April 14th

By Randall L. Broad

Read: Joshua 9:3-10:43; Luke 16:19-17:10; Psalm 83:1-18; Proverbs 13:4

Luke 17:6-10 is a parable about the concept of “duty”.

⁵The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

⁶He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.

⁷“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? ⁸Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? ⁹Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? ¹⁰So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ”

Luke 17:5-10

Duty has taken on a mundane and unpleasant connotation in modern times. It restricts our freedom, takes time away from our passions, and has become the thing we simply try to avoid. Duty often involves difficult and tiring tasks in which we receive very little satisfaction or reward. Yet duty is essential to humanity–most of us will spend the vast majority of our lives doing things we have to and not the things we want to … Note in the above story Jesus is talking to His Apostles and they ask Him to increase their faith, yet His response is to talk about servants and people who do the tasks the master does not want to do. The servants obedience is rooted in their sense of duty to a person who has been given authority over them such as an employer, or for whom they have taken responsibility like a spouse or child. Often times duties of this nature becomes routine, unpleasant, and burdensome. In a time when happiness and pleasure is an end in itself, this burden of duty and responsibility is something people want no part of …. Instead we would rather indulge our selfishness and comfort.

But this is not the way of the Kingdom or its people.

Duty was and is essential to discipleship. Jesus tells His Apostles their duty will be to care for “the sheep”, feed them, and expect no thanks in return. Their reward however will be a faith so strong it can uproot other traditions, ideas, and worldviews. There are metaphors at work in this passage. The “plowed field” could represent the people to be evangelized. The “sheep” represent all those who will be disciples in Christ. The mustard seed and the mulberry tree could represent faith and religion. The point is when new believers are brought to Christ they have to be fed and only then will the disciple be able to rest and eat himself. In our world today we have a tendency to forget our duty to the new believers. Some evangelists and pastors measure their worth by how many people they bring to Christ … and forget or do not care about the responsibility to teach them God’s Word and disciple them after their conversion. The parable above is a metaphor for the relationship between evangelism and discipleship. If you evangelize them; it becomes your responsibility to disciple them.

Evangelism brings people to faith; discipleship strengthens people’s faith. In the evangelism/discipleship process every act of service or duty no matter how small or seemingly insignificant builds their faith and yours one seed at a time. Jesus knows this stoic principle would be familiar to the apostles. They lived in the era where duty and responsibility were thought to be of the highest value. The stoics had taught for centuries man can regulate his life and thus emulate the calm and order of the universe by accepting events with a stern and tranquil mind. This Hellenistic philosophy which stemmed from Zeno (c. 334-262 B.C.) was a cornerstone of the ancient world and transcended culture and religion finding adherents in Judaism and the pagan religions of the time. Stoicism was based upon a single, sole and simple good, which could only be achieved through the use of human reason coinciding with the Universal Reason (Logos), which governs everything. Scholars argue today how much stoicism and Hellenistic Culture in general influenced the gospel as we know it. But one thing is certain; both impact our understanding of biblical time and language. The stoic idea of duty is found throughout the Old and New Testament.

Before I was a Christian, I studied many religions and branches of philosophy. Stoicism is one I found particularly compelling and I think has value to my life as a disciple of Jesus Christ. In particular, I was quite fond of a book by an Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius (b. 121-d. 180) who was an accomplished scholar on stoicism and left behind a journal of daily thoughts comprised into a philosophical tract entitled Meditations. Despite being the ruler of the known world and living in wealth and power, he stressed duty above all things and believed through reason man could come to see the world as fundamentally rational. Two quotes in particular are relevant to Christian discipleship:

I do my duty: other things trouble me not; for they are either things without life, or things without reason, or things that have rambled and know not the way.

This echoes the method by which Jesus is teaching His disciples to grow their faith. Do your duty–which is to disciple others and do not expect rewards that have no life, no reason, and know not the ways of God.

Marcus Aurelius also said:

In the morning when thou rises’ let this thought be present–I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?

What if we substituted the word “disciple” for “human being”? For me, every morning I rise to the work of a disciple and why should that not be enough for me since that is the purpose for which I was created?

Walk with the Lord …

Ephesians 1:17

(RLB250414)

© Copyright 2017: Randall L. Broad

Disclaimer: This commentary is written by Randall L. Broad. It is in no way affiliated with or represents any denomination, university, church, or pastor. Any errors or omissions are purely my responsibility.