The Coffee Shop Assistant is based on Luke 17: 7-10
Does this Parable Need Retelling?
This master-servant parable can no longer be told without an explanation. Without some kind of commentary, sermon, or discussion, the hearers are likely to think that the master is cruel and demanding. The poor servant is both unfairly treated and downtrodden, with no sense of self-worth.
When there is time to unpack the parable, this is fine. When there isn’t time to unpack, to show that this isn’t the case, an ‘instantly understandable’ version might get closer to Jesus’ meaning.
Wealthy Master?
It used to be that having only one servant showed you as pretty far down on the social scale. Nowadays, even one servant places you quite high up; Western society has largely outsourced servants.
That the slave/servant prepares the meals, as well as doing the farm work, tells us this isn’t a wealthy family. A wealthier family would have had two slaves – one for the farm work and one for the inside work. In modern terms, this household is at the level of ‘can afford to pay a cleaner.’ Not poor – but also not rich.
Cruel and Demanding?
Jesus starts his story by asking the crowd a rhetorical question. He’s expecting a chorus of ‘no,’ because no one then would expect servant/slaves to eat before their masters. Paula Gooder, in The Parables, notes that this parable uses ‘how things are’ rather than ‘how things should be.’
The master is being reasonable in terms of ‘how things are’. The servant/slave’s job includes preparing and serving meals. They have to finish their work before they can have their meal break.
The main meal of the day was probably not as late as the main meal in the modern UK. The slave will have had to work from dawn (about 6 am), then come in and cook a meal to be ready for about 3 pm. Their ‘shift’ before their own main meal is about nine or ten hours. It’s a long day, but it’s in keeping with normal working practices.
Coffee Shop
What happens where I live is that ‘servant’ is now outsourced to ‘service jobs’. Someone with the social status of the master in Jesus’ parable wouldn’t have household servant/slaves any more. However, they might go out for a meal, or maybe to a coffee shop.
My instinct was to go for a coffee shop; it’s possible in most coffee shops to see the staff go on a break. It’s also possible for a customer to say, ‘No, hang on, finish my order before you start your break!’ What they wouldn’t say is, ‘No, go on your break first. I’m fine with waiting half an hour for my coffee-and-cake.’
Other possibilities might be a fast food type of restaurant. A closer analogy to the meal is a full scale restaurant, but a customer would never normally know about staff breaks.
Replacing ‘master’ with ‘restaurant manager’ would also be difficult to match with the parable. The manager of the restaurant would take meal breaks. However, they’d take them after the customers have eaten and might eat with the staff.
Unworthy
Where I live, you would expect to thank the coffee-shop assistant for filling your order. You might also thank the bank teller, the bus driver, the delivery person … Brits say ‘thank you’ a lot. So it’s worth considering the original meaning behind the ‘thank the servant’ translation. Jesus’ ‘thank’ is much closer to ‘I owe you a favour’ than to the British ‘thank you’.
Likewise, ‘we are unworthy’ sounds awful to British ears; as if the servant/slave has self-esteem issues. In Jesus’ time, it may have been a polite way of saying, ‘We weren’t doing anything special; you don’t owe me anything for this.’
Who is the Audience?
Luke places the audience for this parable as a group of apostles and disciples. Jesus is most likely telling his followers that God won’t give them special favours for doing what they’re supposed to do anyway. If we’re doing a job, we expect to get paid – the servant/slave in the parable may not get paid, but they get their meal break. What we don’t expect is a massive bonus for just showing up and doing our job.
God doesn’t owe us for ‘just doing our job’. Doing what God asks of us is our duty.
Previous parable: Left in Charge (Matthew 24:45-51)
Next parable: The Teacher’s Voice (John 10: 1-5)
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