Given August 8, 2010 at Millbrook United Methodist Church in Randolph, NJ.
Text: Luke 12:35-40
May God’s words alone be spoken; may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
When I was a young child, I was captivated by the Wizard of Oz. I loved everything about it; I had Wizard of Oz picture books, action figures, bed sheets. I first read Frank L. Baum’s book when I was five, and then I devoured it over and over again throughout my childhood. But the MGM movie with those greats Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, and so many others, won my heart. I loved (and still do love!) that movie. My folks didn’t have cable television; we were so rural that the cable company wouldn’t even service our town. This was well before the day of the satellite television, the internet or Netflix, and there was no movie rental store nearby. However, my grandparents several towns over had cable t.v. So, they recorded from television the Wizard of Oz movie, just for me. I actually wore out the VHS tape, I watched it so many times. I loved the whimsical scarecrow, the creaking tinman, the timid lion, Dorothy's sparkly, bright red shoes; I cheered every time the wicked witch of the west melted and told myself that I, too, would one day walk the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. Although I would not have articulated it as such at the time, I think that something deeper resounded with my young self; there’s really something about this story of a girl who starts to run away from home, who then gets dramatically separated from home by the twister and spends the rest of the story meeting fantastic characters and traveling through fantastic lands trying to find a way home. Home where she belongs. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.
That scratches at an itch that we all have, whether we are seven years old, captivated by Frank L. Baum’s magical story, or seventy-seven years old, and have realized the magic of home for years. There's no place like home. Home where you belong. Home where you are not a stranger, but where you find your deepest comforts and satisfactions. Home where your family is, where your identity is found, where you are most truly, really, YOU.
Home is one of the key themes of this week’s lectionary Gospel lesson; we’re commanded to stay home and be alert, watching for the master’s return from his sumptuous, extravagant wedding feast, keeping away thieves and burglars in the meantime. But, it’s also in tension with another major motif, that of being ready for action, of getting dressed and alert, ready to be on the move. Be alert and ready for what, exactly? We’re not really told, except that the master is returning. This textual juxtaposition of being homebodies and homeless bodies, of being somewhat settled and potential scattered, of being ready and alert for something we are only partially told about, begs for examination. Much like the Jesus we continually encounter in Luke, he just doesn’t make much plain sense here. Make up your mind, Jesus!, we want to say. Ok, so we’re to get dressed and be ready; but are we to settle in here at home or be on the move? Jesus, could you please be a little more clear?
I think if we can parse through this seeming contradiction, this practical impossibility of being at home and being out of home, something else comes into view. Amidst the settled and the scattered appears the imperative to wait. I doubt that there is anything I dislike more than waiting. If I were to guess, I would posit that most all of you can identify with me in my annoyance with waiting. Waiting for dinner to be ready after a tiring work day; waiting for a diagnosis for a mysterious ailment; waiting for the preacher to finish his sermon. Our culture is not inclined to wait, either. Think, for example, of how many “fast food” restaurants there are in our towns, as compared with those which cook food the slow, old-fashioned way. Credit cards have a great appeal to us because we can buy the things we want without having to wait till we have the cash to do so. We rush through school because we can’t wait to start our careers, which we then hurry through because we can’t wait for retirement. We are conditioned all our lives to not wait.
Perhaps, though, one of the most anxiety-producing forms of waiting is when we are anticipating someone’s arrival. Can you relate to the anxiety induced during the holidays when family and loved ones are stranded in the airport due to weather, or en route but stuck in traffic, backed up for miles? We can barely wait! All we want is to be together. The longing that absence produces, that anxiety caused by separation, is groaning, yearning to be satiated. Only reunion can assuage the impatience. Waiting, waiting, waiting...
The waiting in this in-between time, this time when we are neither home nor homeless, when we are to await the master’s return in some form or another, has three characteristics: preparation, maintenance, and expectation. “Get dressed for action!” - that’s the preparation. “Keep your lamps burning”; that’s the maintenance. “Be like those who are waiting for their master to return” - that’s the expectation. You have heard the old phrase “gird your loins.” While that is certainly a dated term, one that many of us might find rather odd that describes a process that sounds rather uncomfortable, it is quite fitting here. Girding your loins has a double meaning - regarding clothing, it means to fasten your belt, to tuck your clothes in, to cinch, to tighten. It is difficult to get dressed and ready for action if you are tripping over your robe, or, perhaps more applicably, if your pants are falling down. In another sense, though, girding your loins means being ready for action. It indicates that one has take the proper measures to be ready for the job at hand. Preparation requires effort on our part.
Preparation without maintenance expires quickly. The proper waiter is to keep her lamps burning. In Jesus’ day, they did not have street lights, nor did they have a porch light to keep on, so that the master could easily find and enter his door. The good servant would listen for the sound of his master’s return and would have his light already lit, so that he could illuminate and thereby facilitate his way. While we are here waiting, waiting to encounter Jesus in some way, waiting like the good disciples we are, we must keep the lamps burning.
Once we have prepared, once we have tied our belts and dressed ourselves for readiness, we cannot sustain our maintenance unless we have expectation, unless we have hope. The one who waits expects the master to return. We are not given any indication in this text that the waiter thinks the master might return, or half-heartedly expects the reunion. No; the master WILL return. The waiter is poised, ready at the door with her lamp, listening for the slightest indication that the master may be returning: a dog barking in the distance, gravel being crunched under sandals. She cannot wait to fling the door open with excitement at their joyful reunion.
Because, you see, when the master comes back, everything changes! The master becomes servant, and the servant is served. The master girds his loins, tightens his own belt, and treats those who have waited to a sumptuous meal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the dead of night or the middle of the day; the master will return the faithfulness of the watchful waiter. Can you imagine? It’s like going into work one day, and your boss handing you the keys to her sports car, and saying, “Today, I’m going to do your job. Go do whatever you want. Take the day off; go play golf, or go to the beach. Go shopping if you want; here’s my credit card, go buy whatever you want.” The tables have willingly turned.
Ok, so we’re to stay home and ward off the burglars, keep our lamps burning and be prepared for action, wherever that may take us (possibly out of the home), for the master, Jesus, is returning. But what does THAT mean? Are we to actually sit around with our girded loins and oil lamps (or maybe flashlights) waiting for Jesus to come back? Do we expect for the heavens to part and Jesus to majestically enter our atmosphere, with all the angels and inhabitants of heaven in tow? I’m inclined to say no; at least, I don’t expect anything like that to ever happen. But I do believe Jesus is coming back; indeed, I believe Jesus has come back, and will come back; I believe in the second coming, and the seventeenth coming, and the three-hundred thirty fourth coming. Let me explain by a simple analogy.
Waiting for the Christmas Guest by American poet and playwright Edwin Markham illustrates this well. (My apologies for those of you who have heard this before, and it’s likely some of you have. However, it is perfect for my purposes here.) In this Christmas story, there is an old shoe cobbler by the name of Conrad and his wife, Martha. In his dream, Conrad had a vision that he was going to be visited by Jesus himself before Christmas day. Excited by this dream, Conrad eagerly anticipated the arrival of his Christmas guest. This special Christmas guest was to be none other than the Jesus. And Martha, his wife, had prepared a gorgeous turkey banquet for his expected guest, Jesus himself. But Jesus didn’t show up that night.
Instead of Jesus, the first person so show up on the doorsteps of the cottage was a bum, a homeless person, a castaway who wandered into Conrad and Martha’s home that Christmas Eve. Shortly, this homeless person found himself eating a portion of the feast that Martha had prepared for the anticipated special guest. The homeless man also received a set of shoes from Conrad the cobbler. The homeless man left the cottage with a full stomach and a pair of new shoes on his feet; however, Conrad was still waiting for his Jesus in-the-flesh to arrive at his front door steps.
Next, a little old lady rapped on the door of Conrad and Martha’s cottage. She had been evicted from her apartment and was lost as she was trying to find the way to her son’s house. After wandering around the streets of the village, the little old lady saw the lights burning brightly from Conrad and Martha’s cottage, so she made her way up the front steps and rapped on the door. Soon, the recently evicted widow was eating a portion of the banquet which had been prepared for Jesus himself and she was sipping on a cup of warm tea that Martha had specially prepared. Afterward, Conrad was taking this little old evicted lady by the hand and leading her to find her son’s house.
Next, Conrad the cobbler found a little boy who was lost as he was trying to find a baker that Christmas Eve. Since all the bakeries were closed, Conrad took the little lost boy home to his cottage and fed him some of the feast that Martha had prepared for the phantom Jesus who was not appearing as Conrad had thought he would. They gave cookies and milk to the little boy. They discovered that the little boy’s father had recently died and the little boy belonged to the Widow Schultz. Martha herself took the lost little boy home that night with a loaf of freshly baked bread, and Conrad was left all alone in his cottage.
While he was alone, Conrad began wondering out loud why Jesus hadn’t come to his house that night. Conrad was so sure that Jesus would show up that Christmas Eve for the banquet that Martha had prepared for him. In the frustration brought on by anxious waiting, Conrad cried out, “Jesus, why didn’t you come to our cottage tonight? Why didn’t you visit us?”
Maybe he did. Maybe Jesus had come three times.
Jesus came to Conrad and Martha’s house three times that night. Unexpectedly, Conrad and Martha helped the homeless man with food and shoes. Unexpectedly, they fed the evicted old lady, warmed her with hot tea and then took her to her son’s home. Unexpectedly, they helped the little boy who couldn’t find a bakery on Christmas Eve and Martha then walked the little boy home to his mother. Time after time, Conrad and Martha were open and receptive to the Jesus who kept showed up in their lives, uninvited, unannounced, and not looking very much like what they had expected. Conrad and Martha had this deep conviction that Jesus was coming to them that night, and Jesus did.
We are always to be ready for Jesus’ second coming, his third coming, his persistent coming, his relentless coming. As difficult as it is, we are called to live in tension, in the uncomfortable in-between, where we are neither comfortably settled in at home nor completely unanchored and homeless, where we are to be prepared, maintaining, expecting Jesus to take us by surprise and visit us. And, like family and friends at Christmas, separated by snowstorms and stranded in airports, we won’t be free from the anxiety of waiting until reunion happens. So the challenge is to get dressed! Keep your lamps filled with oil, or make sure your flashlights have fresh batteries, or your porch lights provide adequate illumination. For Jesus is indeed coming at an unexpected hour, in unexpected ways. And when Jesus comes, there will indeed be no place like home. Amen.
© Evan W. Dodge, 2010.
