Be dressed and ready for action and have your lamps lit!

     As I have shared, often it is my conversations with Adventers or those in orbit of Advent that help me discern which text to preach.  This week, it was conversations with clergy colleagues.  In particular, one of my lady colleagues was lamenting that this was not Stewardship Sunday in her church and that she could not preach a stewardship sermon on any other day of the year.  I reminded her that most Vestries and many Finance committees would LOVE it if more clergy preached stewardship year round.  She decided that her parish was not one of those places, though she allowed that maybe she needed to preach stewardship in ways other than just financial giving.  Her other gripe, though, was that the Gospel sounded a lot like an Advent call to be ready.  Again, since it was not the season of Advent, she did not feel that was the right place for her to be preaching this week.

     Of course, I serve at an Episcopal Church of the Advent in Nashville.  We proudly call ourselves Adventers, and we recognize that Advent is a constant call to be prepared.  So my discernment pretty much ended there.  I had my sermon text.  That is not to say this will not be a great sermon.  Karen and I found ourselves hauling Nathan to school unexpectedly on Friday and Saturday.  As the only other driver in the house and own of that cute Miata, we have not really had to prepare to take Nathan to school.  And with Robbie choosing to go to school there, as well, we have been spoiled.  We just take what does not fit in the Miata when Robbie reports to school!  Life, naturally, got in the way of that.  Nathan needs some work done on his car but was unsure if the cost of the newest repairs would fix everything.  He was in that bind of facing the possibility of spending significant dollars on his car and not knowing if it would be totally repaired.  Those of you of a certain age in the pews would call that adulting.  Anyway, Karen and I spent 18 hours or so in the car Friday and yesterday, which means I may be a bit less focused than normal!

     Our Gospel reading from Luke takes place at a couple intersecting points in Jesus’ instruction of His disciples and Apostles.  In the grand story, Jesus has set His face toward Jerusalem.  No longer is Jesus exclusively ministering to folks in the outlying villages and towns of Judea.  He is now heading to Jerusalem to face His betrayal, torture, and death.  As His time among them grows shorter and shorter, Jesus’ teaching will become more and more focused and, in many respects, more difficult to accept or understand until after His Resurrection.

     The other intersecting point is the pull of the world on those who want to follow Jesus.  Those engaging with Jesus notice that following Him is hard.  They point it out.  And Jesus agrees!  Following Jesus is not for the faint of heart!  It is cross-bearing.  It is very much dying to one’s self.  And the crowds and disciples ask Jesus about it.  Things seem so hard in the world, how can He expect them to accept His teaching as true?

     Make no mistake, Jesus does not condemn their worries.  He simply reminds them that their priorities are out of whack.  During one of my private conversations with an Adventer this week, the Adventer remarked that the Scriptures were fine for those days in that part of the world, but observed that our problems were so much more challenging, so much more difficult to grasp, let alone fix.  I asked for an example and was given as an example institutional racism.  Naturally, I had a great belly laugh.  This Adventer was really mad at my laughter and then patiently explained to me that Jesus could not possibly understand what it was like for human beings to have to deal with institutions with bred racism.  How do we recognize it?  How do we remove it?  How do we change the training to make sure such racism is removed?  Jesus, so claimed the Adventer, had no grasp of such complex problems.

     Putting aside the understanding that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, I asked if the Adventer understood that the Romans depended upon what we call institutional racism in order to keep the peace?  Apparently, I had failed to teach this Advnter that Rome generally assigned ethnic enemies to be the local soldiers.  In truth, our institutional racism comes up short by comparison, when compared to that of Rome.  When I state that cultural enemies got along like Alabama and Tennessee fans at a football game, it’s really a joke.  There’s some hatred and teasing expressed, maybe even some serious vitriol, but that stuff does not really define us as culturally different.  Both Alabama and Tennessee fans are generally citizens of this country.  Heck, we can well imagine another resident of middle Tennessee choosing to root for Alabama because of their recent ascendency in college football.  But I think all of us would be shocked if they physically attacked us, killed us, sold us into slavery and took all our stuff for themselves.

     Maybe a better analogy would be for you to have to imagine “those people” being your local cops.  What if our Governor assigned folks from Antioch or East Nashville to be the police in Brentwood?  What if our Governor assigned Brentwood folks to be the police in those neighborhoods which terrify you?  And again, there’s a limit to the uncomfortableness.  We would never expect someone from Antioch to hate us the way that some hated the Jews.  Rome, by contrast, stoked the ethnic hatred to preserve the peace.  As long as the officials turned in their taxes as scheduled, there was little that would draw the attention of the Emperor and Senate. 

     That’s just one little area, institutional racism in law enforcement.  Does anyone believe their treatment of the poor was exceptional by modern standards?  Anyone want to argue that slavery was not exploitative and served as the foundation of their economy?  Anyone want to claim that their health concerns were any different than ours?  How about their relationships?  No?  Good!

     Like some of us, those earlier followers of Jesus were concerned about provision in the midst of such seemingly overwhelming odds and brokenness.  Our reading today is part of an extended teaching on God’s provision.  Jesus has highlighted the sparrows and blades of grass and how we are of infinite value when compared to those, but the people have asked “really?  Are you sure about that?”  “Look around, Jesus.  Many of us are ravaged by poverty.  Some of us are struggling with disease.  Nearly all of us wonder from where our meal will come, to say nothing of the new sandals we need before school starts, and all those supplies.”  You’re chuckling, but you get the point.  Folks in Jesus’ audience 2000 years ago had many of the same concerns as people 6500 miles to the north and west and 2000 years later.  They may have expressed those concerns in less technical language to our ears, but the concerns we very much the same.  Except, of course, for that hostile squad of soldiers representing a foreign conqueror that we see on our streets daily.

     Jesus extends His teaching today by reminding His disciples and us that we must re-order our priorities.  It is your Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.  It is pleasing to God to give us those things we need.  He does not do it stingily.  He does not say, Well, I gave Susan and John and Wilma a nice house, I guess I’d better balance things out and give Joe a fixerupper and Louise one in a bad neighborhood.  It is not as if God has a limited supply of anything and that He can only give away so much.  No, Jesus reminds us that it is our Father’s pleasure to give us the kingdom.

     Jesus goes on to the stewardship application, right?  No.  I mean, we can use it like that, but is Jesus really teaching us how to be good stewards, or is He more concerned that we get our priorities correct, that we focus on God and trust that God will focus on what is important for us?  Money is an easy place to show both our priority and trust as well as the consequences of idolatry.  When we place anything as a priority over God, we are committing idolatry.  Well, Brian, we need money to pay our bills and to give to the church so that you and Tina and Lisa and Waldemar can pay your bills.  Of course you and we do.  The problem is not the money, though, it is the priority.  If your sole focus is on making money, how quickly does it dominate your life?  When do you ever have enough?  Too often we end up like the rich man who builds and then allows himself to relax and finds himself wanting when God appears.  Our neighborhoods are rife with people who chase the right house in the right neighborhood, the right car, the right school, the right club and so on.  They are so enslaved to the appearances that they cannot enjoy what they have.  Heck, those who have worked at Body & Soul have met a few of our neighbors who cannot have furniture in their “right house” or keep gasoline in their “right car.”  In their pursuit to keep up appearances or keep up with the Joneses, they have become slaves.  They cannot even enjoy what they have because there is always the next thing to be acquired in the pursuit to have it all.

     The great thing about God, well there are several great things about God, is that there is no next God!  He is it.  And He loves us!  Not because we give enough money to the church or because we go on enough mission trips or because we pray x number of hours each day or study Scripture x number of hours each week.  He loves us because He is our Father.  He made us.  Better than that, He made us in His image!  Those special bits of ourselves that endear us to others, how much more do you think they endear us to the One who created us with those special traits, that nepes, to use the Hebrew?  Wicked sense of humor?  He gave some human beings that!  Kind heart?  He gave human beings that.  Overwhelming desire not to break the rules?  Even that was stamped on some of us.  He gave you, He fashioned you into what makes you you!

     Jesus reminds us this morning that God loves us.  No, he will take our fallen nature and work amazing transformation in our lives, thanks to the work and person of His Son, but He loves us before we ever know we should love Him!  And it pleases Him to give us what we need.

     After teaching against the fears and worries that arise out of the cares and concerns of the world, Jesus turns to the Advent message.  Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.  So often, we get caught up in the transcendence of God that we forget the immanence of God.  By that I mean we are great at being awed by the scope of God and His power, but we forget His attention to detail.  An easy example are the heavens.  If you look up at the sky tonight and the clouds cooperate, we have a few interesting cosmic events happening.  The moon is near full.  The bright star to the right is actually the planet Jupiter which, we are told, is no longer truly in conjunction, but is too far away for our human eyes to notice much a difference in magnitude from a few weeks ago.  To the left of the moon is another bright star, but this one is the planet Saturn.  And, if you are looking during the night, you may notice a meteorite shower.  It will peak later this week, but we are in the beginning of passing through the remnants of a comet.  Those grains of sand and small pebbles make for an amazing cosmic fireworks’ show.  And God organized all that!  He set all that in motion and caused it to appear to us as we see it.  And that’s just a few things in our sky!  How many stars can you see?  How many nebulae?  How many and varied galaxies?  He created and placed them all!

     You can accept that, right?  It makes sense.  If God fashioned everything, He made it work the way it works.  We have focused on His transcendence a lot.  God Himself reminded us of the truth of it when He challenged Job earlier this summer, right?  He leads behemoth like a puppy and plays with leviathan like a child might play with a bluegill or sunfish.  That aspect of God makes sense to us.  But heaven help us when we are reminded that that same Creator fashioned you and me!  Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Father.  God can make the heavens and the earth, but I’m a dumpster fire.  I have so many issues I have subscriptions.  Those are not God’s fault.  We are right, our sins are our fault.  But the who you are, the nepes that makes you you in the eyes of all of us worshiping God with you this morning, He stamped you with that.  He gave you that charisma.

     Advent has a same transcendent and immanent view, and we do a better job focusing on the former and not the latter.  For two weeks every year, we remind ourselves that Jesus will return.  We focus on the promise of the Second Coming and the accompanying judgment.  We long to be sheep and not goats.  In many ways, that is transcendent.  If we can accept the Resurrection, the Second Coming is a bit easier.  It speaks to the majesty and power and otherness of God.

     But what about this bit Be dressed for action and have your lamp lit?  Does that seem to be only a command about the scope and majesty of God?  Or is it, rather, more directed at individuals like ourselves?  All that we do at this parish, as far as I am concerned, is meant to prepare us for the work that God has given us to do.  The challenge for me as a pastor is to provide the training and preparation necessary for you to be ready, to be awake.  An easy example is worship.  Why do we worship?  To give thanks to God for what He has done.  To remind us of His promises.  Sure.  Sometimes we worship when we are sad to remind ourselves, or be reminded by others, that God will see us through the shadows of death.  Similarly, we worship when we are joyful both to give Him thanks and praise and to remind ourselves that these mountaintop experiences do not often last.  One day, when He returns, our existence will be mountain top like the transfiguration we celebrated this week, but this world is fallen.  We are sent back into the valleys and wildernesses to help draw others into His loving embrace.  We end every Eucharist with that prayer asking God to send us out into the world to do the work He has given us, each one of us, to do.  How do we do that?  It differs for each of us.

     Each of us is gifted with the story of our lives, our selves, and with God’s salvation history, both in the Scriptures and in our own lives.  We come to church; we read four passages each service; I generally preach and teach on one; in case I really made an uninspiring mess of things, we celebrate the Paschal mystery, reminding ourselves He came, He died, and He will come again; and then we head back out into the mission field, the world.  It’s there that Jesus calls us to be dressed for action and to have our lamps lit.  During the course of the week, we have however many opportunities to serve God in the world around us.  Some work in the feeding ministries at Advent and gather in the parish hall to work the pantry or in the kitchen on that Thursday to make casseroles.  Others are too busy because of work pressures or other life events, but they write the checks that make those ministries possible.  Others feel called to pray intentionally, either for these ministries and those engaged in them or for the parish at large.  Others are called to engage in the study of Scripture.  Some teach us, but all engage in it and should be talking about it.  I could go on and on and on, but this is where the corporate preparation occurs.

     You, of course, have your own specialized preparation.  The first part of that is life.  What made you who you are?  Your experiences and choices and the grace of God!  You are wonderfully prepared, as a result, for any ministry He gives you to do.  Who better to reach accountants with the Gospel than accountants?  Who better to reach the medical community with the Gospel than those who work in the medical professions?  Who better to reach the lost than those who were once lost themselves?  Who better to reach unrepentant sinners than those who were once themselves unrepentant?

     Now, I get it.  It is frightening to take on something as important as the salvation of another’s soul.  But the great news is that you and I are not responsible for their salvation!  Jesus is.  Our job, our calling, our vocation as His disciples is simply to be prepared and ready to share His love and His light in the world around us.  We point them to Him!  Folks will come in and complain that it is unreasonable for me or God to expect that they could ever be an evangelist.  This past week I had a doctor explain to me that they could not understand the intricacies of theology, that it was just too hard.  Really?  Really?  You can explain to me the plumbing and wiring and musculature and everything else in the human body, but you cannot understand that God loves you and others?  You want to try that again?  Y’all laugh, but it’s a laugh that recognizes the truth, right?  Each and every one of us refuses to believe that we can be used by God to spread His kingdom, to demonstrate His grace, to draw others into His saving embrace.

     Yet look around you.  Look at the people sitting beside or in front of or behind you.  Think back to yourself in the mirror before you left the house to come to church this morning.  How did we all get here?  How did we, modern, blessed Americans come to be here this warm, humid morning some 6500 miles and 2000 years removed from the story which we read this morning?  Somebody shared the Gospel with somebody who shared the Gospel with somebody who shared the Gospel, for two thousand years, across however many miles and cultures, in a winsome way, that caused you and I to believe in its truth.  It seems stupid.  It seems a ridiculous marketing plan.  How does such a plan survive the Roman empire?  How does such a plan survive the Dark Ages?  How does such a plan survive our culture?  How does such a plan survive the evil, the scariest “ism” in your mind, that existed between that fateful day in Judea about which we read this morning and today?  One prepared, one dressed for action disciple at a time!

     You see, as cool as these stories are, as important as these stories are about which we read week in and week out in church and Sunday school, what really impresses folks are our stories.  Over the course of time, as we wade through the vicissitudes and ism’s of life, people begin to notice us.  They wonder.  Why is she not destroyed by a loved one’s death?  Why does he always volunteer every week at St. Luke’s?  Why doesn’t she yell and scream at me like other bosses?  Why doesn’t he stab others in the back to climb this corporate ladder?  Why doesn’t he steal school supplies like the rest of us?  Why does she think prayer is such a good solution to every problem?

     They may not ask the questions that bluntly, but I promise you, if they are reaching out trying to understand what makes you you, they are looking for the source of the hope and joy that ultimately is within you.  And we need to be prepared and have our lamps lit, that we might hear the question hidden in their words and respond in the way that God wants us to respond.

     And so, Advent has a very immanent quality to it!  It is incredibly dependent upon relationships.  Yes, the Holy Spirit can come upon a crowd listening to a good sermon and cause 500 people to repent.  But God seems to delight more in that relational way of sharing the Gospel.  When people know you, when people come to respect you, when people come to see that you truly struggle to act and live with integrity, they want to learn what makes you tick, what shapes your worldview, what gives you hope.  And though you may think yourself ill-pre-pared for such wonderful work, God has been preparing you since the day of your baptism.  How many times have you partaken of the sacrament of the Church?  In how many Rites have you engaged?  How many times have you kept your oath at baptism or confirmation and repented to God, praying that He would forgive you and empower you to do His will?  And just as God used ready for action folks to get the Gospel to us across time and distance and cultures and professions, He will use us to bridge to the future, that generations yet unborn will know the saving grace of God!

     The truth is, my friends, you already have all that you need to point others to Him.  Your life and, perhaps, silent witness have caused you to be noticed.  Your attention to worthless and struggles to be thankful to God for all that you have have helped circumcised your heart.  All you need now is the opportunity.  And in the midst of that opportunity, God has promised to help you with what you need to say.  We truly need to have no reason to fear those opportunities because He loves us, He loves others, and He wants us all to choose to love Him.  And for those who do, it is His pleasure to give us the kingdom.

     One other note, I know I have gone long again, but this is really the Gospel of the day, the better than good or great part of the day.  What is your view of the next life?  Do you find yourself hoping you get wings and a harp and sit on a cloud somewhere?  Do you find yourself hoping for streets paved with gold and a big mansion?  Are you praying for a great worship service?  Are you intrigued by the idea of a great Wedding Feast?  Whatever it is, have you focused on the reward described by Jesus today?

     For those who are ready and have their lamps lit, what happens?  When the master returns, what happens?  He serves the servants and slaves.  Right!  In all your dreams, in all your fantasies about the next life, have you ever considered the teaching that God Himself, the maker of heaven and earth and all that is, seen and unseen, will serve you?  I wish you could see your faces.  We are laughing nervously because it seems so farfetched, so unreasonable, so ridiculous.  Yet here it is in Jesus’ teaching on provision.  In other Bibles these words would be in red letters and we all know what that means!  God loves you and me and everyone so much that He is willing to serve those of us who try to do what He asks and repent when we fall short.  You want to argue the truth of Jesus’ statement, don’t you?  But then it’s my job to remind you of the loving father in the prodigal son parable, of the Good Samaritan in that parable, and of the wonderful truth and mystery of the Incarnation, where God condescended to become human, that we might be saved.  And when you think on those and other wonderful stories in the Scriptures and in your individual lives, you begin to hear the truth in Jesus teaching today.  Don’t you?  Brothers and sisters, be dressed and ready for action and keep your lamps lit!  It is our Fathers pleasure to give us the kingdom and to serve each one of us in eternity!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†