Freed... to Serve--October 7, 2025

Freed... to Serve--October 7, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table?' Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink?' Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have only done what we ought to have done!'" (Luke 17:7-10)

These words of Jesus are just plain hard to wrap our brains around.  Let's not ignore that elephant in the room; let's muster up the courage to ask it to dance. 

It is hard to know what to make of a scene like Jesus describes here, even if these words themselves ring with familiarity from hearing them read in worship, as many of us experienced this past Sunday. And it is hard for us to imagine a positive image--much less one coming from the mouth of Jesus--that takes the presence of slavery as a given rather than insisting on its immediate abolition. (This is, after all, the same Jesus whose inaugural sermon in Luke's gospel begins with Jesus claiming the prophet's calling to "proclaim release to the captives" and "to set free those who are oppressed." One is tempted to ask Jesus, "What gives?") Part of the difficulty is just the vast difference between our time and culture and that of Jesus' time and culture--we don't know how to picture life with the institution of slavery still woven into a larger number of households, and our memory of slavery as Americans is different from the ancient world's.    

Let's name that part first: we live in a society whose history involves both a deep dependence on slavery and a literal war that tore the country apart over the question of slavery.  For centuries, the economic engine of the colonies and the eventual nation that become the United States was fueled by slave labor, which itself became a machine of permanent subjugation of people because of their ancestry and skin color.  That story has been called "America's original sin," and it is an apt description. Its aftermath still taints and troubles relations between ethnic and racial groups in America today, and its ripple effects still show up in the disparities in income, generational wealth, family trauma, and the day-to-day experience of ordinary life. And now, a hundred and sixty years since the end of the American Civil War (and sixty years since the Civil Rights Movement sought to address lingering effects of race-based chattel slavery), we live in a culture in which it is unthinkable (hopefully) to claim to own another human being, or to order someone around while simultaneously thinking of them as somehow part of your household.  That just doesn't compute for our minds--and I am grateful for that.

But all of that history--our particular history as Americans--makes it much harder for us to put ourselves back mentally in the first century Greco-Roman world, in which slavery was not only common, but also in many ways quite a different institution from what was done to the enslaved in our country's history.  For one, people ended up in various forms of servitude or slavery for a number of different reasons--you could end up as a debt-servant or indentured servant as a way of paying off debts you had accumulated (once they foreclose on your house and land, the only asset you have to pay off debts is your labor, after all). Your town, region, or nation might have been conquered by the Empire, and you could have ended up enslaved as a consequence of their conquest. Or you might end up in slavery as a punishment for some kind of crime (maybe you can picture that famous scene from the movie Ben-Hur when the enslaved crew have to row the warship to the beat of a drumming soldier).  In other words, there was not an assumption that any particular racial group or skin color was purposefully kept in chains, and there was at least the possibility (in cases of debt-servitude) that you might be released from your situation when the debt was paid off.  So, again, the form of slavery in the Greek and Roman world during the ministry of Jesus wasn't identical with the experience of African Americans in our own country's history.

The other thing to keep in mind, I think, in a passage like this one, is that the alternative for many people who were on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in this culture was to be a day-laborer, which was precarious in its own way.  Just like with day-laborers today, who might wait outside a hardware store or construction site in the hopes that the foreman might need them for work that day, in the ancient world many people lived hand-to-mouth as day laborers hoping that they would be hired, in order to be able to feet their families tomorrow.  That's a scary arrangement, since it can mean the chance (or even likelihood) that if you don't get hired today, your family goes hungry tomorrow.  If you are a day-laborer, every day is going to feel like a competition with everybody else around you: there are only so many spots, and you need to make yourself stand out so that you are the one who gets hired, and your kids are the ones who get to eat.  That has got to make for a constantly anxious, perpetually fearful way of life.  In that context, to be a servant or slave in a household, by contrast, might actually look like it offers more of a safety net, so to speak--at least in the sense that you knew you and your needs would be attended to and you wouldn't be out on the streets if you didn't get hired anew every morning.  In fact, that difference might be the key to Jesus' story.

So let's come back to the passage many of us heard on Sunday.  If I am a servant in an ancient household, for however unpleasant that might be in a host of ways (beyond the unquestionable injustice of slavery--please don't forget that!), the one thing that I could at least count on was that there was a place for me to sleep and a head of the household who was guaranteeing that I would be fed and clothed enough for me to do the work they intended for me to do.  That is to say, unlike day-laborers who have to constantly make themselves look better than their competition, in order to get hired, so that then they can do the work, in order to be paid at day's end, so that they can feed their families, the servants in a household know that they have a place there in the household, relatively speaking.  You belong.   That much you could count on. Day laborers didn't have that kind of assurance--it is the flipside of having "freedom," I suppose.

So imagine, then, if you find yourself serving in a household like that. You know you have a place there, and you know that you belong. You also know that you don't have to compete for the attention or goodwill of an employer in order to get food, clothing, or shelter. In fact, you don't need to worry at all, in that sense, about whether your needs will be met.  They will be. That's the one commitment the "lord" of the house can be counted on to follow through on: your needs will be taken care of. So you are, in a sense, finally free just to do the work you have been called to do.  There's no need for elbowing your coworkers and fellow servants out of the limelight or trying to get more attention on yourself.  There's no need to try and get special recognition that puts you above everybody else. And there's no worry that you'll get to the end of the day and not have your needs taken care of.  You can simply be the one who serves, trusting that all that is needful will be provided for you in time.

Now, again, I know the imagery of servants dutifully saying, "We have only done what we ought to have done!" seems odd at best and cringeworthy at worst. But it is also worth remembering that the One who tells this little thought experiment is the same One who insists that he came "not to be served but to serve." That is, Jesus doesn't talk down to those in the role of servants as one who has never had to wash feet or take the lowliest place.  He says is as the One whose whole way of being the Messiah was to be a servant.  As the apostle Paul will say in his letter to the Philippians (likely quoting an even earlier hymn that the congregation knew): "Christ Jesus... did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness..." (Philippians 2:5-7).  In other words, Jesus himself knows what it is to take on the servant's role; he is not speaking as a would-be master looking down on "the help." Jesus is "the help" too. Jesus is the servant who gives us the freedom of serving alongside of him.

Maybe that's really what this is about.  For us as the community of Jesus' disciples, we no longer have to worry about making ourselves stand out sufficiently so that we get "picked" to be on Jesus' team. We are not the equivalent of day-laborers who have go out every morning and try to prove our worthiness and earn a spot among the staff so that we can get a paycheck. We are servants who already belong in the household and already know that the Lord of the house will provide for our needs.  We are at last free simply to do what God has called us to do, because we are done with needing to impress a prospective boss enough to hire us for the day or elbowing someone else out of competition.  Because we know we belong, we are free to serve.

I wonder what we have been hung up on because of our need to be "good enough" or at least be "better than" the next person, when Jesus has been saying all along, "You already belong. You are now simply free to do what I've called you to do--to serve alongside of me, since I have come to serve, too."  When we see that our place as servants in the household of God puts us shoulder to shoulder and side by side with Jesus, the Servant, perhaps we'll see that is the best possible place for us to be.

If you knew you didn't have to waste a moment trying to prove yourself or get attention and accolades, what would you finally be free to do? What ways of serving God--perhaps easily unnoticed or behind the scenes--could we finally take up because we aren't fussing over getting credit or "points" for our actions? How might we be freed to serve... today?

Lord Jesus, help us to find the freedom to serve beside you today.