Luke 12:32-40
Rev. Lisa Day
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
August 8, 2010
Has it happened to you yet? That scary call from the credit card company asking about questionable purchases? The phone rings and a voice says, “This is not your usual pattern of spending. We just wanted to be sure you were the one making those charges, and not someone else. We want to make sure you haven’t been a victim of identity theft.”
We’ve got to watch out for thieves. We’ve got to watch out for anyone who tries to take what belongs to us! Human ingenuity does offer some options for staying a step or two ahead of thieves. There are many products which promise us a sense of security so that we might sleep at night. To protect our homes, we can purchase alarms, and pay for armed response services. We can install grates on our windows and motion detector lights that pop on with bright spotlights to illuminate the perimeter of our house and deter the thief from his stealthy approach.
We can protect the children who belong to us. We can fingerprint them, and keep a current picture in case they wander off on a family picnic, or worse, and we need help finding them. Or better yet, we can fingerprint and background check those who will care for them when they are out of our sight. We’ve got lots of ways to feel more secure when it comes to our homes and our children.
And our politics. Some of our politicians work hard to address our insecurities, maybe even to inflame them? It’s so rare to hear a request that we make a sacrifice for the common good, but instead we so often hear how a particular policy or program is designed to protect us, to take care of me and mine. This can be true of either party. Watch out! Those other guys are trying to steal what belongs to you. It could be your union jobs or your Reagan tax cuts, depending.
We are a people and culture so frightened of having what belongs to us stolen away. We need to guard against thieves, especially the thieves in the night. Just like Jesus said, right? Watch out for thieves in the night.
Or is that what he said? “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." The Son of Man at an unexpected hour? You mean like the thief? Is this about Jesus the Master? Or Jesus the thief?
Well, first it seems as if Jesus is talking about being the Master – and our job is to be wide awake, faithful servants, waiting for the first tapping at the door, to fling wide the gate to the weary master all partied out from the wedding feast. It can be hard for 21st century American Christians to imagine ourselves as the subservient ones – the servant ones, the ones waiting up for the master. Jesus the Master is hard enough for us independent self-made folk to imagine, to embrace.
Jesus the Master is hard enough. But Jesus the thief? The one testing the door, checking the windows, evading our spotlights in order to shine a flashlight of his own into our homes searching out our vulnerable places. Jesus the Master Thief? Coming to claim what belongs to us?
What does it look like when Jesus steals your identity? What does your credit card bill look like then? Would the bank be calling then to report that these were not your usual charges? Imagine the guests at your dinner table if Jesus were sending out the invitations and signing your name. Who’d be knocking at the door then?
If the Master Thief stole your identity, what would happen to the politics of self-interest then? Would he imitate your voice and call your congressperson with demands for tax increases so that your hungry brother might be fed, so that your needy sister might get a child care subsidy so that she could work, so that cousin of yours might get access to behavioral health services? For God knows there is no security in alarms, no peace in weapons, no real joy in feasts when others remain hungry.
What would it look like if Jesus was the Holy Thief? What happens to those hopes and dreams you have for the children you love in your life – your students, children and grandchildren, nephews, neighbors? What happens to our hopes for their security when Jesus is planning their future?
Did you hear what Robert and Alexandra promised as they brought little Antonio to the font to be baptized just a few minutes ago? “Do you accept your responsibility, as bearers of the grace of God, to guide your child by word and example into the fullness of life which is found in the faith you affirm?” Not to guide Antonio into safety, not into the best security human ingenuity can design and human money can buy – but to guide him into fullness of life. Did you hear your own promises “to teach this child the good news of the Gospel and to love him and care for him so that he may come to know the joy and challenge of the ways of life in Christ.” The joy and challenge of the ways of life in Christ.
It isn’t safe to follow Jesus, not the way we look at safe any way. But oh the adventure, the journey, the excellent company, the joy and challenge – and the feast not just hosted by the master, but served by the master at the end of the day, or in the middle of the night, when the work is done. We don’t come to that font and get a guarantee of safe. We don’t tame God there. We give our children over into fullness of life, into joy and challenge. We hope and pray they will be coaxed away into the glorious adventure of serving the Master, called away to adventures in Atlanta and West Virginia and who knows what else this God might choose to do with them next.
And we too have been to that font, just like Antonio today. Our identity is no longer our own. We too have been placed into the arms of the Master, the one who claims us and enfolds us in baptism. In baptism, we have put on Christ, we are clothed in his new identity. We too are claimed as Christ’s own.
Is God the master thief, or the rightful owner coming to claim and reclaim what is his, by any means, by any sacrifice? God who created us and breathed into us the breath of the Spirit. Jesus who called and redeemed us, or as Paul put it, "You are not your own for you were bought with a price." 1 Cor. 6:19-20. And God the Spirit who sealed us as children of the covenant in baptism, and claimed and marked us as Christ’s own, forever.
This God, to whom we belong in life and in death, will come as master knocking at the door, will come even as a thief does, coming any way it takes to claim us. And coming not to take, but coming with gifts to give, with fullness of life, and joy and challenge, and companions for the journey, and a feast at the end, served by the Master. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”