The Parable of the Lord and the Servant

Some feel-good mystical ravings from the 14th century.

I opened my last post with a quote from Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic and anchoress from late 14th century England. During a serious illness, she experienced mystical visions, including the revelation about the perfection of creation and the nonexistence of sin (whence the quote), as well as something that has come to be known as the Parable of the Lord and the Servant. It is a wonderful story and dense with meaning, even for those who have no identification with Christianity. It speaks to the purpose of our suffering and the divinity in which we share, even as the limited, fallible beings we are. In short: there is a point to our existence, and a beautiful one.

Here is a condensed version of the Parable, in which the God the Father is personified as the lord. The identity of the servant is revealed later.

The lord sits in state, in rest and in peace. The servant stands before his lord, respectfully, ready to do his lord’s will. The lord looks on his servant very lovingly and sweetly and mildly. He sends him to a certain place to do his will. Not only does the servant go, but he dashes off and runs at great speed, loving to do his lord’s will. And soon he falls into a dell and is greatly injured…I was amazed that this servant could so meekly suffer all this woe; and I looked carefully to know if I could detect any fault in him, or if the lord would impute to him any kind of blame; and truly none was seen, for the only cause of his falling was his good will and his great desire…Then this courteous lord said this: See my beloved servant, what harm and injuries he has had and accepted in my service for my love, yes, and for his good will. Is it not reasonable that I should reward him for his fright and his fear, his hurt and his injuries and all his woe? And furthermore, is it not proper for me to give him a gift, better for him and more honourable than his own health could have been? Otherwise, it seems to me that I should be ungracious. And in this an inward spiritual revelation of the lord’s meaning descended into my soul, in which I saw that this must necessarily be the case, that his great goodness and his own honour require that his beloved servant, whom he loved so much, should be highly and blessedly rewarded forever, above what he would have been if he had not fallen, yes, and so much that his falling and all the woe that he received from it will be turned into high, surpassing honour and endless bliss.

…

The place which the lord sat on was unadorned, on the ground, barren and waste, alone in the wilderness. His clothing was wide and ample and very handsome, as befits a lord…But his sitting on the ground, barren and waste, signifies this: He made man’s soul to be his own city and his dwelling place, which is the most pleasing to him of all his works. And when man had fallen into sorrow and pain, he was not wholly proper to serve in that noble office, and therefore our kind Father did not wish to prepare any other place, but sat upon the ground, awaiting human nature, which is mixed with earth, until the time when by his grace his beloved Son had brought back his city into its noble place of beauty by his hard labour,

…

I saw the lord sitting in state, and the servant standing respectfully before his lord…Outwardly he was simply dressed like a labourer prepared to work, and he stood very close to the lord, not immediately in front of him but a little to one side, and that on the left; his clothing was a white tunic, scanty, old and all worn…There was a treasure in the earth which the lord loved…it is a food which is delicious and pleasing to the lord…I watched, wondering what kind of labour it could be that the servant was to do. And then I understood that he was to do the greatest labour and the hardest work there is. He was to be a gardener, digging and ditching and sweating and turning the soil over and over, and to dig deep down, and to water the plants at the proper time. And he was to persevere in his work, and make sweet streams to run, and fine and plenteous fruit to grow…And all this time the lord was to sit in exactly the same place, waiting for the servant whom he had sent out…In the servant is comprehended the second person of the Trinity, and in the servant is comprehended Adam, that is to say all men…For in all this our good Lord showed his own Son and Adam as only one man. The strength and the goodness that we have is from Jesus Christ, the weakness and blindness that we have is from Adam, which two were shown in the servant…The sitting of the Father symbolizes the divinity, that is to say to reveal rest and peace, for in the divinity there can be no labour.

…

[after the servant returns] the lord does not sit on the ground in the wilderness, but in his rich and noblest seat, which he made in heaven most to his liking. Now the Son does not stand before the Father as a servant before the lord, pitifully clothed, partly naked, but stands immediately before the Father, richly clothed in joyful amplitude, with a rich and precious crown upon his head. For it was revealed that we are his crown, which is the Father’s joy, the Son’s honour, the Holy Spirit’s delight, and endless marvellous bliss to all who are in heaven…Now the Son, true God and true man, sits in his city in rest and in peace, which his Father has prepared for him by his endless purpose, and the Father in the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Father and in the Son.

Beneath the imagery and the emotion of the parable, we can also see the same three-part (Hegelian) movement we’ve seen before in the context of how all things relate to each other. The lord, i.e. God the Father, is the universe as substance, as the All that simply is. We can see this from his passivity, from the way he simply sits on the ground while the servant toils. The servant, meanwhile, differs from the lord in dress, demeanor, and ability. We can think of this as the moment wherein a thing is defined in contrast to its other. This is humanity as separate from God and from creation. Finally, though, after the servant has tilled the earth, literally putting himself into it, he is revealed to be God the Son, and God the Father now has a place on earth, uniting the earthly and the divine. This is the moment of mutual essence, or what I’ve called self-difference, wherein each thing can only be what it is in relationship with everything else. Just as the servant was rewarded for his suffering even more than if he had never fallen, so is the product of this reflection greater than if the separation had never taken place, since it is only in separation that all of these things could have their own existence such that they can give each other their mutual existence. God is then to be found in the earth, in creation, and in every person, and when we become consciously aware of this, our consciousness becomes a mirror within which God is reflected, who in turn is our own reflection. God is and always has been everything, but this is the process of development in which we participate, by which God becomes conscious of himself through us, through our consciousness, which is his consciousness. Our seeing him in ourselves is, in the same action, him seeing himself through us (which is us seeing ourselves through him, and so on).

So, it’s crucial that we don’t stop at the moment of separation and cling to our identity as individuals, and instead take the next step of seeing ourselves in others and in the universe at large. I’ve argued that the “reunion” is inevitable because even gross individual self-interest will bring one to realize that their own goals and wellbeing can only ultimately be achieved by realizing one’s place within the whole. But the separation, as long as it endures, is the source of every kind of suffering and “evil.” The belief that one’s being, what one fundamentally is, is defined by the opposition to everyone and everything else, leads to the feeling that one lacks something they need and must compete with others to get it, without realizing that we already have everything we need and the people with whom we’d compete are our own self. As I argued last time, this separation and the suffering it produces is in some sense necessary, and that everything we do, even in our confusion, is part of the work that must be done to realize our true nature. But our task is to reduce that suffering by doing whatever we can to bring about that realization, and there’s no better place to begin than with ourselves.