Matthew Henry John Bartlett

St Michael’s Anglican Church, Kelburn
Sermon for 8 August 2010 – Be ready

Psalm 33; Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2; 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

Jesus’ parables invite us to take up residence for a while in their imaginative world, and see things from a different point of view. But the parable in today’s gospel reading is at first glance a fairly unpleasant affair. It asks us to imagine ourselves as slaves. Slaves who are tempted to laziness and who risk a beating if they’re found shirking their tasks. It doesn’t sit comfortably. It’s a jarring metaphor, but I think appropriately so – because the whole thrust of the Gospel reading, and of the Hebrews passage, is to shake us out of our complacency, to literally take us out of our comfort zone. I’m going to return to the parable later, but for now let’s wind back to the start of the passage:

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Today’s theme is ‘Be ready’. It’s about being ready for the kingdom of God, and the barriers to that readiness. Our texts have a lot to say about the life of the disciple, and much of it is really challenging and counter-cultural. By counter-cultural I mean that as we begin to take them seriously in our own lives, and in the together-life of our church community, we will begin to look different, to be somewhat at odds with ‘mainstream New Zealand’.

Everything in this reading hangs together, so it’s difficult to pick out the particular aspects and talk about them in isolation. But I’ll have a go anyway. Jesus’ first challenge to us is don’t be afraid. Do not fear, because this mysterious thing called the kingdom is being given to you. The kingdom of God that Jesus was proclaiming and enacting – it’s about wholeness, healing, restoration, right relationships between God and humanity, between people, and between humans and the rest of the creation. The kingdom is the world put back the way it ought to be. That’s what we’re expecting, and why Jesus tells us not to fear. But fear, particularly in the form of worry and anxiety, do tend to characterise us and our society. Depending on our personality and stage of life, we’re worried about looking cool and fitting in with our peers; worried about exams; worried about our children, or our parents; about our health, or our spouse’s health; about having enough money; about crime; about whether we’ll be able to retire comfortably; worried about the climate; about the state of the oceans; etc., etc., etc.

The fear and anxiety all come because of the gap between the reality we experience and the glorious kingdom that’s supposed to be being given to us. The kingdom has come near to us in Jesus, but hasn’t fully come. The world is still full of misery, hatred, brokenness and sin. What we need is a sort of double vision – the eyes of faith. This is what the Hebrews 11 passage we heard read is on about. There Abraham is commended as an example for us. Because he could see something better on its way, he and Sarah were able to look beyond the surface appearance of their circumstances, and set out for a distant country, not knowing where they were going. Faith here means holding on to the vision that God is somehow working all things for good. The vision we need is a mysterious perception of what’s really going on, beneath the surface of events, or just beyond the horizon, if you will.

For myself, I need to remember this deeper vision particularly when I’m thinking about or dealing with the big-picture environmental troubles our world faces: it is, for instance, difficult to be optimistic about the nations of the world making the drastic cuts in emissions that seem to be necessary to avoid serious alterations the world’s climate. But optimism isn’t what’s called for – it’s hope. Hope that God is going to renew the heavens and the earth, and that God cherishes faithful efforts in the right direction. Each of us has our own window on the world’s pain; for you it might be something else – a terminal illness, a marriage that isn’t working, or the number of Maori in prison. Whatever it is, we need to look with the eyes of faith, and hold on to the promise that God will do for the whole world what he did for Jesus in the resurrection.

The awareness of what’s really going on has very concrete implications for discipleship. Jesus’ second challenge is sell your possessions and give to the needy. This is continuing a theme that appears all over the Gospels, namely that God and money are rivals for our loyalty, and that we have to make a choice about whom we will serve. Our possessions give us a feeling of security. I know for myself, if there is plenty of money in the current account, at some quite deep level I feel safe, like there’s breathing space and everything is going to be okay. If money is a bit tight, I feel constricted, and insecure. But Jesus is saying that those gut feelings of mine are not telling the truth – they’re instincts that need retraining along kingdom lines.

Jesus’ third challenge extends this further: Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Being ready for the kingdom is all about priorities. Surely this challenge of Jesus should prompt us to evaluate our own priorities, or even more straightforwardly and uncomfortably, to look at our own finances. Could we get by with less? What percentage of our spending could be fairly described as investing in the kingdom? Jesus talks about swapping earthly purses for heavenly ones – that is, rather than storing up wealth in the illusory hope of securing our lives in a shifting world, we’re to do something else with it – to invest it in the kingdom. But what does that really mean? I admit it’s not immediately obvious what exactly it looks like. I don’t think we’re talking only about say giving to the Church Missionary Society, though that’s definitely part of it. Perhaps one way of thinking about it, following St Paul in 1 Corinthians 3, is to imagine that God has restored the world, mended all the broken relationships and healed the earth, and then ask yourself, does what I am spending my money / time / energy on fit well in this setting?

I’m not trying to give the last word on what it means to live further from money and closer to the kingdom – this is a beginning; and something I think we probably need to talk more about as a faith community.

As well as priorities, it’s also about identity. As I understand it, in the Bible, the ‘heart’ means something different than it does for us now. We talk about the heart as the metaphorical site of affection and emotion, but in the Bible the heart generally refers to the deepest core of a person, the integrated centre of your self. Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. We think we need status, respect, a good salary, a nice house, etc. to be really fulfilled, but following Jesus is a process of learning to do without the things we tsought we needed to be okay. It’s losing ourselves and in the process being caught up in a much bigger adventure called the kingdom.

I started by noting the parable in this passage that at first glance is not very agreeable. It does, however, reward careful reading. According to Kenneth Bailey, lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament studies, the climax or key point of many of the parables occurs in the middle of a block of material. This is in contrast to the way Western story lines work, where the key event generally happens at or near the end. In this case, the climactic point is really great. When the master comes back from the wedding feast, he ties up his long robes with a belt, becoming like a slave himself, so that he can serve the slaves dinner! This is a dramatic reversal of expectations. Even in our culture it’s very hard to imagine say the father of the bride slipping out of his daughter’s wedding to serve dinner to the kitchen staff. This subverts the whole master–slave dynamic, and tells us something wonderful about the character of the king whose kingdom we await.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.