August 11, 2019 “Lasting” – Luke 12:32-40

Luke 12:32-40
“Lasting”
August 11, 2019 – Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The yellow gourd had a taste like none he had ever experienced before. C. S. Lewis writes that it was “so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a whole new genus of pleasures, something unheard of… out of all reckoning… For one draft of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed.”[1]

Lewis described his hero Ransom’s first taste of fruit on Venus in his fantasy novel Perelandra. It was so incredibly good that Ransom’s first thought was to reach up and pick another. But something in the atmosphere of the planet seemed to tell him no. A little later he encounters another tree bearing a globe which emits a shower of liquid which washes over him with an exquisite scent that refreshes and energizes him. He considers crashing headlong through a whole grove of the trees so as to experience this wonderful pleasure multiplied a hundred times. Once again, something tells him no.

Lewis’s Perelandra is an unfallen world, a paradise where sin has ruined neither the inhabitants nor nature. Ransom realized his natural reaction, to have something good over and over again, as much as possible, did not fit in paradise. He wonders, “This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards… was it possibly the root of all evil?”[2]

Jesus addressed the itch Ransom felt in chapter 12 of Luke. He spoke about our desire to have things, good things, food and clothing. He gently says in our text for today in verse 32, “Do not be afraid little flock…” He’s warning us as He did earlier in the chapter not to worry, not to be afraid concerning what we may or may not have.

It’s natural to want to repeat good experiences, to store them up like the rich man in the parable last week, like Ransom reaching for another piece of fruit. On our trip to British Columbia in June I discovered Purdy’s chocolate store. They had a wonderful milk chocolate covered ginger candy like See’s used to sell. I bought a big box and I’m still doling it out to myself, a couple pieces at a time.

It all seems so innocent. We do it all the time. We store up pleasures, make sure we have enough of that coffee we really like, that perfect wine, that extra creamy yogurt, those really tender steaks. Or another pair of our favorite shoes, one more fishing rod, a spare driver in our golf bag, a charger pack for a cell phone. We try to insure we have those little things that keep life sweet.

Yet Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Instead of all those things you feel you need and want so much, your Father wants to give you “the kingdom.” He was giving Abraham the kingdom too in our Old Testament lesson, but let’s set aside what the kingdom is for a minute and ask why we might be afraid. What is Jesus telling us we don’t need to fear? We do not need to fear loss.

Because God gives us His kingdom, we may do what Jesus says in verse 33, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven…” Loss is nothing to fear if what we want is God’s kingdom. We don’t need to be afraid of money that runs out, of jewelry which gets stolen, of cars that break down. All that really matters is kept safely in heaven for us. We can give all that other stuff away and be no poorer with respect to God.

Yet we are afraid. A missing wallet sends us into panic. A broken air conditioner drives us crazy. Don’t even speak of losing health or a loved one. We are afraid, because this earth is where our hearts are. That’s why Jesus went on to say in verse 34, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

We often get that well-known saying of Jesus reversed. What we hear Him say is, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be.” In other words, we think our first business is to get our hearts right, to love heaven more than earth, to want the kingdom of God more than chocolate. If you and I can only get our hearts in order, then we’ll put our treasure safely into God’s keeping. But it’s not what Jesus said. That’s backward.

“Where your treasure is” comes first. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.” Deal with your fear of loss, by putting your important stuff where it belongs, in God’s keeping rather than your own. Give money away. Use a car to serve others. Spend time helping someone. As we heard from Augustine last week, store your food in the bellies of the poor, and it will be safer than in your cupboard at home. Don’t try to get your heart to heaven, then put your treasure there. Move your treasure to heaven. Your heart will follow.

In short, don’t try to make yourself feel generous so you can then give more. Just start giving, and you will find yourself becoming generous. Our hearts follow our stuff. We lead them by where we put that stuff. Jesus is trying to teach us the currency of heaven: giving, serving, even losing. It takes practice.

So beginning at verse 35, Jesus teaches us to be ready. We get ready by practicing what He taught. The parable is a picture of servants left to watch a home while their master is away. It points to Jesus going away after His death and resurrection, but promising to come back again. Update it however you like. Office employees tending to business while the boss is out of town. Fast food restaurant clerks running the place while the manager is out. But I always think of my mother leaving us to practice the piano after school.

My sister and I struggled through two or three years of piano lessons. We were supposed to practice a half hour every day. Mom told us to do it when we got home from school and she would be there soon after work. She expected to find one of us practicing when she arrived. So the two of us planned carefully. Set the music up on the piano, turned to the right page. Then relax, read, watch television, but listen carefully for Mom’s car coming up the drive. When we heard it, we were ready. Quick! Put down the book! Turn off the TV! One of us jump to the piano bench and start pounding away, as if we’d been going at it all along.

I don’t think my mother was fooled by that kind of “readiness.” Neither will Jesus be. In verse 37, He sees the servants so ready that when their master comes, “they can immediately open the door for him.” No “just a moment, we’ll be right there.” No trying quickly to hide the mess from a party. No frantic scurry to get things in order or set dinner on the table. They’re all set. They’re doing what they should have been all along. Ready.

You and I are ready for Jesus when we’re doing what He’s taught: living our lives in service to others, letting go of what we have, placing our treasure in heaven. As I said last week, I am proud and pleased by the ways so many of you do that here at church, around our community and even around the world. You are practicing for Jesus.

We have a wonderful promise, if we are ready for our Master. He said it twice here in these verses, a blessing. In verse 37, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Again at the end of verse 38, “blessed are those slaves,” who are ready even if the master comes in the middle of the night or at dawn. I also like the NIV’s translation, “It will be good.” When Jesus comes back, it will be good… if we are ready.

Jesus not only says it will be good, in verse 37 he explains how it will be good. When He comes back the roles are going to be reversed for His blessed servants. The master “will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Ponder that. Instead of imagining how you and I will honor Jesus, bow before Him, find Him the best chair, bring Him the most delicious food, imagine Jesus doing those things for as. As He knelt and washed the disciples’ feet in John chapter 13, He promises to kneel down and serve you and me when He comes. We won’t serve. We will be served… by Jesus.

It’s hard to imagine, partly because you and I must admit that we are way too often incredibly bad servants. We are afraid to let go of what we have and give it to others. We look out for ourselves, not for each other. We squabble and bicker. It’s almost too much to hope that Jesus will actually find us ready and watching when He comes, practicing what He’s taught us. The best we can hope for is a frantic leap for the piano bench or a mad cleanup dash through the house while He stands waiting at the door.

No, we’re not ready for Jesus. At least I’m not, buying my chocolate, worrying about bills, fearing what I might lose or miss. I’m not ready. Yet whenever God gives me grace, I want to practice, try to learn what Jesus teaches me, teaches us all. So I try. I think you do too. We come and offer our efforts at giving and serving and being the kind of people who will be unashamed to open the door for our Lord when He comes again.

As odd as it sounds, being ready for Jesus means admitting how much we are not ready. We cannot make ourselves ready by serving Jesus, because ultimately it all depends on Jesus serving us. As we give our offerings and talk about working at Kennedy Middle School and bringing handmade items to share, we see standing before us the Table of Jesus’ service to us. We can’t make ourselves right. Jesus died on the Cross and rose from the dead to make us right. We need to serve, but even more we need to be served.

There’s a long complicated poem by W. H. Auden called The Sea and the Mirror. It develops themes from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest which is about marriage, magic, and a monster named Caliban. As Alan Jacobs put it, Caliban, who has almost nothing to say in The Tempest, has lots to say in Auden’s poem. Part of what Caliban says in Auden’s poem is a perfect image for us, for the church.

Caliban invites us to picture “the greatest grandest opera rendered by a very provincial touring company indeed.” He says, “Our performance… which we were obliged, all of us, to go on with and sit through right to the final dissonant chord, has been so indescribably inexcusably awful.” He goes on:

…half the instruments were missing and the cottage piano… must have stood for too many years in some damp parlor, we floundered on from fiasco to fiasco, the schmaltz tenor never quite able at his big moments to get right up nor the ham bass right down, the stud contralto gargling through her maternal grief, the ravished coloratura trilling madly off-key and the re-united lovers half a bar apart…
Now it is over. No, we have not dreamt it. Here we really stand, down stage with red faces and no applause; no effect, however simple, no piece of business, however unimportant, came off; there was not a single aspect of our whole production… for which a kind word could, however patronizingly, be said.[3]

That’s us. That’s me. At our best, in Jesus’ eyes it’s still the worst. We are not ready, we never will be. Nothing we do ever comes out quite right, quite good. We are sinners. That’s the Gospel truth. But both the Gospel and Caliban have something more to say.

The point is not our performance. The point is not our service. Jesus asks us to serve. He wants us to put on our incredibly bad performance of love and mission and service. He wants us to let go of this world and seek His kingdom. Yet He knows full well we will not succeed much at all. Later on in Luke 17:10, Jesus tells us, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants.’” How much more, with our typically awful performance, must we say that. We are unworthy.

In The Sea and the Mirror, Caliban also said this this:

Yet, at this very moment when we do at least see ourselves as we are… There is nothing to say… There is no way out… it is at this moment that for the first time in our lives we hear, not the sounds which, as born actors, we have hitherto condescended to use as an excellent vehicle for displaying our personalities and looks, but the real Word which is our only [reason for being].[4]

It’s when we know how bad we are, that we can hear best how Jesus wants to serve us. It’s when our performance has disintegrated into shambles that the Master comes and has us listen to Him, has us hear His Word. We sit down as He takes over and serves up to us His own true and beautiful production of abundant life.

Caliban goes on to say that all our sin and shame and fear, all our “wish and no resolve” continue to haunt us, “only now… we are blessed by that Wholly Other Life… it is just here, among the ruins and the bones, that we may rejoice in the perfected Work which is not ours.”[5]

We receive that “Wholly Other Life,” a new blessed life, from Jesus, by faith. That’s what our readings about Abraham from Genesis and Hebrews taught us. Genesis 15:6 says Abraham “believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” But faith is faithful, so Hebrews 11:8 says, “By faith Abraham obeyed…” By believing and hoping in what Jesus does for us, how He serves and will serve us, we may do as Abraham did and become obedient servants. Just like Abraham we leave the things of earth behind and look toward a “city” not of this world, a city built for us by God.

That’s the promise and blessing of these verses here this morning, especially verse 37, “he will come and serve them.” Caliban said that in the ruins of our failures, “we may rejoice in the perfected Work which is not ours.” The whole point of the Gospel is not that we serve, but that Jesus serves us. He will serve us for eternity. As we sang this morning,

Then he’ll call us home to heaven, at his table we’ll sit down.
Christ will gird himself and serve us with sweet manna all around.

We go out to serve, not in the hope that we will do great and wonderful good, but simply in the hope of being ready, ready to acknowledge that all our service is imperfect and poor, and that we need to be served. We need that “Work which is not ours” to complete and make whole any work we do. We rely totally on the work of Jesus Christ. May you and I let go of this world and all it offers and be humbly ready for that amazing new world that is coming, where our Lord serves up joy forever. It will be good.

Amen.

[1] Perelandra (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965), p. 42.

[2] Ibid., p. 48.

[3] W. H. Auden, The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s Tempest, edited by Arthur Kirsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 51f.

[4] Ibid., p. 52

[5] Ibid.