A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 7

by Roy Clements

¹¹He went on to tell the people this parable: 'A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. ¹⁰At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. ¹²He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

¹³'Then the owner of the vineyard said, "What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him."

¹⁴'But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. “This is the heir," they said. “Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." ¹⁵So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

'What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When the people heard this, they said, “May this, never be!" ¹⁷Jesus looked directly at them and asked, 'Then what is the meaning of that which is written:

'"The stone the builders rejected

has become the capstone"?

¹⁸Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.'

¹⁹The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

Luke 20:9-19

Most people find Mondays depressing. In fact, a team of European doctors and psychiatrists recently completed a study on the subject. They found that there is a higher chance of having a heart attack on Monday than on any other day of the week. That is not merely the result of overindulgence during the weekend, for the incidence of every other kind of stress-related illness and condition is increased on Mondays too. Your blood pressure is elevated on Mondays, meaning that you have a higher risk of a stroke. Your stomach acidity will be higher, which means that you face a higher risk of having an ulcer. You will be glad to know, also, that you are twice as likely to commit suicide on a Monday as on any other day.

That Monday-morning feeling is no myth, but a medical fact. There can be only one explanation: a great many of us find the very idea of work depressing. It is easy to think that the reason for this is the pressure we are put under at work, the expectation to perform. For some high-flyers, I suppose, that is a contributory factor. It is not easy to keep your balance when you are surrounded by a workaholic culture. I remember a friend of mine telling me that he had only ever met three people who were absolutely obsessed with work. Unfortunately they happened to be the other three men in his office!

The Monday-morning syndrome, interestingly, is even more evident in the lives of low-flyers than it is in the lives of high-flyers. People with mundane, undemanding jobs display the same stress symptoms as people who have far more demanding occupations. Pressure therefore cannot be the whole story. Is the reason for that Monday morning feeling, then, rather that our personal relationships at work generate anxiety? Maybe it's the cattiness among the girls in the typing-pool, or competitiveness among the men in the sales team. Could it be physical working conditions that are to blame? Would we be less vulnerable to stress if relaxing music was piped across the factory floor, or if the management invested in more comfortable office furniture?

There's no denying that social and environmental factors make a big difference to job satisfaction. Interestingly again, however, research shows that negative Monday morning feelings are not necessarily reduced in companies which try very hard to create a pleasant working atmosphere. No, there's no escaping the conclusion of such findings, I'm afraid. No matter how good the job, how considerate your employer, how nice the people you work with, for a great many of us it is the very idea of work that is unpalatable. We do not want to do it. The thought of having to do it, which Monday morning forces upon us, is quite enough to plunge us into an emotional abyss.

Is our problem, then, mere laziness? Perhaps we are all congenitally idle. But surely the reason cannot be that simple either. Many studies have shown that redundancy and retirement are stress-inducing too, sometimes far more stress-inducing than the job we used to do. No doubt there are a few idle jacks in this world whose idea of bliss is a life of uninterrupted leisure, but actually the vast majority of us need work in order to feel fulfilled. In his book Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome writes, 'I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.' He was being deliberately humorous, but there is a kind of deeper truth hidden in his wit. It is impossible, actually, to enjoy idleness unless you know there is work you could be doing. To be totally idle is not a recipe for bliss at all, but for despair. If you don't believe me, you ask the men and women in the Job Centre queue. That Monday-morning feeling does not reflect laziness.

I suggest it is rather hopelessness, a hopelessness that has plenty to do but no satisfying reason for doing it. It is not possible to live a meaningful human life unless you believe something about the future. Alexander Pope was getting at it in his famous lines:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest.

To try to live without hope is like trying to play football without goalposts. You may dribble the ball with great skill, execute some fine passes, even enjoy the game to an extent. But what's the point of it all? Unless there's some purpose, some objective, some goal for human existence, the whole show is a monstrous farce. Stephen Crane's poem in The Black Riders expresses this point well:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

'It is futile,' I said, 'You can never—'

'You lie,' he cried,

And ran on.

That surely is the absurdity of much which we today so optimistically call 'progress'. You can talk about advancing only when you have a clear idea of where you are supposed to be going.

The dilemma of modem secular men and women is that we no longer possess such a sense of direction. It is like the counsel of despair adopted by the British government when it ruled Ireland during the potato blight. In order to sustain the morale of the people by providing employment, the British ordered the construction of unnecessary roads, roads that went nowhere.

Humanity at the end of the twentieth century is beginning to wonder if we haven't been unwittingly committing our energies to such a pointless enterprise for years. Woody Allen truthfully quipped, 'The future isn't what it used to be.' Optimism about the destiny of the human race has all but collapsed today. True, you still hear a few people mouthing the old utopian dreams about a future technological paradise on earth, but those who know most are not so stupid any longer. Such dreams lie buried under the carnage of two world wars and the Hiroshima cloud. Humanism has been discredited, and confidence in a future brought about by human science has died as a result.

Yet we human beings must have hope. We can't live without it. Children count the days till Christmas. Teenagers look forward to the next date with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Grown-ups revel in their holiday brochures. We have to have hope. Mere survival isn't enough for us. If we are going to endure the tedium and the fatigue of everyday life, we must have light on the horizon to steer by. A person without anything to look forward to is a person of utter despair.

Tony Hancock was a very fine comedian in the 1950s and 1960s. In his last TV monologue in 1964 he performed a piece which proved ironic.

What have you achieved? What have you achieved? You lost your chance, me old son.

You contributed absolutely nothing to this life.

A waste of time you being here at all. No place for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam jar and a black stone bearing the legend, 'He came, and he went.' And in between? Nothing. Nobody will even notice you're not here. After about a year somebody might say down the pub, 'Where's old Hancock? I haven't seen him around lately.'

'Oh, he's dead, you know.'

'Is he?'

A right raison d'être, that is.

Poignantly, a couple of years after that final TV show, Tony Hancock himself committed suicide. The despair that he was articulating was evidently too close to the truth for comfort. Hope springs eternal? No, Mr Pope, I'm afraid it doesn't always. Sometimes hope dries up. When it does, it isn't just hope that's extinguished. A person, bereft of purpose, dies too. 'I have nothing to live for,' says the suicide note. Dante, in his The Divine Comedy, makes the inscription over the gate of hell read, 'All hope abandon, you who enter here!' There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite so appalling and dreadful to the human spirit as to be irremediably hopeless.

What are you looking forward to? What is the point of your life? A lot of us manage to put on a façade of ambition and direction in life. We tell people we're happy and well adjusted, and that we know where we are going. But is it not the truth that the Monday-morning feeling gets us too? And if we really plumb those inner depths of personal honesty, the reason it gets us is that there is a vacuum inside us. We do not know where we are going. We do not have anything important or big enough to live for, nothing bigger than the next party, the next disco, or the next date.

In the 1960s and 1970s, quite a lot of young people dropped out of careers and study, part in protest, and part in despair at this sense of hopelessness. The rat-race, they said, was an exercise in futility. The 1980s witnessed a revived commitment to competing in the rat-race. But the fundamental question those earlier drop-outs asked was never really answered. What is the point of slogging your guts out for forty-two and a half hours a week, forty-nine weeks a year? Whether the job is demanding or boring, whether the atmosphere is friendly or hostile, whether the salary is high or low, surely the truth is, as Tony Hancock so sadly said, that it is all a monumental waste of time. Shakespeare expressed it eloquently when he said:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

The operative word is that final 'nothing'. The Monday-morning feeling is the stress, anxiety, and depression we feel when we are confronted with that nothingness. It is not the prospect of hard labour that moves us to bury our heads under the bedclothes, and to roll ourselves up into a secure foetal position, praying for the night to return. Rather, it is the prospect of futility. And if that analysis is correct, there is only one way to escape those Monday-morning blues. That is to discover some meaning to life. If we can find some context of hope, then not only our daily work, but every aspect of our human existence, can find meaning and direction.

It is this quest which makes the parable of the ten minas so interesting and important. In it Jesus provides us with that vital future perspective which we need to give our work significance. His tale tells us that history is going somewhere; you and I are going somewhere. Life is not just a labyrinth without an exit. There is a goal to existence. And because there is, Monday morning need never depress us again. There is something worth living for, and therefore something worth working for.

Luke sets the scene for us in the earlier part of chapter 19. Jesus tells the parable 'because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once' (verse 11).

Jesus had been travelling slowly and deliberately towards the capital city of Jerusalem for some months. Luke structures the whole of his gospel from 9:51 onwards around that journey. Among Jesus' companions there have been signs of escalating anticipation. They all sense that Jesus' life is moving towards a crisis. Everyone feels that when they get to Jerusalem something absolutely dramatic is going to happen. Here in Luke 19, they have reached Jericho, less than 20 miles from the capital, and it is clear that by now the atmosphere of expectancy has intensified to fever pitch. The people thought the kingdom of God was going to appear at any moment.

The prophets in the Old Testament had told the Jewish people about this 'kingdom' to come. It would mean that the world would be ruled not simply by God's sovereign providence the way it is now. In the kingdom of God, the world would be ruled by God's direct, theocratic command through his chosen Messiah. Some of Jesus' followers, however, were convinced that he was the Messiah. 'You've seen what miraculous signs he's been doing,' they whispered to one another. 'It can only be a few days now before he sets up the kingdom of God we've all been waiting for. I can't wait to see the look on the faces of those Roman tyrants, can you? It's nearly here!'

To give him his due, Jesus had tried on a number of occasions to put an end to such hysteria. Repeatedly he had warned his disciples that it was death that awaited him in Jerusalem, not political triumph. In fact, he had said as much just before they arrived in Jericho. But the disciples, it seems, couldn't take it in. They didn't want to accept such uncongenial words. So they did nothing to quench the rising tide of popular euphoria.

Jesus, sensing that things were getting a bit out of control, decided that he must take some action. As so often in previous situations, what he did was to tell a story, one of his matchless 'Stealth bomber' parables. In the past, he has launched these secret weapons of his in order to explode the complacency and the self-righteousness of the religious Establishment. This time, however, the target audience is different. This tale belongs to a family of parables which Jesus told, not with the purpose of challenging the Pharisees and the scribes, but rather with the purpose of instructing his own followers about the nature of the kingdom of God. As we said in chapter 1, the Jews of Jesus' day expected the kingdom of God to come in a single shattering moment, like a thunderbolt from heaven. Jesus, in his parables of the kingdom, makes it clear that God's strategy is actually going to be rather different from that popular expectation. The kingdom of God was going to come in a way unforeseen by the Jewish people: in three phases rather than in a single apocalyptic crisis.

It is this phased strategy that Jesus is hying once again to get across in the opening of this parable.

A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return

—Luke 19:12{{{4}}}

The point of the metaphor is that Jesus, heir of the world though he is, will not claim the kingdom immediately. He has a long journey to travel before he can enjoy his coronation. He must leave this world altogether. Only on his return will he be publicly enthroned. In the meantime, during the period of his absence, he is leaving those who count themselves as his servants a task.

He called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. 'Put this money to work,' he said, 'until I come back' (Luke 19:13).

If the disciples were expecting victory the moment they set foot in Jerusalem, they would be disappointed, then. Soon after they arrived there, Jesus would be leaving them. But they were not to be disheartened about that. He had a farewell endowment for them, modest by comparison with the vast wealth that he would have at his disposal when he returned in glory, but substantial enough to test the faithfulness of his servants and their sense of responsibility. In the short term, that is what the future holds for them. He is not offering them immediate access to messianic power and glory. What he is offering them is an opportunity for service.

Here then is Jesus' answer to the dreaded Monday morning feeling. Put this money to work until I come back.' This, if you like, is the Bible's work ethic. Notice, it is grounded not in mere moral duty, but in future hope. We are to put his money to work until he comes back. The final phrase is desperately important.

The world is going somewhere, the king is returning. Make the most, then, of the opportunities and the resources you have to invest in his kingdom by working hard for him. That is Jesus' message.

People divide themselves into three broad categories, depending on how they respond to that challenge. At one extreme are those who identify themselves as rebels; his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, 'We don't want this man to be our king' (Luke 19:14). Jesus' fellow countrymen would relate very easily to this scenario, because just a few years before, after the death of Herod the Great, his son Archelaus went to Rome to ask Augustus Caesar to make him king over Judea. But Herod the Great's dynasty was very unpopular among many of the Jews. The Jews therefore sent a delegation of fifty senior men to oppose the appointment. It may very well be that this rebellion in the story resonated with the Herod affair in the memories of many Jews at that time. Jesus is saying that people would reject God's Messiah too, resenting his interference in their affairs.

Some of them might cloak their rebellion in the guise of doubt or ignorance. But Jesus is adamant that the root of this resistance to his rule is not intellectual but moral. It lies not in the mind, but in the will. 'We don't want this man to be our king.' That's what they would say. Such rebels wave their impudent fists in vain. For as the story recounts, 'He was made king, however, and returned home.' Jesus' point is that nothing can stop his final triumph. Indeed, at the very end of the parable, he tells us what fate befell these rebels as a result of their unwillingness to accept the king: Those enemies of mine who did not want me to be a king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me' (Luke 19:27).

Like me, I expect you find that a very harsh ending, an ending in some ways we would rather Jesus had left out. The fact is, however, that there can be no room in the kingdom of heaven for rebels. It was rebellion against God that ruined this world in the first place. We human beings arrogantly thought that we could defy God's commandment with impunity. And look what a mess we have made of the world as a result!

God is determined that his new world is not going to suffer the same fate. It is going to be populated only by those who acknowledge, desire and appreciate his sovereign rule. The very foundation of that new age to come will be the prayer, 'Your kingdom come, your will be done' (Matthew 6:10). Those who are not willing to pray such a prayer exclude themselves from it. They make it clear that they would not be happy in his kingdom. Why, if God let them in they would ruin it within twenty-four hours! Sure, it is a harsh verdict: 'Bring them here and kill them in front of me.' But by it Jesus conveys the hard truth that if we do not want this king, then we cannot have a role in his kingdom.

A second category of people, at the other extreme, are those whom Jesus called in his parable 'the good servants'.

He sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.

The first one came and said, 'Sir, your mina has earned ten more.'

'Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied.

'Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge often cities.'

The second came and said, 'Sir, your mina has earned five more.'

His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities' (Luke 19:15-19).

Again, this is an important element of the story. For there are two mistakes people habitually make about going to heaven. The first mistake is to think that you can get to heaven by good works. The second is to think you can get to heaven without good works. There are few tensions in the Bible more important to grasp than that which holds this apparent contradiction together.

On the one hand, the Bible insists that we cannot earn our salvation. This was demonstrated in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax man in the temple. The only way any of us can be acquitted is on the basis of God's grace. Forgiveness is a gift he bestows out of all proportion to any merit we could possibly claim. On the other hand, the Bible insists also that our actions are relevant to our eternal destiny. Though we can't earn God's grace, we can and we ought to give evidence of it in our lives.

Part of the purpose of this parable in Luke 19 is to draw to our attention the importance of that practical evidence. Clearly, Jesus thinks it will not be enough on the last day simply to put our hands up and say, 'I'm here, Lord!' Rather, when the Book of Life is opened there must be something to show, some evidence of our commitment, of our faith, of our response, as in the case of this first man who comes in. 'Sir, your mina has earned ten more.'

Notice the king's response. 'Well done... good servant... you have been trustworthy.' There is ambiguity in that word translated 'trustworthy'. It can mean either 'reliable' or 'believing'. Those two meanings are of course not disconnected, for we show that we are believers by. the obedience of our lives. The two qualities hang together. In vain do we pretend that we 'trust', if we are not trustworthy servants.

Jesus, of course, is using a financial metaphor to describe the trustworthiness for which God is looking. What precisely does he mean by this 'mina' which the Master has given to his servants? Some suggest it is a symbol for the Holy Spirit, others that it symbolizes the gospel message. Still others suggest that it stands for any sort of talent, gift, or endowment that an individual might possess and hold in trust for God.

The answer is, I suppose, that it can be all of those things. The mina is what Jesus has left us with in his absence—the resources, the endowments, the charge, the mandate, which he has given us to be getting on with now that he has returned to heaven.

By the same token, the cities which are placed under the servants' jurisdiction as a reward for their faithfulness are also clearly symbolic. Jesus is not suggesting here that heaven will be territorially parcelled out as if he were Henry VIII awarding political patronage to his favourites. The cities in the story stand for the fact that the use we make of our resources and opportunities, here, in this period of time, while we're waiting for his return, can have and will have eternal consequences. It is possible, he's saying, to live here and now in such a way that heaven will be enriched for us.

How can that be? What is the nature of this reward which he pictures in the gift of cities? The Bible does not spell that out very clearly. Jesus elsewhere talks about 'laying up treasure in heaven', but never completely explains just what that celestial treasure is. What he is clear about is that it is possible to live our lives now directed in such a way that what we achieve lasts. It is not all thrown away. The mark of good servants is that they do make a wise, long-term investment.

That is good news in a world that is full of Monday morning depression. It is good news that we can work our guts out in the service of Jesus Christ, and know that this counts. As Jesus said on one occasion, 'If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones... he will certainly not lose his reward' (Matthew 10:42). Paul develops this thought in his letter to the Colossians. He says it doesn't matter what your job is, or what role you fulfil in society. You might be a slave or a master, you might be a husband or a wife, you might be a parent or a child. Every Christian can dedicate his or her role or job to Christ, and should do so. Whatever you do, he urges, do it from the heart as working for the Lord. It makes sense, he insists, because it is from the Lord that ultimately we expect our reward (Colossians 3:18—4:1).

The Christian is going somewhere, with a goal, with a hope. That means that our work has significance even though it may be mundane—even though, as in the case of a slave in the Roman Empire, it could be positively degrading.

There is a story of three workmen on a building site. A TV interviewer asks them what they are doing. The first man replies, rather unimaginatively, 'Oh, I'm breaking rock.' The second replies, somewhat more thoughtfully, 'I'm earning money to feed my wife and kids.' Then he asks the third man. 'Oh,' he says, 'I'm building a cathedral.' It makes all the difference, you see, to have a goal, to see your life in an eternal perspective, to have hope.

There is a third category of response to the challenge of the coming kingdom, however: that of the wicked servant.

Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth.

I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.'

His master replied, 'I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant!' (Luke 19:20-22).

The first thing to say about this servant is that his characterization of the master is grossly unfair. He is trying to make out that the master is some kind of vicious exploiter of the working classes, always looking to make a fast buck. But it's quite clear that he's nothing of the kind. He has entrusted ten servants with the equivalent of £50,000 or more. Remember, these were slaves—they didn't even have the status of an employee in the ancient world. Yet he commits to them this considerable wealth, putting it at their disposal to use while he's away. What's more, the reward which he grants to the first two servants on his return makes it quite clear that, far from being exploitative and ruthless, this man is a benefactor. He is only too willing to share with these slaves not just the management of his estate while it is convenient to him, but the enjoyment of his estate now that he has come into his full inheritance.

The third servant, in his acrimonious slander of the master's character, is simply projecting on to him his own mean-minded and mercenary disposition, it seems to me. He is embittered by something, perhaps his status as a slave. Maybe he feels some deep resentment at being given only £5,000 to play with, believing he could have done with more. Perhaps he is conscious that the other slaves have made rather better use of their money than he has, and feels somewhat peeved. Whatever the reason, the result is that he can't bring himself to believe in the kindness and generosity of the master. His behaviour is sulky. He wraps the money up in a handkerchief; 'I was afraid' is the excuse he offers. In a sense he was, I suppose, afraid that he might not be successful, afraid he would fail.

A traveller in the southern states of the USA once stopped in a small township. He paused to talk to one of the farmers sitting at the entrance of his home. 'How's your cotton coming along?' said the traveller.

'Ain't got none,' was the reply.

'Didn't you plant any?'

'No,' he said. 'Afraid of the boll-weevil.'

'How's your corn, then?'

'Didn't plant none. 'Fraid there weren't going to be no rain.'

'How about your potatoes?'

'Ain't got none. 'Fraid of the potato blight.'

'Well, what did you plant, then?'

'Nothin'. This year I figured I'd just play safe.'

This was the third servant's policy. He figured that he would just play safe. The irony was that he was playing very dangerously indeed. In trying to avoid the wrath of his master, which he said he feared so much, he was actually incurring that wrath to a far greater degree.

'I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn't you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?' (Luke 19:22-23).

The master responds that even if he was the cruel tyrant the servant wanted to make him out to be, he had not acted accordingly. The servant had not even lived by that partial and distorted knowledge of his master that he had. His problem was not that he feared the master too much, but that he did not fear him half enough. If he had, he would have done something with that mina he had given him, even if it was only putting it in the bank. The truth was that he was a wicked servant, looking for an excuse for his sloth, negligence and irresponsibility.

What did Jesus mean when he said that the servant could have gone to the bankers with the money? Some, no doubt, will see this statement as New Testament approval for the stock market and for finance houses. That, however, would be a most precarious conclusion to draw. If anything, in fact, this part of the story implies that taking money at interest is the action typical of an opportunist entrepreneur—the hard man who likes to gather what he has not sown, or, as we would say, get something for nothing. He is the sort of person who is interested in putting money out for interest. In Jesus' day, usury (that is, taking interest on loans) was regarded as immoral among the Jewish community. There's little doubt, therefore, that Jesus' hearers would have perceived this reference to money-lenders as pejorative.

Some have suggested therefore that in the story's original setting, the 'bankers' represent the Pharisees. It stands for those who wanted to keep the truth of God within the bounds of Israel and not share it with the world. Because a Jew couldn't lend money at interest, the only way you could have dealings with a banker was if you mixed with Gentiles. So, they suggest, what Jesus means when he says 'Go to the bankers' is 'Go to the Gentiles'. He is alluding to the responsibility the Jews bore to represent the truth of God to the pagan world, and this wicked and lazy servant hadn't done it.

There may be an element of truth in this theory, but I suspect that, certainly for us who are not first-century Jews, Jesus' teaching has a wider application than that. What he is saying, surely, is simply that there is a need for enterprise and energy in our use of the resources God has entrusted to us. By the example of his wicked servant, Jesus is warning us against insularity, parochialism, laziness, and passivity. He's telling us that we must work for his kingdom with vision and vigour. He's encouraging us to have enough confidence in God to believe that he will not treat us badly if 'in good faith' we make a mistake in our investment. God will recognize that there are risks in any enterprise. Only by taking such risks can you prosper in God's service. We mustn't allow fear to make us withdraw tortoise-like into the security of our shell. We must be prepared to commit ourselves in bold initiatives for the kingdom of God. If you like, Jesus is warning us here against an excessive conservatism. We are not, of course, rashly to throw our master's money around. That is not what he wanted from this servant. But Jesus is saying that we have a responsibility to make courageous decisions for the furthering of Christ's rule.

Some of us who are conservative theologically also tend to be conservative in every other way. We are happy to attend church every week, and to feel secure and cosy in the company of our Christian friends. Any exposure to the world, that nasty, wicked world, makes us feel decidedly uneasy. So we stay on the side-lines as spectators of the enterprise of others.

But in this tale, Jesus is surely warning us that it is only participants who win the prize. The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass has a relevant section in this connection:

Sunday January 12th. Six-fruit-gum talk on witnessing by Edwin this morning. Very good. Made you want to go straight out and witness to somebody. Drifted off into a pleasant daydream in which I began to preach in the street and ended up with a huge crowd of people all repenting in tears and being healed of their sickness just by the touch of my hand. Very near to tears myself during the chorus that followed, as I pictured myself addressing vast assemblies of needy people throughout the world. Came to with a shock as I realised that Edwin was asking for people to volunteer to do some actual street evangelism next Friday. Sat as low down in my seat as I could, trying to look like someone whose earnest desire to evangelize was thwarted by a previous appointment.

We all know that feeling. Perhaps the servant felt irritated because he hadn't been given enough resources. If only he'd been given £50,000 instead of just £5,000, he could have made a real killing on the market. But what could he do with such a measly sum? It wasn't worth even trying.

Some of us, perhaps, would say something similar of our opportunity for Christian service. 'If I could preach like Billy Graham I'd be an evangelist. If I was any good at languages I'd be a missionary. If I was musical I'd join the choir or play in a band. If I was academic I'd go to theological college. If I wasn't so shy I'd start a Bible study group in my house. But God has given me so little, it's not worth trying.'

There is a story of the two little Cockney boys who were protesting their life-long devotion to each other. The first little boy said to the other, 'Hey, Bobby, if you 'ad a million pounds, would you give me 'alf?'

''Course I would,' he said.

'What about if you 'ad a fousand pounds?'

'I'd give you 'alf just the same.'

'What about if you 'ad a fousand marbles?'

'I'd give you 'alf of 'em,' he replied.

'What about if you 'ad two marbles?'

(Pause.) 'That's jolly well not fair. You know I've got two marbles.'

God wants our two marbles. He is not interested in the hypothetical devotion which we would exercise if only we had got masses of resources, endowments and spiritual gifts at our disposal. He wants our two marbles dedicated in his service. Only thus will we have something to show, he says, on the last day, as evidence that we are men and women of faith, and trustworthy, good servants.

Then he said to those standing by, 'Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minus.'

'Sir,' they said, 'he already has ten!'

He replied, 'I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away' (Luke 19:24-26).

This is surely unfair. Why should his mina be given to the one who has already got plenty? The servant must have meant well.

Jesus, however, illustrates a spiritual principle here which he repeats many times: that you cannot find eternal life by trying to hang on to what you've got. The only people who are going to discover real life as God intends us to live it are those who are willing to throw their lives away. People who hang on to their lives, greedily hoarding what God has given them, are going to finish up losing it altogether. The people who are going to receive, paradoxically, are the people who are willing to let go, to put at risk themselves and what God has given them. There is no special half-way house on the day of judgment for those who meant well.

Luke's account of the story actually leaves the final destiny of this man in some doubt. He does seem to draw a line between the fate of the wicked servant who forfeits his reward and the fate of the rebels who forfeit their lives, but it may not be wise to pin too much hope on that distinction. For in Matthew's version of this same story, there is a far less optimistic end. 'Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matthew 25:30).

The irony of this faithless servant is that in trying to avoid taking risks, he was in fact taking the biggest gamble of all—gambling with his soul.

It will soon be Monday again! We could wake up depressed and miserable as people who are going nowhere, or motivated and ambitious as people who know we're going somewhere. The choice is ours.