A couple of weeks ago I took my
grandchildren to see The Secret Life of
Pets. If you find yourself in need of a good, rollicking laugh at some
innocent fun (and you have some pre-teen children to take along with you) this
movie is worth the price of admission. If you haven’t seen the trailers, the
basic idea is that our pets—our dogs and cats, our guinea pigs and our
budgies—live quite a different life when we’re not at home to see them and they
get up to hijinks that we would never dream of. If you haven’t seen the movie,
I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
The Bible makes it very clear that as
followers of Jesus you and I also, like those pets in the movie, live in two different
worlds. At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples that they do not belong to
this world (John 15:19). A generation
later the apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi that our true citizenship
is in heaven and that we are not to conform to the pattern of this world (Philippians 3:20; Romans 12:2). And St
John counsels, “Do not love the world or anything in the world …” (1 John 2:15).
What does all of this mean? Many Christian
people have interpreted these and other passages as though we need to withdraw
as much as possible from any involvement in the affairs of the world. That has
led to the formation of monastic communities in the Catholic and Orthodox
traditions and groups such as the Amish and the Hutterites on the Protestant
side. Yet I think that the more perceptive among them would readily admit that
even they have not managed to escape the world completely, both from a social
and an economic perspective, and more significantly from a spiritual one. They
face the same issues and fight the same struggles as you and I do.
Well, if we cannot entirely escape the
world, does that mean that we are forced to give into it? A clear answer to
that can be found in the words of Peter: “Dear friends, I urge you, as
foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against
your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you
of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he
visits us” (1 Peter 2:11-12). So
how does this work out in day-to-day life? I believe that that is exactly what Jesus
was talking about to his followers in this morning’s reading from Luke’s
gospel. The passage divides into three sections, so let’s take a few moments to
look at each.
The Shepherd: Be fearless (32-34)
Jesus’ first words to his followers in this
morning’s reading are, “Do not be afraid.” As the events in the months that
followed would prove, those disciples would have plenty to fear. Jesus had
already warned them at least twice that he would be rejected and suffer and die
at the hands of the religious authorities and that they too would be called
upon to take up their cross. Besides that, in recent days his words had begun
to take on a darker, more sombre tone—about a wicked generation that refuses to
repent, about people who killed the prophets and then erected their tombs,
about those who have power to destroy the body but not the soul…
Admittedly we do not live under the looming
shadow of the cross as the disciples did. Nor do we live beneath the menacing
eye of Roman oppressors. Nevertheless, it seems to me that one of the dominant
motifs of our current age is fear. You have only to look at some of the most popular
films over the past few years—Mad Max,
Extinction, Hunger Games, Oblivion, Resident Evil, and The Maze Runner, to name just a few—all of them depicting the
future world in grim, dystopian terms. You and I may not have gone to see them,
but somebody did. These titles alone grossed over $225 billion at the box
office. Think of how long it takes to board an airline flight since 9/11. Think
of the climate of fear that has engulfed many European countries after the
recent ISIS attacks, not to mention the fear which I believe is the overriding
theme in the U.S. election right now, no matter which side you may happen to be
on. It’s all over Facebook and the media, in the news columns and the op-ed
articles, combined with positively frightening images of Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton with headlines to match.
In the midst of this Jesus says to us, as
he said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid.” And notice how he refers to them.
In spite of their being grown men, accustomed to the rough and tumble of the
world, Jesus addresses his followers as lambs—“little flock”. Can you think of
anything more vulnerable and defenseless than a little wooly lamb? At the same
time we recognize that God has not placed us in a fierce and hostile world
without any protection. That is precisely why Jesus speaks to his disciples as
his “little flock”. He wants them to know that he is their Good Shepherd, and
ours too. “Uncertainties are no cause for alarm or anxiety,” wrote New
Testament scholar Fred Craddock.[1] We do not need to join in the prevailing paranoia that surrounds us
because we know that we are in the hands of one who loves us more than we can
ever possibly imagine, whose purposes for us and for his creation are only
good, who will lead us even through the valley of death, and whose goodness and
mercy will follow us all the days of our life. Immersed in an environment of anxiety
and paranoia, Jesus says to us, “Do not fear.”
The Master: Be faithful (35-38)
In the second section of this morning’s
passage Jesus gives us a picture. It is of a large household whose master has
gone off to join in the celebration of a marriage. In our society that might
mean an absence of a few hours—or if the wedding happened to be at some
distance, perhaps a weekend or a few days. But in the context of ancient Near
East you need to think big—bigger than an Italian wedding or even “my big fat
Greek wedding”. We are thinking of festivities that could last for a week or
longer, and so if the wedding were at any distance the master could be absent
from his household for a considerable span of time. At best it would be a
temptation for the servants to take a little time off. At worst it might
provide an opportunity for an extended party time as long as the master was
away.
It seems that that was exactly what Jesus
had in mind. When Peter asked him about this parable, Jesus explained, “Suppose
the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and
he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and
drink and get drunk” (Luke 12:45). Obviously
the parable is about the time between Jesus’ ascension and his coming again and
the call to us to remain faithful during that time. Yet the pressure is always
on us not to. We live in a society that less and less has any sense of moral
responsibility to any power beyond ourselves. In that sense, the twenty-first
century is not markedly different from the first, when the apostle Paul urged
his fellow believers in Rome not to “let the world around you squeeze you into
its own mould, but [to] let God re-mould your minds from within. Then you will
learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans
12:2). Listen to How Eugene Petersen puts this in The Message:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Much along the same lines, Paul wrote these
words to his fellow believers in Ephesus:
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit…(Ephesians 5:15-18)
A few sentences later he reminds Christian
masters that they have a Master in heaven—and both they and we are called to be
faithful to him as we await his return. What shape that faithfulness takes will
vary according to the gifts and responsibilities that God has entrusted to each
of us. But the call remains the same, in the power of the Holy Spirit seeking to
make God’s love and God’s good purposes realities in this world.
The Coming Son of Man: Be focused (39-40)
In the final couple of verses of this
morning’s reading, Jesus shifts to a third image. This time it involves the
owner of a house and a gang of thieves. You never know when thieves might try
to break in, says Jesus, but you can make yourself ready in case they ever do. In
the same way, he warns us, “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will
come at an hour when you do not expect him.” And so, if you will pardon the
alliterations (but as a preacher I find myself powerless to resist them!) in the
course of this morning’s reading Jesus has told us to be fearless, knowing that
he is our Good Shepherd whose purposes for us are only good. He has encouraged
us to be faithful to him as our Master, seeking to carry out his will in the
world. And now he cautions us to be focused, as we know neither the day nor the
hour of the coming of the Son of Man.
Back in biblical times protecting your
belongings from a thief probably meant putting a bolt on your door. Nowadays it
seems that most theft takes the form of white-collar crime and protection means
using adequate security codes on your credit cards and computer. Not long ago
that involved 56-bit encryption, which employs codes using more than 72 quadrillion
(15 zeroes) permutations. However, nearly twenty years ago it was shown that a little
desktop computer could hack it, and so the standard had to be increased to
128-bit. Yet even that hasn’t prevented the major security ruptures that we
have witnessed in the last few years.
So what about the coming of the Son of Man?
Jesus is going to come again and you and I need to be prepared. And what does
that involve? Certainly not abandoning the world, as some might suggest, but
quite the opposite: plunging into it, seeking to make God’s new creation a
reality in the here and now. It could be through the beauty of art, literature
or music. It could be in the social or political realm. It could be through such
seemingly mundane occupations as farming, driving a bus, managing finances,
teaching a class, raising children, caring for the elderly or any other of a
million and more activities that human beings are engaged in. We speak of all
of these pursuits as “secular”. Yet as they are offered up to Christ and his
kingdom they take on a worth and a significance that are eternal. And it goes
without saying that by necessity it will also mean praying, seriously seeking
God’s will and cultivating our relationship with him, loving our neighbours, striving
to know the mind of Christ and to reflect the heart of Christ in all we are and
do.
As we seek to be people of God’s kingdom in
the midst of the kingdoms of this world, may we be fearless, faithful and
focused, as we rely on “him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask
or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. To him be glory
in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and
ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
