After doing this (giving them this exhortation on almsgiving), Jesus now moves directly into 2 parables about the final judgment, or about his second coming, or about the coming of the son of man. And you might think, well what do those have to do with each other? I’m going to come back to that in just a minute. For now, let’s just walk through each one of the parables. The first one is the parable of the Return of the Master. So here he’s trying to exhort his disciples to be awake and to be prepared for the coming of the son of man at the final judgment. And in order to do that he uses this parable of servants who are awake, waiting for their master to return from a wedding feast. So he says to his disciples, “let your loins be girded and your lamps burning and be like servants who are waiting for their master to come home from a wedding feast.” So what does Jesus mean “let your loins be girded and your lamps be burning”? These are just two images of being prepared. So if a person was about to travel, they would not let their undergarment (their undercloak) hang loose. They would gird it up so that they could walk, travel or run more easily. So an image of being prepared to travel would be to have your loins girded. And then of course, your lamp burning, this is an image of the servant keeping the lamp lit so that when the master comes home in the dark he can see his way. We still say this today, you know, “leave the light on for me”. So these are both images of preparedness, but in this case Jesus is comparing the coming of the son of man at the final judgment to the return of a master from a wedding feast.
I’ve probably talked about this in other videos before, but ancient Jewish wedding feasts were very elaborate productions. They were normally seven days long. And then one of the main celebrations, the night of the consummation of the bridegroom and the bride, would take place when the groom and the bride (especially the bride) would be carried in procession to the groom’s house into a huppah, or a bride chamber, and there they would consummate the marriage on the wedding night. So they were, in other words, celebrations that could go late into the night. So the image here is that the master is coming back from a wedding feast and his servants are waiting at his home, ready for him. So Jesus pronounces a beatitude on the servants who are ready for the master when he returns. “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes…” But notice here (I’ve said this before in other videos), there’s almost always a twist to Jesus’ parables. There’s something unexpected. We’ll here’s the twist, he says when the master comes and finds them awake, “Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at the table and he will come and serve them.” Now this never would happen in an ancient setting, that the master would gird himself with a towel. This is an image of foot washing, like in the Gospel of John; Jesus girds himself with a towel and then he washes the feet of his disciples. That was a task of a slave to their master. So when the master would come home, the slave would have their loins girt, they’d be girded with a towel (that’s how you knew who the slave was, the person wearing a towel), and then they’d use the towel in a basin of water to wash the feet of the master.
But here Jesus is saying, if you are awake when the master comes home, he will take a towel, gird himself, and wash your feet and set you a table and act as if you’re the master and he is the servant. So there’s the twist to this very mysterious parable. He gives this beatitude of those servants who will stay up even to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th watch. So in the ancient world they didn’t have clocks, so the night was divided into various watches of the night. So you have the 1st watch, the 2nd watch, the 3rd watch. These are basically like 3 hour periods of dividing up the night into different portions. So each servant would take a post, so to speak, at the different watches of the night. And so Jesus is commending those servants who stay awake throughout the night waiting for the master to come home, and how they would be rewarded. Now (pause there), that’s the level of the parable. Obviously he’s talking about the coming of the son of man. So it’s interesting here that the image he uses is a wedding feast and sitting at table, the master serving them at table. These are both interesting because elsewhere Jesus will compare the kingdom of God itself to a wedding banquet, the celebration of the union of a bridegroom and his bride. So this plays into a theme we’ll see elsewhere in the gospels, that the kingdom of Heaven isn’t just eternal life, it’s an everlasting wedding feast where the divine bridegroom is united to his bride. But the other dimension of that is that here Jesus compares this coming of the master to a banquet, although it’s a banquet in which the master will act as if he is the servant and the servants will sit at table and he will serve them and feed them.
Well this is a Eucharistic image when you really get down to it because what Jesus is describing here (in the parable) is what he’s going to do at the last supper, when he’s going to take the bread and wine in the last supper and say that this is his body offered for the disciples. So I just bring this up not because it’s the primary meaning, but it’s a kind of secondary connotation. The primary meaning is that you need to be ready for the coming of the son of man and the coming of the kingdom of God like servants who are ready for their master to return. But there are echoes also of Jesus’ identity as the bridegroom, of the kingdom as a wedding feast and even of the imagery of the Eucharistic table of the Lord as a place where the Lord acts as a servant and offer’s himself to his own disciples.
After doing this (giving them this exhortation on almsgiving), Jesus now moves directly into 2 parables about the final judgment, or about his second coming, or about the coming of the son of man. And you might think, well what do those have to do with each other? I’m going to come back to that in just a minute. For now, let’s just walk through each one of the parables. The first one is the parable of the Return of the Master. So here he’s trying to exhort his disciples to be awake and to be prepared for the coming of the son of man at the final judgment. And in order to do that he uses this parable of servants who are awake, waiting for their master to return from a wedding feast. So he says to his disciples, “let your loins be girded and your lamps burning and be like servants who are waiting for their master to come home from a wedding feast.” So what does Jesus mean “let your loins be girded and your lamps be burning”? These are just two images of being prepared. So if a person was about to travel, they would not let their undergarment (their undercloak) hang loose. They would gird it up so that they could walk, travel or run more easily. So an image of being prepared to travel would be to have your loins girded. And then of course, your lamp burning, this is an image of the servant keeping the lamp lit so that when the master comes home in the dark he can see his way. We still say this today, you know, “leave the light on for me”. So these are both images of preparedness, but in this case Jesus is comparing the coming of the son of man at the final judgment to the return of a master from a wedding feast.
I’ve probably talked about this in other videos before, but ancient Jewish wedding feasts were very elaborate productions. They were normally seven days long. And then one of the main celebrations, the night of the consummation of the bridegroom and the bride, would take place when the groom and the bride (especially the bride) would be carried in procession to the groom’s house into a huppah, or a bride chamber, and there they would consummate the marriage on the wedding night. So they were, in other words, celebrations that could go late into the night. So the image here is that the master is coming back from a wedding feast and his servants are waiting at his home, ready for him. So Jesus pronounces a beatitude on the servants who are ready for the master when he returns. “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes…” But notice here (I’ve said this before in other videos), there’s almost always a twist to Jesus’ parables. There’s something unexpected. We’ll here’s the twist, he says when the master comes and finds them awake, “Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at the table and he will come and serve them.” Now this never would happen in an ancient setting, that the master would gird himself with a towel. This is an image of foot washing, like in the Gospel of John; Jesus girds himself with a towel and then he washes the feet of his disciples. That was a task of a slave to their master. So when the master would come home, the slave would have their loins girt, they’d be girded with a towel (that’s how you knew who the slave was, the person wearing a towel), and then they’d use the towel in a basin of water to wash the feet of the master.
But here Jesus is saying, if you are awake when the master comes home, he will take a towel, gird himself, and wash your feet and set you a table and act as if you’re the master and he is the servant. So there’s the twist to this very mysterious parable. He gives this beatitude of those servants who will stay up even to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th watch. So in the ancient world they didn’t have clocks, so the night was divided into various watches of the night. So you have the 1st watch, the 2nd watch, the 3rd watch. These are basically like 3 hour periods of dividing up the night into different portions. So each servant would take a post, so to speak, at the different watches of the night. And so Jesus is commending those servants who stay awake throughout the night waiting for the master to come home, and how they would be rewarded. Now (pause there), that’s the level of the parable. Obviously he’s talking about the coming of the son of man. So it’s interesting here that the image he uses is a wedding feast and sitting at table, the master serving them at table. These are both interesting because elsewhere Jesus will compare the kingdom of God itself to a wedding banquet, the celebration of the union of a bridegroom and his bride. So this plays into a theme we’ll see elsewhere in the gospels, that the kingdom of Heaven isn’t just eternal life, it’s an everlasting wedding feast where the divine bridegroom is united to his bride. But the other dimension of that is that here Jesus compares this coming of the master to a banquet, although it’s a banquet in which the master will act as if he is the servant and the servants will sit at table and he will serve them and feed them.
Well this is a Eucharistic image when you really get down to it because what Jesus is describing here (in the parable) is what he’s going to do at the last supper, when he’s going to take the bread and wine in the last supper and say that this is his body offered for the disciples. So I just bring this up not because it’s the primary meaning, but it’s a kind of secondary connotation. The primary meaning is that you need to be ready for the coming of the son of man and the coming of the kingdom of God like servants who are ready for their master to return. But there are echoes also of Jesus’ identity as the bridegroom, of the kingdom as a wedding feast and even of the imagery of the Eucharistic table of the Lord as a place where the Lord acts as a servant and offer’s himself to his own disciples.
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