Slavery – Unfromme thoughts to Luke 17,1-10
If you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘ We are unprofitable servants; we have only done what was our duty. (The gospel of Luke 17,10)
Why indignant to me, this sentence ever since I met him for the first Time knew have you heard? At that time, I was a Teenager, I had done a difficult job fairly well, and sunned myself a bit in the success of luck. Because of this set, such as a wet towel around the ears, I was struck: don’t get any on your work; you’re not more than a useless servant who has done his duty.
The sat. In this position, I experienced father and mother who were always the light of their achievements under a bushel… and then below it suffered if the world has not noticed you around this light. I myself have long used to stand at ease my own Successes to. Today, where almost everything revolves around power and success, is listening to the sentence of the unprofitable servants hardly. But why, then, my indignation, which always comes back up when I read this sentence?
Obviously had, and also the other with the Image of the unprofitable servant (Luke 17,7-10) have your trouble: The Greek Text speaks of “doulos” (to 17.7.9) and “douloi achreioi” (17,10), i.e. of useless slaves. So you are reading it in various German Translations. Martin Luther, according to translated time time with useless servants; later Translations followed him[1].
In the time of Luke, it was clear what were “douloi”: slaves and women slaves, could easily be the man, be agreed; speaking tools and animated things, they were in the eyes of their owners, and owners, to exploit at will, without rights, absolutely dependent, and unfree. Some of it went in the slavery better, because they could be due to their Origin and their formation is different than the army to the slaves, who had to up to the exhaustion of toil[2].
Luke 17,7-10 has such a slave to everyday life in the view: Someone has a slave and draws the greatest possible Benefit from him. He lets him work in the field, then do the domestic work. Only after the food is cooked for him and served, like the slave self-sufficient. Gratitude and appreciation does not deserve a slave. – This is a common slave mentality, whether in ancient times or in the presence of: Profit to be made from what has been brought into his possession. And a slave, don’t Benefit more, is a useless slave, which gets rid of best lucrative.
Jesus, as he is brought up in this short Episode, Luke to Talk to, forces his listeners with rhetorical questions in the slave perspective support: Thanks about the slaves because he did what was commanded? (17,9) – not Determined. And in the next Moment, he assigns them a Slave and a slave with attitude: So it’s supposed to be, When you have done all that was commanded you, that ye ought to say, ‘ We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty. The devaluation has to follow the self-depreciation.
What to do with such a thought? Fortunately, as in the Slave parables in other Places in the New Testament[3] is not in this Episode from the Kingdom of heaven. God does not come into play. He is not the slave owner.
It is a matter of domination and Violence in the world, in the municipality of Luke’s is located, and to create their well-being[4]. The apostles (17,5) are provoked by the logic of these conditions to agree to. And then you will be asked to put themselves in the slave status.
The to sympathize with the slaves, the victims of Violence, with those forced to the edge and down, is a basic feature of biblical ethics, and, perhaps, hard perspective to change, as here, the impulse for the early Christians to reconsider gradually the self-evident attitude to slavery, and to see slaves differently[5].
And perhaps the outrage that the sentence of the unprofitable servant triggers in me is the bitter realisation that, in the world, and the native Church of the slave-holding mentality of the slavish attitude is overcome, and I myself have to leave me requests, when I play the one or the other role.
Lukas I don’t have to let me say that I come out from the structural injustice in the here and now without assistance and without the Knowledge of my own addiction. But he provides me with at least one other role in view, when he says that we are in the sight of God as the children of resurrection, children of God (cf. Luke 20,36). I can live with that.
Dr. theol. Hildegard king, apl. Professor of Church history at the Institute for Catholic theology at the TU Dresden. Lives in Chemnitz.
Church Responsibility: Martin Cords, A Catholic Station Officer
[1] The unit of translation in 1980, spoke of the unprofitable servant, the Revision of 2016 speaks of useless servants
[2] Cf. to this end, Kessler, Rainer, art. slavery (AT), in: The scientific Bible dictionary on the Internet (www.wibilex.de) in 2019. Access to the 22.9.2019. As well as Hanna Roose, art. slavery (NT), in: The scientific Bible dictionary on the Internet (www.wibilex.de) in 2019. Access to the 22.9.2019.
[3] Cf. for example, Lk 19,11-27; Mt 18,23-35; Mk 13,33-37.
[4] Cf. the remarks on the rank of the dispute of the Disciples Lk 9,45-48; Lk 22,24-27; cf. the comments to the places of Honour at the feast Lk 14,7-11.
[5] Cf. Grieser, Heike Hilpert, Konrad, Lauth, Hand-Joachim, article slave, slavery; in: LThK 3Bd. 9, 1993, 655-659.