We are Unprofitable Servants: A Meditation on Luke 17

While pride may be thought a civic virtue, it is never complimented in Holy Scripture.  From the pride that caused the devil to fall, to the pride that caused our first parents Fall, or the pride that goes before any person’s fall, it is not a complimentary feature of humanity.  People, broken and sinful as we are, have no right to pride… or perhaps phrased as a question, “What on earth do we have to brag about?”

We could start a list, I suppose, of the things we enjoy patting ourselves on the back for.  Perhaps we are particularly strong, fast, or physically powerful; perhaps we are clever, quick, or wise; perhaps we have won games, championships, or competitions; perhaps we have earned degrees, certifications, and honors.  Whatever populates your particular list of things you like to brag about, Jesus presents a universal pin that pops every person’s pride balloon.  In the Gospel readings for this week, Jesus presents a story to help the disciples understand their proper place and order in the grand scheme of things:

But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle,

will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the

field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather

say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird

thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and

afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank

that servant because he did the things that were commanded

him? I trow not.  So likewise ye, when ye shall have

done all those things which are commanded you, say, We

are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our

duty to do.  (Luke 17:7-10, KJV)

Jesus’ point here is not about dinner eating order, but rather about the difference between a Master and His servants.  Granted, the American mind chafes at the notion of someone being superior to another, but we need to set that humanistic notion aside—God is not equal to us, nor are we equal to God.  As human beings we may all be equal before God, but that should not lead us to forget that the Creator is infinitely greater than His creatures.  If we can come to grips with the reality that we are the creatures, the servants of God by His own design and making, we can appreciate what Jesus is teaching His disciples.

Even at our best, we are only doing what is our duty to accomplish.  Were we to use all our God-given time, talents, and treasure for the purposes that God has given them to us (in pure love of God and our neighbor, doing everything that is commanded of us,) we would not deserve any accolades from God.  If we perfectly and completely lived up the righteous, holy, and pure Law of God in everything we thought, said, and did, never missing or forgetting anything His Word teaches us, nor ever flinching in our faith and trust of Him, we would have done what we were made to do.

Ponder that for a moment.  If we could keep the Law in perfection, and be holy as our Father in Heaven is holy, we wouldn’t be worthy of praise, but of simple affirmation that we had done what we were designed from the beginning to do.  There’s no ticker tape parade for simply doing your duty—no grand awards banquet for accomplishing that for which you were made.  Quite on the contrary, it is your obligation to do everything that God has called you to do, and to do it perfectly according to His will.  There’s no grading curve.  This is simply Pass or Fail.  And to pass is to be perfectly in accordance with your Maker’s will.

It doesn’t take long to see the wisdom of Jesus’ teaching, when we understand our situation before God rightly.  He made us perfect, and we corrupted ourselves into a state that cannot keep His will or His Word.  He did all things well in the Creation, and we did everything we could to corrupt it into a sphere of death, suffering, and misery.  What God brought into being and called very good, we have taken and warped into something evil.  As fallen creatures now, that Law of God which was perfectly in harmony with us in the beginning, has now become our death sentence written large across the heavens.  Even if we were to come back to His Law, and seek to keep it, our petty attempts are ludicrously short of His perfection.  And if, even for a moment, we were to keep His holy Law rightly in thought, word and deed, at best we could say that we had done only what was our duty to do… never mind all the millions of other moments in which failed miserably, or perhaps openly rebelled against our duty to God and His Law.

And so it is true what Jesus says, that not only at our best could we say we have merely done our duty, but in reality, we are unprofitable servants.  Every one of us, from the Apostles and the Prophets, to the Saints and the Martyrs, to you and me:  we are unprofitable servants.  Perhaps we had a flash or two in our meager lives of coming close to fulfilling some aspect of the Law and God’s righteousness, but we are on the whole sinners deserving of nothing but death and condemnation.  At our weak and paltry best, we are only unprofitable servants of the Master, our Creator, having failed to live up to our created duty.

When Jesus preaches the Law, as He does in this text, He leaves sinners like us with nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.  If we hide in our works of sin, He is there to judge us according to the perfection of the Law.  If we hide in our works of righteousness, He is there to judge us according to whole of the Law, and the whole of our lives.  For those who would sit at the feet of Jesus our Master and learn from Him, we must learn this great truth which St. Paul would later write:  that no one is justified by the Law.  No one is righteous—no, not one.

But where does the sinner turn, to escape the great judgment that awaits us?  To this same Jesus, our Savior.  Jesus knows better than any other just how fallen we are.  It was through Him that we were made, and through Him that our sins and evils have been paid.  Jesus is the Word through which all the universe leapt into existence, and He is the Eternal Word that suffered and died for the wickedness of His unprofitable servants.  This same Jesus who presents the Law in all its holiness and severity, brings to us in His very Body and Blood the Gospel in all its sweetness and hope:  that He has come to seek and to save the lost.  Where there is no hope in the Law, there is hope everlasting in His Gospel of Grace.  Where we are left to beg for mercy in terror under the righteous condemnation of the Law, Jesus brings to us the joy and peace of Absolution through His Gospel.

Are we unprofitable servants?  Indeed, we are.  But in Jesus, we are given a new nature, a new life, and a new identity.  In Him, we are given His Holy Spirit, that dying to sin in our Baptism, we might rise up in a new life of faith, hope, and love.  And this new life we have been given is not our own work, that anyone should boast—but rather it is the work of God in Christ Jesus. 

So here, the Christian does his good works of love and mercy, which grow out of a heart of living faith, not as if trying to satisfy the Law, but reflecting the love and mercy of Grace.  We do not do our good works for others to appreciate, or to earn anything for ourselves, or to somehow help God along in this world; rather we do them out of a love that pours forth from Jesus Himself, through us, to our neighbor.  Such living faith cannot exist apart from the works of love, which emerge like fruits of Jesus’ Vine.  And even so, the Christian remembers that we remain the unprofitable servant for whom He died, and we live by grace through faith because He lives for us.

Are we unprofitable?  Most surely we are.  But Jesus makes all things new, even unprofitable sinners like you and me.  Thanks be to God, that our Suffering Servant, Jesus Christ, has done what is profitable for us all through His Cross, that we may believe and live in Him forever.  Amen.