No servant can serve two masters… Luke 16:13 (MSG)
Light and Heavy – Small Things Series – Part 5
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6
There’s a method in Rabbinic literature used to prove a point by saying if a small thing is true, a greater thing is even more true. It’s showing how big something is by comparing it to something smaller. It’s called “Kal v’homer’ and it literally means “light and heavy.” Jesus used this method in his teaching a lot, as did all the Rabbis.
Eg. “Consider the lilies of the field… If God clothes them, how much more will He clothe you?” (Luke 12).
And,
“For the sons of darkness are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” (Luke 16:8).
And,
“No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Mammon – see yesterday’s devotion).” (Luke 16:13).
Light and heavy.
Jesus wasn’t giving his listeners a dualistic ultimatum. He knew that life wasn’t like that. Can’t be like that. It’s not as black and white as we would like to think it is. The Parable of the Dishonest Manager shows us that. Jesus used this method of “Kal v’homer,” a light and heavy comparison, as a way to hold the tension, to show how much distance there is between the two.
Tell me: Are you faithful in ALL the little things of your life? And does that mean you graduate to bigger things? And only those who are 100% faithful in the small get the much?
I don’t find life to be like that. I’m not like that. In some area’s of my life, I rock it, smash it, Queen E (full name is Elizabeth) and all that. And other areas? Slothful, worm-like, pitiful, perhaps even untrustworthy (have I told you about the time I told a whole room full of my people that my best friend was pregnant when she was keeping it a secret? yep.)
Light and dark exist within me at the same time. There’s a tension between the two. Will I serve the bottomless hunger of greed and profit and getting ahead? Will I allow shame to dictate my actions? Or can I, at any moment, choose? It’s not a once-made always-made choice. It’s a decision I must continue to live into.
The tension brings me back to centre.
Not in a compromise, 50/50 kind of way. But in the sense that by holding them in both hands, I can see more clearly what to do in this current moment. That’s what the Dishonest Manager did. He stuffed up, got caught out, and brought shame on himself and his employer. But he owned it; he worked with it and through it.
The small things are the big things because the tension and weight of one impacts and influences the other.
Go to Part 6 – Making Things Right »
Written by Lizzy Milani
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