Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
11. Sunday after Pentecost, 08/08/2010
Sermon on Luke 12:32-40, by Dave Brooks
32 "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.35 "Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." (English Standard Version)
One of the essentials that marks out the life of those who have other lives in their hands is preparation. At one level, this involves training: a fireman, a policeman, an airline pilot, even a teenaged lifeguard at the local pool receives training to make sure that they know what to do under all the circumstances that they might face. Persons who have to enter into life and death situations train and retrain to ensure that they know what to do, when to do it, and with what they will do it. So firemen will rehearse the best techniques on how to enter burning homes, how to properly carry victims, how to use the high-pressure hoses that shoot vast amounts of water, how to dress themselves in their protective clothing, how to make best use of the axes and pikes and other pieces of equipment they use. And, as they train on the equipment, they are also learning how to read signs: when a fire is about to break out again over against when it is out; when a building is unsafe to enter; how to communicate with each other in the stress of fighting raging conflagrations.
But there is another type of preparation that marks out the lives of persons such as I just mentioned. For all the time they spend in training, they spend as much time in tending to the equipment that they will soon put into the service of someone's life-perhaps even their own. Fire equipment and vehicles are washed, polished, serviced, repaired, and/or replaced. Police equipment is checked and rechecked, weapons cleaned and their safety ensured. Pilots review repair records, examine the plane, test gauges and controls. Even those summer lifeguards learn the discipline of preparation-not just learning to swim powerfully and well, but they learn that there is a best practice for toss-rings, a right way to lace and store the attached ropes so that they will uncoil quickly and smoothly when called upon. What seems fastidious and nitpicky is truly the one way to really know the status and readiness of everything that might come into use. An inattention to detail, a lack of the discipline of preparedness, is flatly dangerous.
There is one last reason for all the training, all the preparation that a part of the lives of persons such as I've named. Proper training ensures that the action you take won't be cluttered with extraneous or wasted effort. Proper preparation and readiness means that you won't be scrambling to find that vital piece of equipment because it's under a pile of papers, or in one closet or another, or is simply not ready to be used. Training and preparation is a discipline that pares away what is not needed so that, when the time comes, nothing gets in the way.
In other words, discipline is a hedge against greed.
It is the reason that Luke has Jesus ending his conversation about overstuffed barns, glorious lilies, ravens of the air and all the rest with a talk about being ready when the bridegroom comes. So many Christians read that passage and think that it is simply a nod toward that now vague "future time" when the Son of Man will come and bring history to a close. Hoping to not be surprised, some seek to read the times and use that effort to bypass the simple command to be ready. The truth is that the opportunity to encounter the bridegroom could come at any time. You and I simply don't know. Firemen don't know WHEN there will be a fire, only THAT there will be one-so they train, and they prepare. Jesus teaches us ways to see so that we are not surprised when the bridegroom shows up-him being found among the least of these is one, him being found in his community whenever we gather in his name is another-- but there again, to learn to see, to learn to recognize Jesus in the world is a discipline of preparation.
The discipline that Jesus urges his disciples to take up-that they may be ready-is a hedge against greed of all kinds. Greed is simply the desire to acquire. It's not really about money or things; it's about the attaining, the grasping, the possessing. We are conditioned every day-every day!-to acquire more, and yet the more we acquire, the less ready we become. All the things we aquire takes more of our time to tend, takes more of our energy to maintain, takes more of our God-given resources to keep together. It is a poor and ill-prepared fireman whose axe is dull because he had no time to sharpen it; it is a worse fireman who isn't even sure where the axe is because it's lost in a pile of extraneous stuff.
Now, notice that I said that the discipline Jesus commends to us as disciples is only a hedge-and hedges are not walls. There are many persons in our world who are supremely disciplined in their desire to acquire. The discipline of preparation only means letting go those things that get in the way, so that we can concentrate on and be ready for what's important.
But there's the heart of it, isn't it-the answer to the question "What is important?" Jesus has been rather steadfast over these last weeks about what is important to life. It's not clothes, nor food, nor things that can be stuffed in barns and warehouses, nor beauty and appearance-indeed, none of the things that the world says is vital. Rather, to know God and his loving purpose for you and me is the most important thing of all. The great secret of life is caught up in this, that the Kingdom of God is actually a gracious, glorious gift-and it's right at your hand.
The late Indian Jesuit Antony de Mello was renouned around the world for his ability to teach people to pray. He warns us that while we are searching wildly for that great experience of God there are a host of rich experiences of God that are passing us by. One needs to do very little, really, to experience God. All one needs to do is quiet oneself, become still - and become aware of the feel of your hand. Be aware of the sensations in your hand. There you have God, living and working in you, touching you, intensely near you.
De Mello would laugh when he talked about this exercise. Most people think this is a little silly. Feeling their hands and finding God. They are like the Jews in 1st Cen. Palenstine who were straining their eyes toward the future in expectation of a glorious, sensational Messiah, while all along the Messiah was beside them in the form of a man called Jesus of Nazareth.... You wish to see God? Look at the face of the man next to you. You want to hear him? Listen to the cry of a baby, the loud laughter at a party, the wind rustling in the trees. You want to feel him? Stretch your hand out and hold someone. Ă
No gift can be received when our hands are already full, already wrapped around the things we have acquired. No hand can be held unless our hands are empty. Let us be prepared and let go of those things that get in the way, to be ready with open hands to receive the bridegroom when he comes. Amen.
Ă Antony de Mello, "Sadhana: A Way to God," found in Homiletics Online, accessed July 31, 2010.