Good morning and welcome to Tuesday foundations podcast. Wherever and whenever you find yourself tuning in today, we pray as a team that God speaks to you and encourages you through these reflections.

REFLECTION:

Here’s a question for us all to consider today….How do we wait well?

Waiting is something we’ve experienced an awful lot this year! Right now we’re in the middle of Lockdown 2.0 and it feels like we are waiting again. Waiting for restrictions to be lifted.  Waiting to hear about what plans we can make for Christmas – whether we will be able to be with our families. Waiting to hear about when a vaccine will be available, who might receive it first or how long it will take to roll out. Maybe you are self isolating right now and you are waiting, literally counting down the days until that period comes to an end. These are just some of the challenges of this particular season. We all find that there are things or period in our lives which require us to wait.

If we’re really honest, and I’m speaking for me personally here as well, waiting is not something we’re generally very good at. It’s not something that we enjoy doing. It’s something we’d rather skip over or fast forward through if we could.

Jesus, in today’s passage, is teaching his disciples about how we should approach a period of waiting. If we look at back at yesterday’s passage, Jesus is speaking here about his return, his second coming. And we think this is confusing and it’s hard to grasp. Imagine being a disciple and still having Jesus with you whilst he’s saying all this. Incredibly, it would seem that there were things about His return that even Jesus didn’t know…like the when. That knowledge alone he tells them, in verse 36, is reserved for the Father.

But what Jesus did know – is that his friends were going to really find it hard when he left them and so he began to teach them about how they were to approach that next period when he was absent and they were waiting. Over the next two days we see Jesus speak out a series of parables to unpack this further– two of which we have in today’s passage. For us today in Sheffield, in the year that is 2020….we’re asking the question what can we learn from these verses about how we as Jesus disciples might approach our own period of waiting?

Jesus says this in verse 42: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”

The first thing we see is that as his followers times of waiting are also times of watching. Jesus speaks about this in the terms of owning a home. That the owner doesn’t know if and when their house might be broken in to but if they did, they’d keep watch during the night so that they were ready and alert to the danger of any intruder. This image of being vigilant and on guard against an enemy threat we see used a number of times in the Old Testament too – think the watchmen on the city walls. Waiting involves watching

Then in the second parable, Jesus speaks about two different servants given the task of managing the household in the absence of the boss. One servant works hard, stewards the responsibility and resources he has been given well. Jesus says of this good servant – reading from verse 46: It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. The other servant in the absence of the master’s direction becomes abusive to his fellow co-workers and lazy about his work – spending his time eating and drinking to excess only to find that when his master returns he is called to account for his actions. The final verse of this passage paints a frightening picture of the impending judgement upon that wicked servant. Faithful waiting also involves working.

So, what do these two parables have to say to us today – in the midst of lockdown, in this time of waiting?

Jesus shows us that we are to be watchful, awake and alert.