The Interrupting God: Luke 12:32-40 - Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

[Jesus said:] 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.
  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.” (NRSV)

Nighty Traffic by Ben Beard.  Creative commons image on flickr

Quite often, when I visit the Happy Day Café for lunch, I'll see the Lower Kiski Ambulance company.  There have been as many as a dozen of them, fully dressed in uniform.  Very often, their pagers will ring—and two or more of them will get up from the table to do their duties.

You’d think they’d grumble or complain having to leave their lunches behind, but they don’t.  They just go.  Someone else will collect their meals and bring them back to the station, and that’s it.

At a second’s notice, they’re ready to go.  The same is true for all of our emergency responders and the women and men of our armed forces. 

This is the kind of readiness Jesus demands in today’s Gospel.  We are to be “dressed for action” with our “lamps lit,” ready to open the door for him as slaves awaiting their master’s return— because Jesus comes at an unexpected hour.

Now there’s two ways we get this wrong: the first, is that we think only of Jesus’ second coming.  None of us knows when that day will be; we want it to be soon, but we pretty much resign ourselves to thinking that it won’t happen in our lifetime.

The second, is that we hear Jesus’ words as a threat: that unless you’re prepared and ready, you’ll be left behind. 

Yet you need to pay attention to the first words Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  This is what you must be prepared for: because Jesus will show up in your life, all the time, to be gracious to you.  Most of the time, he will come unexpectedly. 

Most of the time, you and I are not ready for this.

I consider my own life—and how frantically I move from task to task.  The passing of time makes me feel like I’m tied to the bumper of a moving car—trying desperately to keep up, and eventually tiring out and being dragged along.  No wonder we say, “time flies...”

There’s so much to get, so much to do, so much to know anymore.  For in the same way as you seek instant gratification from possessions, you seek instant gratification for your time.  You want to have something to show for it; something to give you satisfaction.  You certainly don’t want to let down the people who are counting on you.  This is why you see people acting out so viciously against anything or anyone that creates interruption or inconvenience. 

On the other hand, I think about how much time I waste—with my face glued to a TV screen, a computer screen, a smartphone screen—reading this or watching that.  A friend of mine called this my “nothing box.”  We rush through time one moment, only to waste it in the next.

In the end, we’re left exhausted and at the same time oblivious to Jesus.  We’re so quick to accuse Jesus of being absent—when in reality, we’re just not paying attention.

When Jesus says, “I come as a thief,” he’s not coming in order to catch you unprepared and lock you out of the kingdom.  Jesus comes because it is “your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  And he will come at any time, in any situation, to make it happen.  Faith is what happens when the Holy Spirit brings the treasures of God’s Kingdom into your reality, whatever it may be. 

Faith means trusting that God up to something, even amid the stress and noise and exhaustion. Faith is recognizing your life is holy ground—and your time as sacred time.    Faith means getting ready for Jesus.  And this is where the challenge comes in, because in order to be prepared for his future coming, you must receive him through the means he comes to you in the present.

You need to be spending time in prayer and studying the Scriptures.  You need to be present here not only to receive the Sacraments but also to give yourself into this beautiful expression of who Jesus is to us and the world.  Jesus will never be a part of your reality unless you are regularly settling your soul before God.  You must take the time.  You must do it—with your eyes fixed on Jesus and not the calendar or the clock. 

Forgiveness, healing, and peace are the gifts of the kingdom Jesus wants you to have.  Your life will become sacred ground and your time made sacred to taste and see the goodness of God.  God will give you the hope to endure your worst days.  But knowing that God’s ways are not always your ways, God is doing to change your plans.  God is going to interrupt you because a neighbor needs you.  God is going to interrupt you because God has something in store for you to learn or experience.  God may even bring the course of your life to a screeching halt and send you in a completely new direction. 

But the reason for all this is simple: so you can see God for who he is; a God who keeps promises.  And—so that you can be the person God created you to be.

You can go in peace to serve the Lord—because the Lord is serving you.  This is what you have to be prepared for, and I pray that you'll be ready.