To Each His Work: Mark 13 and the House We Keep While We Wait

There is a particular sound a house makes when someone important is expected. A broom scratching across the verandah at six in the morning. The good glasses coming down from the top shelf. Somebody shouting from the kitchen to ask whether the spare room has fresh sheets. Most of us grew up knowing that sound. When an aunt was coming from England, or the pastor was coming to dinner, the whole house leaned towards the gate.

Jesus used exactly that picture when he spoke about his return. In Mark 13, after describing the day when people “will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26), he tells a small story. A man goes away on a long journey. He leaves his house in the hands of his servants, gives each of them authority and their own work to do, and tells the doorkeeper to keep watch (Mark 13:34). Then comes the warning: “Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming” (Mark 13:35).

Christians have argued for centuries about the timing and the details of that day. Jesus himself refused to give a date. But he was very clear about one thing: the waiting is not idle. It happens inside a house, and everyone in the house has a job.

A day of joy and a day of trembling

Scripture holds two feelings together when it speaks of Christ’s coming. For those who belong to him it is the best news imaginable: the curse undone, death defeated, every tear wiped away. Yet it is also a day of reckoning, when the Lord judges the living and the dead and everything hidden is brought into the light.

Anyone who has had a landlord inspection, or a relative home to see the house they paid for, knows something of that mixture. You want them to come. You also want the cracked louvre fixed first. The thought of the owner walking through the door makes you look at the place with new eyes.

That is not meant to make us anxious. A servant who loves the master is glad to hear the car at the gate. But the story does invite an honest look around. If the Lord of this house came in this evening, or at midnight, or with the first cock crow, what would he find us doing?

Nothing we keep is truly ours

The servants in the parable live in the house, eat in its kitchen and give orders in its rooms. It would be easy for them to start thinking of it as theirs. That is the quiet temptation of every homeowner, too. We sign the papers, we pay the mortgage, we choose the tiles, and bit by bit the house becomes a place where we are in charge.

The gospel turns that around. The title may carry our name, but the house, the land and the people under the roof are held in trust. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (Psalm 24:1). That changes the questions we ask. Not only “Can we afford this extension?” but “Is this how the Master would use the space?” Not only “How do I get the tenant out?” but “How would he want this handled?”

To each his work

The detail that is easy to miss is that the master gives each servant a task. Nobody is left out, and nobody is doing everyone else’s job. Watching for Christ does not look like sitting on the front step with our eyes on the clouds. It looks like faithful attention to the work in front of us.

In a household, that work is often small and unglamorous:

• The grandmother who still prays through the family names every morning before the house wakes.
• The teenager who has been given the gutters and the water tank, and actually checks them before the rains.
• The couple who sit down with the bills once a month and refuse to hide anything from each other.
• The neighbour who notices that the old man at the corner has not opened his windows today, and knocks.

None of that will make the news. All of it is the kind of work the Master expects to find in progress when he comes home.

Keeping the door, and opening it

One servant is told to keep the door. A doorkeeper watches for danger, but a doorkeeper also lets people in. Part of living ready is keeping our homes open to those who do not yet know the Lord: the colleague who has never been invited to anyone’s table, the young family renting the flat downstairs, the cousin who stopped coming to church years ago but still turns up for Sunday dinner.

God does not want anyone to be caught unprepared. A house that shows his love in plain, practical ways, with a plate set for a visitor and patience with a difficult relative, may be the place where someone first begins to long for his return instead of fearing it.

For reflection

• If you think of your home as held in trust rather than owned outright, what one decision would you make differently this month?
• What is “your work” in your household right now, and have you been neglecting it while watching someone else’s?

A prayer

Lord Jesus, you are the Master of this house, and we are glad that you are coming back. Keep us awake and faithful in the ordinary tasks you have given us. Make our home a place where your love is plain to see, and draw to yourself those under our roof and beyond our gate who do not yet know you. Amen.