“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.

Luke 12:35-38

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Divine Exuberance

Who is God and what is he like? In the Parable of the Watchful Servants, Jesus unveils the Lord’s exuberant love for those who faithfully await his return. Blessed are the servants who, with girt loins and trimmed lamps, keep vigil through the night, listening for his knock. In a striking reversal, the master—finding his douloi (“slaves” or “servants”) awake—girds himself to serve them. With boundless love, the kurios (“lord” or “master”) prepares a splendid feast for his faithful, delighting in their devotion.

The Master’s Magnanimity

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. 

John 15:14-15

The master’s magnanimity mirrors the boundless joy of the Father and the Son: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). Self-giving love is the very life of God, and nothing surpasses the gift of the Father’s love through the Son. When God became man, he girded himself with the girded. Calling himself the “servant of all,” Christ shows us the way to the Father’s heart (Mark 9:35, Luke 22:27).

Blessed Concord

To enter into a union of hearts with the Father through the Son is to dwell in blessed “concord” (from Latin com, “with, together,” and cor, “heart”). Concord signifies a state of mutual friendship, a harmony of hearts bound by love.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

Traditional Chinese Translation

《儆醒僕人的筵席》
為他們的主保持儆醒的僕人
在蒙福和諧中接受了他的喜悅。