Useless servants we are

I want to talk about a well-known parable, the parable of the useless servants. We are all useless servants according to the parable that I want to develop, but also with a clarification: Although we are useless servants, God treats us as favorite friends, special friends, and that is what the subject of our meditation is going to be about.

Let me first read this parable, it is found in Saint Luke chapter 17 verses 7 to 10, and this parable says this way: "Who of you having a servant who plows or pastures cattle, when he comes back from the field then says to him: pass Would you rather say to him: prepare my dinner, dress yourself and serve me until I have eaten and drunk, and after that you say to him: eat and drink yourself? Do you thank the servant because he did what he knows? I had sent him? I think not. "

"So also you" this is the conclusion of the parable, "So you also, when you have done everything that has been ordered, say: we are useless servants, because what we should do, we did." What an interesting parable.

This parable, as we said, tells us about the absolute lordship of God, the fact that God has total sovereignty over our life. He also speaks to us about what the attitude of the believer should be before the absolute lordship of God, that our attitude must be one of total performance and submission to the Will of God, this must characterize our lives.

Jesus uses a parable in this passage but also uses what is known in the art of rhetoric, that is, good speech, is known as hyperbole. A hyperbole is an exaggeration of something, it is an illustration or an image that exaggerates a truth that the teacher or the lecturer wants to project to his audience, and by exaggerating it, and magnifying it beyond the natural makes it more evident, more obvious, more understandable. It is like when a person says for example: I am starving. It is not that the person is literally starving, but he is using an expression that dramatizes and makes the idea that this person is very hungry very clear, right? And that's the idea of hyperbole.

And in this parable we have elements of exaggeration to illustrate a very deep spiritual principle, and I am reading from some notes that I have here because I want to be very systematic in the teaching that I want to elaborate for you. This parable in fact, of the worthless servant, is very similar to the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. You will remember this parable of the Lord about a widow who needs justice over a legal situation that she is facing.

And this woman comes before a judge who is indifferent, unfair, careless, and comes before the judge, and the judge cannot attend to her, and he just fires her. And this woman insistently comes time after time before the judge demanding that he do her justice.

And the parable of the Lord says that at one point, the judge already exasperated by the insistence of this woman, her continual coming before him to do justice to her, decides to get her out of the way and out of her, finally decides to agree to your request and do you justice so that you stop exasperating and annoying you further.

And the Lord Jesus Christ says: Well, if this unjust man did justice to this woman who came insistently, how much more will your heavenly Father attend to your requests? since He is just right?

So the injustice of that judge, insistent, exaggerated, what he does is that, in a contrasting way, he illustrates rather the availability of the Father to attend to the prayers of His children. When we come before God and bring our requests over and over again, the Bible says the Lord will attend to them.

And by the way, this is a very important teaching here, right? that when we pray we have to do it continually before the Lord, our requests we have to bring to the Father again and again. We do not know lately why it is sometimes required to bring a petition before the Lord insistently, but the Word of the Lord tells us that we have to touch, search, be diligent, bring our requests before God continuously until we receive an answer, but that is a separate idea. The idea is that many times the Lord uses images of exaggeration in His parables to help us understand something.

And in this parable of the useless servant we have this idea of a lord, a boss who treats his servant in a harsh and demanding way, but that attitude of the boss is designed by the Lord Jesus Christ to illustrate rather the attitude of the Heavenly Father who is different in one sense from the pattern illustrated here. This man overreacts to a servant who deserves nothing, who is like a zero in terms of his meaning as a human being.

There is also something you can teach us about the fact that, before God's Presence, before His greatness, before His might, before all that we owe to Him, we are really nothing, even though God treats and treats us. he sees us in a different way; before God we are a lot. But the parable wants to establish a reality here, doesn't it? that ultimately, when we see what we truly are compared to the greatness and lordship of God, we really should not believe that we are the great thing or demand anything from God, or expect anything from Him because He is everything and He has all power.

And that attitude of humility, and of recognizing our true state is very important in the Christian life. In this attitude lies the greatest that we can have for our Christian life and for our life of prayer before the Lord, total humility, total recognition of what we are before the greatness of God. Very important and in our next message we will continue to develop this idea. I hope you keep in touch with us because it will be a great blessing for your lives. God bless you and until our next meditation.