Luke 12: 32-40
“Ready or Not”
August 7, 2022
It happened again a few weeks ago and I’m always in awe when it does.
I was meeting with the family of a woman whose graveside service I was going to be doing and the words that always stop me in my tracks was offered up by her children who were fortunate enough to get to spend their mom’s final days by her side.
They all shared the same sentiment that their mother had shared with them, very close to the end.
They said, “She was ready” as in ready to die.
Her adult children went on to explain that their mother’s acceptance and readiness for death had been a process that had been resisted for the early months of her decline but by the end they told me she had spoken with everyone she needed to, she had expressed what she wanted to happen after she was gone, she had managed to help begin the healing process between a couple of family members and she felt confident that where she was going next would be wonderful.
Luke’s Gospel has quite a bit to say about the end times and what comes next.
Ours is not a fire and brimstone tradition and I would venture to say each of us has an image of some sort about what happens next.
That image could have been formed in a childhood Sunday School class, or maybe it comes from movie images like one of my favorites, Heaven Can Wait, where Warren Beatty’s character is mistakenly brought to the hereafter a bit too soon.
The fear of what comes next has been used to control human behavior for millennia and many of us have shaped our vision of the next life based on that fear.
This passage is less about the end times and more about the end ways.
Luke’s Gospel puts a lot more emphasis on the carrot rather than the stick when it comes to what happens after this current life.
Instead of using the idea of punishment as the incentive to be ready, we hear that we want to be ready so that we will receive blessing.
This is our Father’s good pleasure which is to give us the kingdom.
Instead of generating fear, Jesus calls his followers to know with confidence that the things of heaven will not perish like the stuff we hold onto with all our might here on earth.
In a world that so often emphasizes getting our fair share and accumulating as measures of success,
what Jesus wants us to know is that it is in our giving that we will be drawn closer to our God of blessing, the one that offers us so many gifts.
There’s a story that’s told about a nun who was explaining that the vow of simplicity that she took was not about possessions being bad. Instead, the idea was to “live lightly” so that whenever God called, she would be ready to pick up and go.
A way to describe this nun was that “She lived lightly to live ready.” (Inward/Outward from Church of the Saviour, 8/6/22).
Living lightly might be the way we stay ready for God’s presence.
Since none of us are privy to when the end times will arrive what could we do to leave ourselves open and available for glimpses of God’s assurances.
The purses that don’t wear out, as Jesus references them, are not the kind that carefully guard whatever financial resources we have.
Like the nun in the story, Jesus does not say have no possessions.
He says “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
What is it that we treasure most?
If its relationships, how much time do we devote to them?
If its experiences of making a difference in others’ lives how much of ourselves do we carve out to make this happen?
If the beauty of creation is something we treasure, what are we doing to care for it?
If we treasure freedom and peace would God be able to see that in our actions to promote freedom and peace?
Living on high alert all of the time is not realistic without sacrificing our physical and mental health.
Maybe the call to be ready means to be open to surprise and wonder.
Perhaps Albert Einstein captured the choice of how we make our way through the world best when he said,
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
To live on the lookout for the sacred in the everyday is bound to align us more closely with the God of blessing who has the power to surprise and amaze us.
This is not to say all of life should be viewed with rose-colored glasses, but it is to seek out the opportunity for the loving response to the challenges that come into our lives.
We can give some serious reflection to those things we treasure and how they might be used in building up God’s kingdom on earth.
Readiness is a state of mind and heart.
Doomsday scrolling won’t make us more prepared for Kingdom building.
Viewing our lives and homes and possessions as something to build a moat around and protect at all costs won’t either.
Our readiness comes in the form of an open heart and mind and a willingness to be moved into action, for God’s sake and for the sake of God’s beloved.
Hear then this wisdom from Steve Garnaas-Holmes titled, Ready:
God is not sitting idly by
watching our self-destruction.
God is at work in every moment,
the same dance of electrons
and embrace of gravity
vibrating with love,
creating and creating,
grace in the very being of it.
In every moment
God is mending what is
from the depths of what is.
Tragic or magic, momentous or mundane,
every moment is a choice
to join in harmony
or sit idly by.
Be ready.
The light of the lamp
of your heart, lit,
enlightens the world
and guides us in this darkness.
Amen. (Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light, www.unfoldinglight.net)