Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise.

Luke 12:35-59

I.

            Jesus has just finished speaking about our heart being where our treasure is, the end of a long soliloquy on greed and wealth, anxiety, and God’s loving provision for everyone.

            Now he shifts gears a bit and urges constant vigilance, and readiness, to his disciples.  In other words, the time for this faithfulness and reliance upon God is now. 

            The first image he uses is of household slaves awaiting the return of their master from the wedding banquet.  Now we really don’t have much of a frame of reference for this kind of relationship.  We know slavery as a horrible, murderous institution in our own history, something further permeated by virulent racism.  We continue to suffer the rancid residue of slavery in our society even today.  We know that slavery is an execrable evil.

            Slavery was always bad by definition; it is structured into the nature of it as ownership of another person.  In Jesus’ day, slavery was extremely common.  Some say that a third of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves.  Slavery was the backbone of the world economy for thousands of years.  Jesus is talking to people who had direct experience of slavery. 

            They would have been amazed at the very idea that a bunch of slaves could be waiting with joyful anticipation for their master to come home from a wedding reception.  Clearly this is a very unusual, to the point of unprecedented or even impossible, household.

            The text does not say whose wedding it is.  Maybe it’s the wedding of the master himself!  Certainly it is a close friend, or even perhaps the son or daughter of the master.  It is a joyful occasion, so joyful that the slaves wait up until all hours of the night so they can celebrate with the master too!

            If the people are thinking, “Well, this isn’t like any estate I ever heard of.  Who ever heard of slaves who love their master?”

            But then it gets weirder.  Jesus says that those who stay up, alert and ready for the master, will be rewarded.  Jesus says that the master will even serve them!  We would barely even think of such a thing today!  Who comes home at three in the morning from a wedding reception and decides to make a meal for the babysitter?  So this is a remarkable and unheard of image, showing such love between the master and the slaves that the people hearing this have to know that this is not to be taken literally.  It is not about an earthly household.  It is about God and people. 

            The second image is less benign.  He says “if the owner of a house had known when the thief was coming he would not have let his house be broken into.”  So on the one hand it is like joyfully waiting for the Master to come home from a wedding reception, and on the other it is like being ready for a thief to break in to your house.

II.

            The point being that “the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  You don’t know the future.  Just like the farmer in the previous story who built bigger barns to store his bumper crop, and then dropped dead, we do not know what is going to happen even 1 minute from now. 

            So the time is now for us to act like disciples.  It is not something that may be put off until certain signs are fulfilled, or we have enough information, or we are more mature.  It’s not like we are certain to have lots of time on our hands to change our ways.  We rely upon the odds based on past experience.  Philosophers call that “the fallacy of induction.”  In reality, no amount of specific cases in the past can accurately and certainly predict the next case.

            The actual fact is that the Master, or the thief, could show up at any time.  And our deportment now, in the present, in this moment, will determine whether we are rewarded, or punished.

            At this point Peter pipes up. “Lord, are you telling this parable just for us disciples, or for everyone?”

            To which Jesus responds by telling another parable.  “You tell me, Peter.  Who is the faithful and prudent manager?  Who is the one that the master will put in charge of his slaves?  Who will take good care of the master’s other slaves, giving them their allowance of food at the proper time?”  Jesus is talking about the “managers,” the leaders whom the master has left in charge of the estate while he is absent.

            The managers were also slaves of the master; they just had more authority and responsibility than others.  “Blessed is that slave whom the master will find at work when he arrives.”  Blessed is the one who is faithfully carrying out the master’s will and instructions, even when the master is not physically there to check up on them.  Blessed is the one who is keeping the master’s commandments, who is maintaining the estate according to the master’s plan and intentions. 

            “Truly I tell you, he will put that slave in charge of all his possessions.”  To be faithful to the master in the master’s absence is to inherit and receive all the possessions of the master.  Basically, it is to become a partner with the master, because the master can rest assured that this slave will be faithful and responsible with the master’s goods.  Here’s another thing that never happens in earthly households: slaves generally do not inherit.

III.

            But if that slave who has been put in charge during the master’s absence says to himself, “My master is delayed in coming.  We don’t know what has happened to him.  (This is before cell-phones or even reliable mail.)  He may never show up.  In which case, I am in charge accountable to no one!”  And if in his power-mad frame of mind he starts to beat the other slaves, both men and women, and to eat from the master’s flock and larder, and drink to intoxication on the master’s wine, well, that will be somewhat different.

            If, in the master’s apparent absence, we do violence to each other, turning our responsible position into a dominating one, and if we exploit the master’s resources to satisfy our own greed and gluttony, not sharing with the slaves we have deemed to be lower than we are, then the consequences are dire.

            Jesus says that the master will return when least expected and at an unknown hour, and will slice that wicked manager in pieces, and number him with the unfaithful.  In fact any slave, who knows what the master wants, but does not prepare himself for the master’s return or do what the master instructed will receive a severe beating.

            Now this is starting to sound like the slavery people know.  Except in Jesus’ retelling, we get the kind of relationship we deserve.  If you trash the master’s stuff, you will be trashed.

            Then Jesus adds a little caveat.  If we don’t honestly know the master’s will when we are breaking it, then we will receive a bit of a break.  But the greater responsibility will be required of those who know the master’s will.  He is referring to the disciples.  He is also making another dig at the Pharisees and other leaders.  They know God’s will… but they don’t do it.  Because this is not about home economics, this is about the whole society or even the whole planet.

            If God entrusts us with the household of this whole beautiful creation, including other people, and we decide out of greed and gluttony to waste and pollute it, and exploit the labor of the people for our own gain, what may we expect upon the return of the Creator, which could happen at any time?  It’s not going to be pretty.  You want to talk about the wrath of God?  Seriously?

            Jesus concludes, “From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”  What we have been given is not a reward, but a responsibility.  And we had better use it in accomplishing God’s will, as revealed in Jesus Christ. 

IV.

            Jesus then says that the road ahead is going to be hard for everyone because we have let the bad managers lead us into a destructive, exploitative, corrupted, faithless, and toxic approach to the household placed in their charge.  And those who follow him and his way of peace and justice, community and love, will necessarily become the cause of a division in the world, extending even into families. 

            Following Jesus and living according to his teachings puts us out of synch with what we have always been told is true, but isn’t.  To start living according to the truth in a world where everyone else is still following lies, creates friction.  Friction makes heat, and enough heat bursts into flames.  And these flames consume everything unreal, illusory, false, and evil.

            That’s why Jesus says, “I came to bring fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”  So the fire is the fire of God’s love and Holy Spirit, which is experienced as power and joy in the hearts of those who live according to God’s Word, in God’s new community… but which comes as destruction to those who destroy the earth  (Rev. 11:18).

            And the baptism is Jesus’ immersion into mortal human life, which is completed with his death.  In Jesus, God comes into our life, becoming the victim of human injustice and violence.      

            Jesus then raises his voice to the crowds around him can hear.  “You all know how to predict the weather.  When the wind blows from the sea, you know it’s going to rain; when it blows from the desert, you know it’s going to be hot.  And you can interpret the times just as well.  Throughout history, when any society has been in conflict with God’s Word and Spirit, bad things happen.  God is truth, and to live a lie means to be in conflict with the truth.  Guess what, the truth is real and always wins.  If you’re on the side of the truth by living according to God’s will, you will be saved.  But if you stay in lies and falsehood, you will go down in flames with the system built on them.   To live a lie is unsustainable.”

            To live according to God’s will is to live after the teachings and example of Jesus Christ: it is to live in love, hope, justice, peace, goodness, and beauty; it is to live in humility, generosity, forgiveness, and selflessness.  That is the way of life.

            To function according to lies is to approach things with greed and gluttony, trusting in threats and violence, trusting only in fear and anger, and thereby laying waste to the Creation and God’s people, especially the poor.  This way of existing is based on nothing, it is unsustainable, and it will collapse into dust, taking with it all who place their trust in it.

V.

            Jesus concludes this dire preaching by urging people to get their act together now, changing their lives and making amends today, getting into conformity with God’s love in the present, and so avoid having to answer for having been out of synch with God’s love in the past.  God is willing and ready to settle now!  Believe me, we don’t want to go to trial, because, if our case if based on our past behavior, we will lose.

            It has been accurately stated that we don’t have much of a theology of God’s wrath.  Well, here it is.  If you trash God’s creation and oppress God’s people, you have so distanced yourself from the truth that you experience God’s love as wrath.  The world becomes a very hostile place when you make yourself God’s enemy.

            But that’s not the note I want to end on.  Jesus wants us to place ourselves in the position of those happy and joyful slaves who wait for the return of the master with the devotion that would rival that of a dog.  He wants us living in this creation, “lost in wonder, love, and praise,” as one old hymn has it.  He wants us dwelling together in harmony, as God intends and says in Scripture, and as Jesus himself teaches and exemplifies.  He wants us caring for, and providing for, and supporting, and forgiving, and healing, and lifting up each other.  He wants us to live here in peace, loving God with all our being, and our neighbors as ourselves.

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