St. John’s Lutheran Church, Toluca, IL – 9th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 15:1-6, Psalm 33:12-22; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Gospel: Luke 12:32-40
[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
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Dressed for Action
Grace and peace beloved of God from our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.
When I was a child in my birthland, it was common for parents to gently blow their kids’ little cuts, burns, and bruises to alleviate the pain. It was a widespread method to get their children calm until real help in the form of antiseptics and band-aids – which you know cures everything – could be arranged. A psychological trick or not, the fact was it worked most of the time.
Such conventional wisdom practice led to the popular notion of “morde e assopra.” That is, to gently blow into the injuries one caused to others to make them feel better. It can be intentionally used for psychological abuse. This is true, but also it is a way to show that one is genuinely sorry and wants to alleviate the pain inflicted on someone else.
Our text from the Gospel of Luke today begins right where we stopped last Sunday. In the preceding verses, Jesus shows considerable contempt for those who placed exaggerated trust in the accomplishments of their personal work and the financial security that comes from it at the expense of their neighbors. They rejoice in their daily bread, not in the community’s nurturing. That is greed for Jesus, and he tells his audience that God is not pleased with such foolishness and wants back the things that he freely gave. The things that should be freely given to others. Basically, such an attitude would eventually cause a brake up with God.
That hurts. We know it, and so does God. Nonetheless, it needed to be said. Our Savior often needs to show us or remind us of what he is saving us from. Those are the times when the Word of God convicts us. These bites tend to leave a mark. They may even break the skin.
Enter the love of Christ and God’s promise of salvation for those who place their trust in him.
Jesus opens our reading today, pouring an obscene amount of empathy and compassionate love on those wounds. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” God wants us, all of his children, collectively to do well and live abundantly.
Ok, Jesus goes right back to what may sound like more admonition, but I don’t know. The tone has changed for me now. It feels like the voice of the loving parent worried about the future of their children may be taking over. Then Jesus goes: be ready and dress for action.
We had an amazing week of Vacation Bible Study. A lot of work, obviously. Nonetheless, we rejoiced because, amidst the other demands, we put the time and effort into working together for the life of the children in our community. As a consequence, we experienced a glimpse of the kingdom promised, the kingdom God has the good pleasure to give us. It assures us that when we trust God’s presence and do his work with an open heart, then God is in the house, and the promise is fulfilled.
Yes, we want to build in that experience and absolutely should. However, more often than not, ministry is to have those glimpses amid the challenges and complexities of life that usually go beyond the walls of our buildings. It’s very easy to lose sight of such glimpses that help us to realize promise is true to fall through the crack. We have more stuff to do.
Therefore, Jesus asks us to keep dressed for action, to keep our garments ready, so that we are ready to go the next time the kingdom comes near or around us. Nonetheless, Jesus is not talking about pastors who dress for action every Sunday with robes and all kinds of garments.
If you ever witnessed a baptism in this church or another, you may have heard that the baptized has been now clothed with Christ. That is the garment. Therefore, to be ready and dress for action is to nurture the gift of faith that we receive in such a baptism.
Beloved of God, this whole admonition about where we are putting our treasures is actually about what our priorities are and on who we put our trust and follow.
That is only possible by nurturing the faith gifted to us in baptism. All the good that we do, even the VBSs, is because God has nurtured this faith in us throw the Holy Spirit.
And you know what faith is, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
But, we got to experience it. We have to live that faith together. That’s why we promise to raise our children among God’s people. We need that to experience such a promise and to realize that the promise is true.
Therefore we keep the garments pressed and ready; we keep Jesus in our lives and thoughts and put our trust in him and in him alone.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Bridging Faith 