Luke 19:11 (ESV)
As they heard these things, he
proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they
supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
The parable Jesus told was about a
nobleman who “went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then
return” (Lk 19:2). He gave his servants different amounts of money to watch
over in his absence telling them to “Engage in business until I come” (Lk 19:13).
On his return he rewarded them accordingly. Two of them doubled his money. One
hid the money so he wouldn’t lose it. The result was that he lost it. What he
had was given to one of the others. But that’s not where the story ends. It ends
with the citizens who hated him and did not want him to reign over them being killed.
What is interesting about this story
is that it is sandwiched between the story of Zacchaeus, the short, little tax
collector who received Jesus and the Triumphal Entry where the Pharisees rebuked
him. The religious ones are both the servant who failed to invest what had been
stewarded to him and the citizens who did not want their nobleman to rule over
them. It makes me wonder sometimes how we would respond if Jesus came on the
scene today.
Would we be the citizens who don’t
want him to change anything, the servant who feared to invest what he was
given, or the servants who stewarded their resources and were rewarded? We like
to think we would be the latter, but I fear that we may too often be the former.
God did not leave us here to guard the church from change. He left us here to multiply
the church through the gospel. I see way too much guarding and way too little
multiplying in many of our churches.
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