The first idea in watchfulness is keeping awake; and the second is
looking out for something that is coming. Both these conceptions are
intertwined in both our Lord's use of the metaphor of the watching
servant, and in the echoes of it which we find abundantly in the
Apostolic letters. The first thing is to keep ourselves awake all
through the soporific night, when everything tempts to slumber. Even
the wise virgins, with trimmed lamps and girt loins, do in some degree
succumb to the drowsy influences around them, and like the foolish
ones, slumber, though the slumbers of the two classes be unlike.
Christian people live in the midst of an order of things which tempts
them to close the eyes of their hearts and minds to all the real and
unseen glories above and around them, and that might be within them,
and to live for the comparatively contemptible and trivial things of
this present. Just as when a man sleeps, he loses his consciousness
of solid external realities, and passes into a fantastic world of his
own imaginations, which have no correspondence in external facts, and
will vanish like
'The baseless fabric of a dream,
If but a cock shall crow,'
so the men who are conscious only of this present life and of the
things that are seen, though they pride themselves on being wide
awake, are, in the deepest of their being, fast asleep, and are
dealing with illusions which will pass and leave nought behind, as
really as are men who lie dreaming upon couches, and fancy
themselves hard at work. Keep awake; that is the first thing; which,
being translated into plain English, points just to this, that
unless we make a dead lift of continuous effort to keep firm grasp
of God and Christ, and of all the unseen magnificences that are
included in these two names, as surely as we live we shall lose our
hold upon them, and fall into the drugged and diseased sleep in
which so many men around us are plunged. It sometimes seems to one
as if the sky above us were raining down narcotics upon us, so
profoundly are the bulk of men unconscious of realities, and
befooled by the illusions of a dream.
Keep yourselves awake first, and then let the waking, wide-opened
eye, be looking forward. It is the very _differentia_, so to
speak, the characteristic mark and distinction of the Christian
notion of life, that it shifts the centre of gravity from the
present into the future, and makes that which is to come of far more
importance than that which is, or which has been. No man is living
up to the height of his Christian responsibilities or privileges
unless there stands out before him, as the very goal and aim of his
whole life, what can never be realised until he has passed within
the veil, and is at rest in the 'secret place of the Most High.' To
live for the future is, in one aspect, the very definition of a
Christian.
But the text reminds us of the specific form which that future
anticipation is to take. It is not for us, as it is for men in the
world, to fix our hopes for the future on abstract laws of the
progress of humanity, or the evolution of the species, or the
gradual betterment of the world, and the like. All these may be
true: I say nothing about them. But what we have to fill our future
with is that 'that same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen Him go.' It is much to be lamented that curious
chronological speculations have so often discredited that great
central hope of the Church, which is properly altogether independent
of them; and that, because people have got befogged in interpreting
such symbols as beasts, and horses, and trumpets, and seals, and the
like, the Christian Church as a whole should so feebly be holding by
that great truth, without which, as it seems to me, the truth which
many of us are tempted to make the exclusive one, loses half its
significance. No man can rightly understand the whole contents of
the blessed proclamation, 'Christ has come,' unless he ends the
sentence with 'and Christ will come.' Blessed is 'that servant whom
the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching.'
Of course I need not remind you that much for which that second
coming of the Lord is precious, and an object of hope to the world
and the Church, is realised by the individual in the article of
death. Whether Christ comes to the world or I go to Christ, the
important thing is that there result union and communion, the reign
of righteousness and peace, the felicities of the heavenly state.
And so, dear brethren, just because of the uncertainty that drapes
the future, and which we are often tempted to make a reason for
dismissing the anticipation of it from our minds, we ought the more
earnestly to give heed that we keep that end ever before us, and
whether it is reached by His coming to us, or our going to Him,
anticipate, by the power of realising faith grasping the firm words
of Revelation, the unimaginable, and--until it is experienced--the
incommunicable blessedness revealed in these great, simple words,
'So shall we ever be with the Lord.'
But, then, look at the second of the aspects of Christian duty which
is presented here, that watchfulness is to lead on to diligent work.
The temptation for any one who is much occupied with the hope of
some great change and betterment in the near future is to be
restless and unable to settle down to his work, and to yield to
distaste of the humdrum duties of every day. If some man that kept a
little chandler's shop in a back street was expecting to be made a
king to-morrow, he would not be likely to look after his poor trade
with great diligence. So we find in the Apostle Paul's second
letter--that to the Thessalonians--that he had to encounter, as well
as he could, the tendency of hope to make men restless, and to
insist upon the thought--which is the same lesson as is taught us by
the second of our texts--that if a man hoped, then he had with
quietness to work and eat his own bread, and not be shaken in mind.
'Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find
so doing.' It may seem humble work to serve out hunches of bread and
pots of black broth to the family of slaves, when the steward is
expecting the coming of the master of the house, and his every nerve
is tingling with anticipation. But it is steadying work, and it is
blessed work. It is better that a man should be found doing the
homeliest duty as the outcome of his great expectations of the
coming of his Master, than that he should be fidgeting and restless
and looking only at that thought till it unfits him for his common
tasks. Who was it who, sitting playing a game of chess, and being
addressed by some scandalised disciple with the question, 'What
would you do if Jesus Christ came, and you were playing your game?'
answered, 'I would finish it'? The best way for a steward to be
ready for the Master, and to show that he is watching, is that he
should be 'found so doing' the humble task of his stewardship. The
two women that were squatting on either side of the millstone, and
helping each other to whirl the handle round in that night were in
the right place, and the one that was taken had no cause to regret
that she was not more religiously employed. The watchful servant
should be a working servant.
II. And now I have spent too much time on this first part of my
discourse; so I must condense the second. Here are two aspects of
the heavenly state, rest and rule.
'Verily I say unto you, He shall gird Himself, and make them to sit
down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.' I do not know
that there is a more wonderful promise, with more light lying in its
darkness, in all Scripture than that. Jesus Christ continues in the
heavens to be found in 'the form of a servant.' As here He girded
Himself with the towel of humiliation in the upper room, so there He
girds Himself with the robes of His imperial majesty, and uses all
His powers for the nourishment and blessedness of His servants. His
everlasting motto is, 'I am among you as one that serveth.' On earth
His service was to wash His disciples' feet; in heaven the pure foot
contracts no stain, and needs no basin: but in heaven He still
serves, and serves by spreading a table, and, as a King might do at
some ceremonial feasts, waiting on the astonished guests.
I say nothing about all the wonderful ideas that gather round that
familiar but never-to-be-worn-into-commonplace emblem of the feast.
Repose, in contrast with the girded loins and the weary waiting of
the midnight watch; nourishment, and the satisfaction of all
desires; joy, society--all these things, and who knows how much
more, that we shall have to get there to understand, lie in that
metaphor, 'Blessed is that servant' who is served by the Master, and
nourished by His presence?
But modern popular presentations of the future life have far too
predominantly dwelt upon that side of it. It is a wonderful
confession of 'the weariness, the fever, and the fret,' the hunger
and loneliness of earthly experience, that the thought of heaven as
the opposite of all these things should have almost swallowed up the
other thought with which our Lord associates it here. He would not
have us think only of repose. He unites with that representation, so
fascinating to us weary and heavy-laden, the other of administrative
authority. He will set him 'over all that he hath.'
The steward gets promotion. 'On twelve thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel'--these are to be the seats, and that is to be the
occupation of the Twelve. 'Thou hast been faithful over a few
things; I will make thee ruler over many things.' The relation
between earthly faithfulness and heavenly service is the same in
essence as that between the various stages of our work here. The
reward for work here is more work; a wider field, greater
capacities. And what depths of authority, of new dignity, of royal
supremacy, lie in those solemn and mysterious words, I know not--'He
will set him over all that he hath.' My union with Christ is to be
so close as that all His is mine and I am master of it. But at all
events this we can say, that faithfulness here leads to larger
service yonder; and that none of the aptitudes and capacities which
have been developed in us here on earth will want a sphere when we
pass yonder.
So let watchfulness lead to faithfulness, and watchful faithfulness
and faithful watchfulness will lead to repose which is activity, and
rule which is rest.