16.07 | A Mina in the Hand
Luke 19:11-48
‘He said: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’”’
Luke 19:12-13
There’s two ways to read a parable.
The first is to sit, reading as the scholarly and the detached—looking for theoretical principles, academic understanding, or interesting ideas to strengthen your theology (or counter those whose theology you disagree with).
It’s a popular choice. There have been many who have walked this path of the Christian theorist.
The other way is immersion. It is to view the parable, not as an exercise of the academic, but as a story that invites you to leap into its pages. It is to view the parable as a framing story—a metaphor for your life, right now, with your challenges and hopes and priorities and choices, that you might find direction for your life within its framework. The one who reads this way may not leave with all the arguments of the theorist, but they will leave with the rugged hands of a disciple—their own life re-framed again to the metaphors of Jesus, ready to walk the next steps in His Way.
The parable of the ten minas invites immersion.
It invites us to consider that we are positioned in a time of waiting. Our King has journeyed to a distant land, and thus maybe it is unsurprising that He sometimes will feel distant. When He feels distant, that may not be a failure of our spiritual performance, but an honest aching of the heart for the reconciliation that we long for. And yet, it invites us to recognise that His return is coming, and that faithful waiting means daily choices oriented towards this return. It means all things and all decisions lived towards Him, even when He feels distant.
It invites us to recognise that we live in an environment hostile to His rule. His citizens hated him. Whether we live in the heartlands of Christendom, or the midst of persecution and oppression, we live in a world that will use religion to suit its own purposes and power games—using any means to supplant the reign of God with the Empires of corruption and the egotistical ambitions of humankind.
It invites us to look into our hands, and see that the King has placed a mina there. Ten servants. Ten minas. It asks the question of what He has put into our hands today. What skills? What gifts? What resources? What opportunities? It invites us not to count our poverty (because any servant with only one mina can spend time wishing they had five, or ten, or a thousand…), but—accepting that limitation is a universal human experience—to count what He has placed into these hands in this moment. This is our starting point for our every moment.
And it brings us to a binary choice that we meet every single day: risk, or hide. Creativity, or fear. Getting into the marketplace with an asset, or digging a hole to protect a liability. And it reveals in us, in each of these moments, that our real tussle is with our understanding of the character of the King. For the goodness of the King is the atmosphere for our creativity. And the expectation of His critique is the crippling assumption of the fearful.
Be encouraged. Don’t be distracted by the harsh words from the master in the story. Jesus often used ordinary (and imperfect) human responses in His parables, and yet every parable can only be a limited window into the heart of the Father. And do not be too surprised of the outcome, for the Scriptures always describe a life without God as leading away from life.
Your story today is reframed. There’s a mina in your hands. And your good King invites you out of the suffocating fear of the hiding, into the expansive living of the beloved.
Reflect:
What is in my hand today?
What would it look like to bury it?
What would it look like to put it to work?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
You feel more distant than I want you to be,
And I miss you.
I await your return.
Help me to grow,
Not in apathy and despair,
But in hunger and desire
And in a life lived in the waiting.
And King Jesus,
I’ve a mina in my hand here.
There’s days when burying it looks appealing—
Hiding feels safer than speaking,
And the risk of loss feels greater
Than the risk of living a half-life.
And yet,
Today,
I lift my eyes again.
I take this mina,
And I put it to work.
Empower the work of these hands,
That my little acts of creative courage,
May generate yield for your Kingdom,
In the daily anticipation
Of your Well Done.
In Your Name,
And awaiting your return,
My King Jesus,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Isaiah 65-66 | Proverbs 19:1-10