Luk
e 12.32-40 (NRSV)
32 ‘Do not be
afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom. 33Sell
your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear
out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth
destroys. 34For
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Watchful Slaves
35 ‘Be dressed
for action and have your lamps lit; 36be
like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet,
so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.37Blessed
are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you,
he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and
serve them. 38If he
comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed
are those slaves.
39 ‘But know
this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken
into.40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an
unexpected hour.’
Apologies for the lateness of this posting, but I have
recently returned from the far north-west of Scotland and it has taken time to
recover from over nine hours of driving along either busy motorways of difficult
to negotiate minor roads.
In this passage Jesus tells his disciples not to be
afraid – because it is our father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.
What makes us worry and afraid? For many of us, wealth
is at the heart of things, either because there is too much and we lose sight
of the kingdom, or too little and we become obsessed with merely surviving. As
G B Caird put it: insecurity ‘... when it is a constant companion, can engross
the attention and sap the resolve ...’ Jesus makes the point that to worry is
absurd because God will provide us with what we need; if he takes care of the
birds and the flowers, how much more will he take care of us his children.
There is also the sense that it is pointless to worry, because it changes
nothing. The cure for worry is to gain the right perspective – to put first
things first. When one does this, something important happens – we learn to
focus on what really matters and what we really need, as Caird states: ‘... the
necessities of life are fewer and simpler than selfishness supposes ...’
There is a reminder here of the injunction we have to
possess our possessions and not to allow them to possess us – to make sure that
the Kingdom of God is what matters – and so what we own needs to be seen as
providing for a need and not necessarily for a want.
John Wesley challenges Methodists to: “Earn all you can,
save all you can, give all you can.” In the days before rampant inflation, he
spent 28 our of 30 pounds when he was at Oxford and continued to spend 28 pounds
even though his earnings grew vastly – bit he gave the rest away.
I cannot help thinking how hollow this might sound to
those who are starving and in real and crippling poverty where the struggle for
the next mouthful of food consumes one’s whole life. But then, if everyone gave
generously, who lived as though the Kingdom of God was a present reality, there
ought not to be any poverty! This is a real challenge. Are we holding back the
progress of the Kingdom in this simple and yet very practical way.
If one were to summarise what we learn in the rest of this
lesson in the fewest words possible one could say that Jesus is warning people
to be prepared.
The disciples were warned to be prepared for what was
going to happen to their Lord. Jesus makes reference here to his own death
which would be a searching test for his disciples. He warned his followers that
a time of testing would be coming their way and might come upon them at a time
unknown - so they had to make sure that they were prepared for this and
stresses this need for vigilance in verse 35:
Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action ... (TEV)
And we all know the truth of this. Life is such that
unless we remain prepared, we can be taken by surprise and can be beaten and
battered about. So we must all be and remain prepared.
All people are going to stand before God and will be
called upon to give account of their lives, not as in front of a harsh judge,
but a merciful loving Father. None of us knows when this will happen to us. We have
been reminded here of how quickly riches can become poverty. So too is it a
fact that we can very quickly move from excellent health to suffering and even
death. When the Son of Man comes becomes real for every person at the moment of
death.
It is also ridiculous to think that life without God on
earth is better than life with God. People have mentioned how they think it is
so unfair that some people can come to God in the eleventh hour of their lives.
All I can say to the person who waits that long that it is a pity that they
missed out on so much. Life with God on earth is life in all its fullness. Life
without God but with materialism, greed, drunkenness, debauchery and all other
fleshly lusts is life in all its
emptiness. Life with God is life with meaning
even in the midst of the most horrendous trials and sufferings. Life with
Christ is a life with hope, no matter what happens. Even death has no sting for
the Christian. Life without Christ can be filled with hopelessness and fear,
especially of death. The longer people wait, the longer people miss out on what
life really should be like.
Barclay suggests that there are some things that our
Lord expects us to be doing when he comes. We need to be found 'waiting and
watching'. We need to take each day and grab every opportunity as if it were
out last day on earth. We tend to throw countless wonderful blessings away
simply because we do not seize the opportunities that come our way. When Jesus
comes and he finds us being faithful - he will bless us like the master
returning from the wedding to serve his faithful workers. What does this mean?
Barclay makes the following suggestions:
1.
We
should be found having completed those jobs that can be completed; doing the
best we can. Christians should be those who live in this world as temporary
sojourners, because we belong to the Kingdom. Christian workers should be so
different, because they do everything to the best of their ability and can
always be relied upon – echoes here of St Paul who says ‘... whether we eat or
drink or whatever we do, we should to is as for the Lord ...’
2.
We
should be at peace with others – as far as this is possible. We live by
different standards, and Jesus reminds us elsewhere that by being what we are
is going to cause offense – even when we do not mean to do so. But have we done
what we can, even if our efforts are sometimes rejected?
3.
Are
we at peace with God? I love the way Barclay expresses himself here ... asking
‘... whether we are doing out as a stranger or an enemy, or going to sleep in
the arms of God ...’
We are not all meant to literally sell everything we
have. We know this because Jesus allowed Zacchaeus to keep at least half of his
wealth. But would we be ready to do so if our Lord called us to? Most of us who
read this or who will be in our congregations next Sunday will have far more
than we actually need, our lives being filled with much, much more – even
materially speaking. But we need the proper perspective. To quote again from
Barclay: “Bend all your life to obeying God’s will and rest content with that.”
We need to live each day the best way we can – we need
to be ready – not because we are going to face a hard and critical judge, but
because we will be found embarrassed and disappointed because we will have let
ourselves down in the presence of the one who loves us most. We already have
experience of this when we disappoint the people we love and who love us; imagine
how it will feel if we let our Lord down.
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