not as a threat that he will punish or evict anybody he suspects of laziness, but because as soon as he comes home, he's putting on dinner for all of them.

And of course, from Jesus' vantage point, this twist ending isn't a twist at all--it is simply how things work in the Reign of God! Jesus is always taking our expectations about God's ordering of the world and flipping them on their heads, so that from Jesus' perspective, the lowly are lifted up, the proud are taken down a few pegs, the last are put first, and the would-be masters are known because they are serving everyone else.  So when he pictures all of us disciples as servants in the household of God, it isn't because Jesus sees God as a slavedriver, but as the table-turning servant of the servants.  We want to stay up for this God's arrival home, not out of fear but with faith that Love is on the way.  We keep at our tasks in the mean time, not with dread of being punished or insulted if we haven't met our quote, but with trust that at the time of homecoming God will gather us around the table and set a plate in front of each of us.

We are not meant to live our lives as disciples in constant worry that we're not worthy, not acceptable, or not working enough.  We are not meant to look constantly over our shoulders for some authority figure to shout at us that we don't belong anymore and throw us out onto the street. We do the work God has put in our hands for the moment, trusting that the great God for whom we wait has promised to turn the tables and serve the servants at the end of the day.  We serve now, with diligence and love, because we know the Master of the house turns out to be the servant of the servants when all is said and done. Jesus' goal is not to work us to death but to surprise us with abundant life--that's what makes him worth giving our lives to in service, and that's what makes him compelling for us to follow as disciples.

Lord Jesus, keep encouraging us to serve in your work, as you prepare us for your coming among us as the servant of all.