“Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Such are the accolades poured down upon Jesus as he proceeded to Jerusalem at the beginning of his “passion week.” Hopes were high that he was the looked-for inheritor of David’s throne. He certainly had done things that no one else had done, things that heralded the reign of the promised one. The signs were there: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” He must be the one! “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
But as was often the case for those who encountered Jesus, the enthused people failed to grasp all that was going on. They were right to hail him as king, but the fulfillment of his reign was not to be realized in the days that immediately followed. This they needed to understand so that they might be prepared for his return. On that day, he will come not on a donkey “having salvation,” but astride a white horse to “tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” To press this point he told a parable.
The nobleman of the parable was going to “a far country” where he would “receive a kingdom” and return. If they were listening, what they needed to grasp was the fact that upon his return the nobleman would settle accounts. The metaphor Jesus used was the nobleman entrusting money into his servants’ hands with the expectation that they would “engage in business” until he returned. There were others in the parable who, like the religious leaders of Jesus day, rejected outright the nobleman being vested with authority to rule over them. These, too, would be called to account.
The nobleman’s dealings with his servants, however, is most applicable to us in his church. What he gave them was something with innate capacity to bring a return (as the saying goes, “the rich get richer . . .’). For the church, it’s not money that has been entrusted, but things of far greater value, all with innate capacity to bring him a return: his story, his Spirit, and his reputation. How we have stewarded these precious commodities is what we will have to answer for upon his return. By his grace, we strive to hear, “Well done, good servant!”
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