Luke 12.32-40 (NRSV)

Luke 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.’

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 out of 30 pounds when he was at Oxford and continued to spend 28 pounds even though his earnings grew vastly – but 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 – life in all its fullness!`

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.