Saturday, 13 April Luke 19:11-27
Written by Dr Graham Leo. ©2019.
This parable is not easy to interpret. However, we must apply the general rules to help us. First, context. This will not be an easy reflection. Please bear with me to the end.
Luke commences by saying (v11) ‘while they were listening to this’. So we had better go back and look at what ‘this’ is. The ‘this’ is Jesus’s statement to the crowds who had been sneering at his seeking out of Zacchaeus the tax-collector. Jesus has said that they ought to be rejoicing, ‘because this man, too, is a son of Abraham’. And then he clarifies yet again his kingdom mission: ‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.’
Luke then tells us the specific reason that Jesus told this parable. It was (v11): ‘because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the Kingdom of God was going to appear at once.’
Let’s summarise these to help us think:
1. People sneered at Jesus’ fulfilment of his mission to seek the outsiders.
2. Jesus re-affirmed his mission to actively seek and save all those who were the lost.
3. There was mounting expectation that once Jesus entered Jerusalem, he would commence the decisive action to oust the Romans and restore Israel to a sovereign state. The gentiles would be out and Israel would be in charge.
Within this context, Jesus tells a story of a ruler of noble birth, who went to a distant country to have himself crowned King, and then to return. That is an unusual thing to do. Usually, you would seek coronation in the country you intend to rule.
However, this was an unusual time. Israel was a vassal state of Rome. To be King of Israel, Herod had to do exactly what Jesus was describing. He had to go to Caesar in Rome and press his case to be appointed King of Israel and then return. It would not be surprising that such a man might prudently protect his investments, before he went on this journey, just in case he failed miserably, and came back with empty hands.
Now this parable is not about Herod; it is about Jesus. But it does use a political context that the people would readily understand. After the exodus, God had delivered the nation of Israel into the Promised Land, requiring them to honour Him as their one, true King.
Having human Kings over Israel was never part of God’s plan. Samuel was prophet of Israel when the people demanded a King. We had better go back and read that history:
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. (1 Samuel 8:4-8)
Just as in the parable, Israel, as a nation, rejected their true King. God had ensured that there were various deposits of faith in the land. Israel had been given the Law, the Prophets, the Temple, and the Priesthood. With these deposits, Israel was meant to be a light to the nations, a witness of the one, true God to the whole world.
When God called Abraham to found the nation of Israel, God said, ‘Through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.’ But Israel had re-cast God’s universal blessing into ‘Through your private association with God, you alone of all peoples will be blessed.’
A thousand years after Samuel gave the people their first king, Jesus (who is God) left his place of noble birth, and came back as the True King to take up his rule (as he said, back in Luke 4). He found that none of the deposits of faith were doing well, and several had failed utterly. They had not held true to their mission and had tried to keep their truth to themselves alone, not encouraging gentiles to find a place in God’s kingdom.
Those who had kept the faith alive, who were truly interested in inviting in the foreigners to the truth of God, would be given much more work to do well beyond their imagination at this time: ‘Take charge of ten cities: Rome, Cairo, Alexandria, Smyrna, Byzantium, and so on, all the way out to India and China and Russia and England and the Pacific nations.’
The leaders of Israel at that time were traitors to the cause that God had given them to nurture. One of the leading dynasties at the time was the family of Annas. Annas had been high priest when Jesus came to the temple as a lad. He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest at this time. The family shared the role around as if it were a game. Annas had five sons, all of whom occupied the role of high priest at some stage.
They were of the sect of the Sadducees, the ruling party which supported the Romans, and did not believe in the resurrection. It was they who even tried to murder Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead, because he was an embarrassment to their cause (John 12:9-10). All this was happening right at this very time, when Jesus told this story.
It is likely that the family of Annas was the political target in Jesus’ telling of the story of the rich man and Lazarus we met a few days ago. That rich man (perhaps representing Caiaphas) had five brothers (no-one missed that point!) who needed to be told the truth, but Jesus, as you recall, said they had the Law and the Prophets, which was enough.
The family of Annas ran the Temple and their various religious/political offices as their own personal business. They were very wealthy, at the expense of the poor and uninfluential. In 70AD, their family and their wealth would be utterly destroyed by the Roman General Titus as he totally destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. We recall the harsh last words of Jesus’ parable (v27), where the King destroys the enemies who had worked so hard to prevent him from taking his rightful rule.
It is fitting that this is the last parable to be told before Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph on ‘Palm Sunday’. It informs his listeners that the game was up for those who had tried to bury the treasures of God, and that the Kingdom of God would not look anything like they were expecting it to look. Its boundaries would extend far beyond Israel. This King was the King of the World, not just Israel. Those who had been faithful would be given even more souls to care for, while his enemies would find that they will lose everything.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, I worship you as the True King. Even today, there are still many who would refuse your Kingship and sneer at your care for the unlovely and the vulnerable. But I declare my allegiance to you, and offer my life to your service. Amen.
