do your job

In Jesus' teaching, there are two parables about servants who are charged with doing their job in the absence of their master. The Parable of The Talents has two servants who do well and enter into the joy of their Master and one who does nothing and ends up with nothing. The Parable of the Minas is very similar, but it has a twist at the beginning and the end, which has significant meaning for us today.

The Master with the minas also goes away, giving each of his servants ten minas.  But then we hear that the Master's subjects, who are not His servants, hate him, letting him know they don't want him to be their king.  Whom do these subjects represent?  

Whereas a talent had monetary value for Romans and Greeks, a mina was an ancient form of measure used by the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day.  As we know, they were not particularly fond of Jesus: they hated Him and certainly didn't want Him to be "the King of the Jews."  This is the hostile environment in which Jesus' disciples were called to serve Him.

So what did those servants with minas do when faced with this antipathy toward their Master?  They just did their job.  Most of them put their resources to work, making more for the Master.  They didn't attack those who hated their Master and them; they left that judgment to the Master, who took care of it in the end.  And such was the case with those first servants of Jesus.

We live in an age that is increasingly hostile to our Master and to us, His servants.  Though we may be tempted to attack these rebellious subjects of His, Jesus invites us to just do our job.  We are to love Him with everything we have and do, and to love these neighbors as we love ourselves.  We are to make disciples of them, not further alienate them from our Master and theirs.  When He returns, may He find us doing what He asks us to do and not wasting His resources on projects with no value.