Abraham and Sarah died before
they ever met their great grandchildren. They died before Israel became a
nation and before the promised land was settled. They died long before the
shepherd boy David grew up to unite the people. They died long before Jesus came
to lead human kind back into a loving relationship with God through
resurrection. They died long before the church went from group of frightened
disciples hiding in an upper room and spread to the corners of the world even
to Sydney.
That is something for us to
remember as well. To remember we who call ourselves Christian are part of a
much larger narrative. Because of what humans like Abraham and Sarah did
thousands of years ago, we are here today. Because of what those who have come
before us have done, we are here today. How are we participating in this great
faith experiment, so that people down the road will benefit from God’s love?
Often the times we answer in
faith are times that we do things to benefit someone else. Like Abraham and
Sarah, we still respond in faith so that our children and our children’s
children will have a better life. More than that, we respond in faith because,
we are seeking to participate in bringing the Kingdom of God to this world. And
that is something worth having faith in.
Yet, we have to be careful that
we don’t turn Jesus’ radical teachings about how one is to live into the
saccharine bromides of a greeting card. One important way to read with such
care is to remind ourselves of the radically different contexts of life
first-century believers faced. Jesus’ exhortations may ring differently in the
ears of a people with supermarkets selling thousands of food items, warehouse
clubs full of industrial-sized stock, and second-hand stores lined with the
extra clothes we donate to charity.
The trust Jesus advocates
here is daring, radical, even foolish. These teachings highlight not just what
Jesus is asking us to do here but how he is asking to live. In our scripture
this week from Luke, Jesus’ teachings make it harder to hide behind the
largesse of our possessions and the many ways we can insulate ourselves from the
storms and randomness of a difficult world. Let loose of your fear. Sell what
you have. Look to the heavens for a treasure that cannot rust or, we might add,
be swept away when the markets teeter on the edge of collapse.
But Jesus goes on to explain
that rejecting fear does not mean resignation or apathy. Using the images of a
wedding banquet being prepared for the unknown arrival of the master and the
prospect of a thief, Jesus dramatises the kind of posture he wants us to
embrace. In light of Jesus’ previous admonition about fear, we know that the
images aren’t exactly right.
We are not mere slaves of a
master; we are children of God. God’s arrival is not like a thief seeking to
destroy and steal. Both those scenarios are full of apprehension. Instead, we are
called to prepare for the arrival of Jesus not with fear but with hope, not with
anxiety but with expectation, not with hate but with love.
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