Tuesday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 10, 2020

Luke 17:7-10

Jesus said to the Apostles: “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’ ”

We can see from the first line of today’s Gospel reading that the Lord was speaking to people who understood  what slavery meant.  And the Lord is peaking of slaves.  The Greek word doulos, used here, means a “male slave”; diakonos means “servant”, that is, one who is paid and usually has specialized skills.  Thus, the line should read, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, etc.”  

The Lord’s words would have left his hearers scratching their heads because after he describes a common situation during the workday. he tells his hearers, “So should it be with you.”  That is, he tells them that they themselves are as slaves before God.  And he tells them that just as a slave earns no reward for his labors, “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’ ”  Obedience to God’s commands does not merit praise from God or any remuneration from him.  We are not hired servants.  We cannot negotiate wages with the Almighty.  A hired servant can expect a reward for going beyond his manager’s expectations, but such is not the lot of a slave.  

The difference between the slave of a human master and the slave of God is that although we deserve nothing for our hard work on his behalf, he does reward us,  This comes simply out of his free love for us, a love so sublime that it cannot be imagined.  And so while the slave of a human master works all day in hopes that he will be allowed to work the next day, we who are slaves of Almighty God do his work out of love for him who has such great love for us, and he gives us reason to hope that we may reign with him one day.  This helps us to appreciate the momentous event we hear of in John 15, 15: “I will not now call you slaves . . . but I have called you friends.”  The Lord not only frees his Apostles from slavery, but calls them “friends”, raising them to his level.  Indeed, the Apostles were slaves, giving up their families, employment, and property in order to travel with the Lord and to serve him in whatever capacity he chose.  And in the Holy Spirit, they become more intimate with him, becoming his adopted brethren, coheirs with him of eternal life.

We ought never to lose sight of what God has done for us, raising us out of the drudgery of life without knowledge of him, then making us his slaves, then freeing us by his grace out of his own love for us.  We do none of this on our own.  Without his love and grace, we serve the most miserable and hopeless slavery of all, that of our basest instincts (our flesh); that of the world; and that of the devil.  And while we can be nothing more than “unprofitable slaves”, God cherishes us, and the fact that we serve him as best as we can.