While the people were listening to these things (“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”), Jesus proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.
Note that he told a parable because a) he was near Jerusalem and b) the people had some thoughts about the Kingdom of God appearing. We will come back to that.
Therefore he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. And he summoned ten of his slaves, gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to be king over us!’
When he returned after receiving the kingdom, he summoned these slaves to whom he had given the money. He wanted to know how much they had earned by trading. So the first one came before him and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And the king said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been faithful in a very small matter, you will have authority over ten cities.’
Then the second one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made five minas.’ So the king said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ Then another slave came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina that I put away for safekeeping in a piece of cloth. For I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You withdraw what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.’
The king said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! So you knew, did you, that I was a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow? Why then didn’t you put my money in the bank, so that when I returned I could have collected it with interest?’ And he said to his attendants, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has ten.’
But they said to him, ‘Sir, he has ten minas already!” He replied, ‘I tell you that everyone who has will be given more, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and slaughter them in front of me!’ “ After Jesus had said this, he continued on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
This parable just sits there between the calling of Nicodemus and the entrance to Jerusalem starting the final week of Jesus’ life. It feels awkward and disjointed. But, since Luke committed to writing “an orderly account,” there must be something here that’s an important part of an ongoing bigger story.
On the one hand, there’s a practical reading that looks at stewardship: If God gives you provision and talents, use them to multiply the kingdom. That’s a common teaching taken from this parable. I agree with the principle of that teaching, though I’’m not sure I would take it from this parable.
First, though it’s popular to see Jesus as the king figure in this parable, it is hard for me to conceive that Jesus would be the ruler who has left and then returns. His character and nature are not like the third servant describes (“a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow).
Second, if that ruler is Jesus, the parable suggests that when God gives the gifts of the Kingdom to his children, if they don't double what he gives them, God gets so angry that he destroys them. If Jesus is God in the flesh – so, God is like Jesus - that doesn't track with anything we have seen about Jesus so far. We just read Jesus saying to Zacchaeus, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” not punish the fearful.
Third, I'm not sure what to think about the teaching of those having much getting more and those having little losing what they have. Didn’t we just hear about the lost sheep, and lost coin, and the two lost sons, and God pursues and loves them? If the ruler is Jesus, this is joltingly the opposite. He has kept calling his disciples “you of little faith,” and he didn’t throw them away. He discipled them.
The best explanation I have found involves a historical event that happened around the time of Jesus. When Herod the Great died (this is the Herod the Sadducees convinced to be the “King of the Jews” and who controlled the Temple priests), he willed his kingdom to his three sons. The three sons sailed to Rome on three different ships to bring gifts to Caesar and ask him to honor their father’s will. The Jewish Pharisees sent a delegation on a fourth ship to plead with Caesar not to make Antipas king.
As a result, Caesar decided to name Anitpas a “tetrarch” (just lower than a king). Antipas blamed the Jews for the decision; when he got back, he made an example of the Jews who were left at home and slaughtered them by the thousands. When Jesus stands in front of Herod in the final week of his life, he is standing in front of (drumroll) Herod Antipas.
I am leaning heavily toward the notion that Jesus is challenging how those who “thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately” expected the kingdom of God to appear. I think they wanted him to take it like a Herod would take it, and Jesus is having none of it.
Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem for Passover. He has a huge crowd of disciples, and they lead the adoring crowds in welcoming him into Jerusalem as a king. All the kingly symbols are there:
the cloaks on the ground (what the people did for Jehu in 2 Kings 9:13–14)
palm branches (1 Maccabees 13:51 records the use of palm branches in a celebration of Judas the Hammer, a Zealot who led the Maccabean Revolt)
crying Hosanna (“Help us!”)
saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (also what they said of Jehu)
Jesus riding donkey (Zechariah 9:9)
They thought they might finally be getting a King, a deliverer who would set up an earthy kingdom by copying Rome’s pax romana (“peace by the sword”). They didn’t like Rome, but they had no problem with THEIR guy using the tools and method of Rome to bring about THEIR own kingdom. But…this is the thing about Rome.
Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks. #parablereference
Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them. #parablereference
Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery. #parablereference
When Jesus sees his people welcome him with a not so subtle reference to take out Rome with Rome’s methods, here is how he responds:
Now when Jesus approached and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you had only known on this day, even you, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and surround you and close in on you from every side. They will demolish you—you and your children within your walls—and they will not leave within you one stone on top of another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)
Why is this going to happen? They have the wrong idea about what will bring peace because “they did not recognize the time of their visitation from God.” The visitation of God is Jesus; Jesus is telling them what will bring peace, and they are not picking up what he is laying down.
History had shown that, at the end of the day, the Jewish people kept defaulting to the path of the Zealots. When Jesus read from Isaiah in his hometown and declared the year of the Lord’s favor but left off the line about God’s vengeance,[1] his hometown tried to kill him because they knew what he was saying. God’s favor was going to become available to all, and they were not okay with that. God was going to bring peace by reconciling everyone first to Himself and then to each other, and that meant nobody was going to pay for the crimes done against them.
For many of them (the Zealots for sure), the kingdom of God would arrive by taking the sword to those who hurt them. And that's what a Caesar or a Nero would do. That’s what happened in Jesus’ parable. That’s what Antipas did to those who displeased him. And this is the approach the Jewish people kept revisiting over and over. Even the non-Zealots seemed to keep rallying around the sword to solve their problems and usher in the Kingdom of God.
We've got good biblical reason to believe that this Zealot thread kept running through Jesus’ disciples no matter how often he taught and lived differently.
I’ve noted before that that Judas and Simon were both zealots. Judas had a nickname “Iscariot,” a nickname that seems to place him among the sicarii, one of the "dagger-men" of the Zealots who had committed to killing Roman soldiers whenever he could with his dagger that shared his nickname. I'm leaning more and more toward the idea that when we get to the last week in the life of Jesus, Judas was intending to be the spark that started the revolution.
Judas knew that if he went to the high priests, they would come for Jesus. Remember, the high priests are the Sadducees. They love Rome, and they have been trying to kill Jesus because Jesus is putting their status with Rome in jeopardy. At one point Caiaphas tells the Sanhedrin that it’s better to kill one person, Jesus, than to have them all killed.[2] Judas knows that the Sadducees’ private army of bodyguards will have no problem pulling a sword on Jesus. They had a reputation for doing that kind of thing to those who crossed the Sadducees.
It’s an odd collaboration. The Zealots hated the Sadducees because they were such compromisers. Clearly, Judas is just using them. The text doesn't say this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were Zealots hiding nearby, waiting for the fight to begin. What a shock it must have been when Peter - who brought a sword to a garden prayer time? - starts the fight and Jesus promptly stops it.
Let's fast forward to the trial where Herod does what Herod always did at Passover, which was to offer a released prisoner to the Jewish people. He gives them the option of Jesus the Christ or Jesus Barabbas. The crowd chooses Barabbas, who had been arrested because he had already engaged in violent insurrection. They want their Zealot who knows how to fight on their terms.
I suspect part of the reason Jesus wept was because he knew what would happen when God’s people try to bring about the Kingdom of God at the edge of a sword. He warned Peter: “You live by it, you die by it.” Why are the Jewish people slaughtered and the Temple destroyed in AD 70? The Zealots keep pushing and pushing and pushing until Rome snapped.
So, full circle back to the parable. I think Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and he reminded them of what Herod was like, and how empires work. He will never be that kind of King, and his kingdom should never be that kind of Kingdom.
* * * * *
I've been thinking a lot this week about what principles we take away from this. If you recall, the Jewish people wrestled with three responses to the question, “What do we do with Rome?”
Compromise, embrace it, learn to love it (Sadducees and Herodians)
Retreated and just focus on being holy (Essenes and Pharisees)
Fight Rome with the weapons of Rome (Zealots)
Jesus has challenged all of these approaches throughout the course of his ministry. He doesn't retreat from the culture around him; instead he goes to the Gentiles (Samaritans and Romans). He doesn't embrace the culture; he embraces the people in the culture as individuals and calls them to follow him. He doesn't pick up a sword – unless it’s the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, which he seem him wielding in Revelation. Let’s go back to what characterized Rome and Herod Antipas.
Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks.
Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them.
Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery.
How is Jesus a different kind of King?
·Those outside the kingdom were not destroyed in the process of expanding the kingdom. They were literally still alive to have access to the Kingdom. Jesus just kept inviting himself to the home of the sinner, the Samaritan, the tax collector. He kept inviting people. The banquet table has enough seats for everybody.
On the cross, he asks God to forgive those who crucified him rather than asking him to smite them. He will restore Peter, who might have betrayed him more than Judas when he called down curses and said, “I don’t know my own rabbi.” Okay, important trivia (?) When Jesus rose, the women at the grave were told to take the news “to the disciples and Peter.”[3] It’s only been three days. Why isn’t Peter just assumed to still be a disciple? Because he denied and cursed his rabbi. He was done. There was no coming back from that. When Jesus sees him again, where is he? Back to fishing. He was done. AND JESUS RESTORES HIM. This is not an earthly kingdom; this is a heavenly kingdom.
Jesus was not about rewarding the competent and punishing the incompetent #peteronceagain. Remember the Parable of the Two Brothers (Prodigal Son). Remember the Parable of Workers working all day vs. one hour. Jesus is excited about giving everyone the spiritual spoils of the Kingdom, whether they are crushing it or floundering or lost like that sheep. Everybody sits at the banquet table. Surely there is reward in walking in the Path of Life as we harvest what we have planted, but God is not a stingy and petty God, turning his nose up at the Samaritan and tax collector and prodigal. He came to seek and to save the lost, after all. That’s what he loves to do.
Let's see if we can make this practical for our situation today.
We are not living in a nation that brings a sword against followers of Jesus like Herod Antipas. We do, however, live in a culture that will at times challenge us on aspects of what we believe or how we believe we should live our faith. How do we respond to living in spiritually occupied territory of Babylon/Rome (to use Revelation’s imagery)?
I'm hearing rumbles in some circles that we might be looking at a time that is ripe for a second Civil War. It's often accompanied with the stated desire to get America back to Judeo/Christian roots even if it requires violence, as if we can spread or solidify the Kingdom of God at the point of a sword. That just doesn't sound like Jesus. That sounds like Judas.
But there's also a level to this that stops short of violence physical violence. I'm thinking now of emotional, verbal and maybe even spiritual violence. When we talk about the culture wars, we can mean one of two things.
We can mean that there is a clash anytime Christians live in spaces with non-Christians simply because we are going to value different things for different reasons, and we are going to offer our worship and allegiance to different gods or idols. In that sense, yeah, there's going to be a war in the sense that there is conflict and tension. Legit. This has always been true.
We can also use Culture Wars to mean it is time for us to get out there and fight fight fight – but…. it's not usually accompanied with language asking what it looks to fight like Jesus. It's usually much more pragmatic Zealotry, with a physical or symbolic peace by the sword in that the ends will justify the means if we aren’t careful. A public figure who aligns with Christians noted recently, in reference to the aforementioned culture wars, “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing…”
But here's the reality. The means determine who we are in the end. If we fight like Rome to further the Kingdom of God, the society we usher in will just be Rome by another name. And if this is our hope, we will constantly be searching for peace and not finding peace because we didn't fight like Jesus as we pointed toward Jesus. The apostle Paul – who knew a thing or two about fighting battles in the wrong way - reminded us how to fight like Jesus, for Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, draw your strength and might from God. Put on the full armor of God to protect yourselves from the devil and his evil schemes. We’re not waging war against enemies of flesh and blood alone. No, this fight is against tyrants, against authorities, against supernatural powers and demon princes that slither in the darkness of this world, and against wicked spiritual armies that lurk about in heavenly places. And this is why you need to be head-to-toe in the full armor of God: so you can resist during these evil days and be fully prepared to hold your ground. Yes, stand—truth banded around your waist, righteousness as your chest plate, and feet protected in preparation to proclaim the good news of peace. Don’t forget to raise the shield of faith above all else, so you will be able to extinguish flaming spears hurled at you from the wicked one. Take also the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray always. Pray in the Spirit. Pray about everything in every way you know how! And keeping all this in mind, prayon behalf of God’s people. Keep on praying feverishly, and be on the lookout until evil has been stayed. (Ephesians 6:10-18)
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[1] Luke 4
[2] John 11:45-57
[3] Mark 16:7