This morning’s sermon preached at Forest Presbyterian Church in Lyons Falls, NY.  My text is Luke 12:32-40.

In the eyes of popular media, inner-city neighborhoods are often portrayed as haunts of violence and lawlessness.  The inhabitants of such areas tend to be stereotyped as hardened and dangerous people, who are best avoided by well-to-do suburbanites.  I’d like to reassure you this morning that the reality of life “on the street” is far duller than the imagination allows.  The lives of our fellow human beings in downtown Utica bear a striking similarity to the lives of people here in Lyons Falls.

I’m thinking right now of Youngblood, a sometime-resident of Genesee Street who is frequently in trouble with the law due to his activities as a vendor of controlled substances.  One day, Youngblood and I were driving to an appointment with his probation officer and he said, “Man, I been reading about this 2012 s**t.  They say the world is gonna come to an end.  Is that stuff really in the Bible?”  What strikes me about Youngblood’s question is that this is the exact same question that many people are asking in churches these days.

In fact, people have been asking this question on and off for many years.  Before the massive influx of literature regarding the end of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012, many of us will undoubtedly remember the great fuss that accompanied the arrival of the year 2000.  Going a little farther back in history, much attention has been given to the quatrains of Nostradamus (which have never been successfully used to predict an event before-the-fact) and other Apocalyptically-minded “prophets”.  Almost forgotten is the chaos that surrounded the turning of the last Millennium in the year 1000.  Kings and Popes were found muttering prayers in cathedrals at midnight, certain of the earth’s impending doom.

Several bestselling “road maps” for the end of the world, notably the Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, claim to take their information straight from the pages of the Bible itself.  As a result, many Christians have become increasingly confused and anxious about the so-called “end of the world”.  While rational believers are typically disinclined to accept the dark predictions of such fanatics, we sometimes wonder, “What does the Bible really say about that stuff?”

To fully answer that question would take much longer than the time we have this morning, but we can begin by looking at the gospel text we have in front of us.  In verse 40, Jesus tells his followers, “You… must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  This is one of those Bible verses that often get painted on billboards, bumper stickers, and picket signs.  During his growing up years, my father heard sermons on texts like this one.  The preacher would thunder, “When Jesus returns, you wouldn’t want him to find you out dancing or at the movies, would you?!” Trusting that Jesus doesn’t really have a problem with people going to movies and dancing, it makes sense to ask the question: what then does it actually mean to “be ready” for the unexpected coming of the “Son of Man”?

To answer this question, we must first establish what it is that we should be ready for.  When Jesus uses the phrase “Son of Man”, he is making use of an ancient Hebrew expression that means “human being”.  This phrase is the one that Jesus uses most often in reference to himself.  Many scholars agree that, in this particular case, Jesus is identifying himself with the figure seen in a vision by the Hebrew prophet Daniel:

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. ¹⁴To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)

This human being in Daniel’s vision, who receives eternal authority over the nations of the world, appears immediately after God subdues the other empires of the earth, all of which appear in the vision as vicious and wild animals.  The message is clear about God’s plan for the future: to reform the many violent and animalistic nations of the world into one human society.  Jesus presents himself as the crux and the catalyst for this new human society.

In the book of Revelation, the apostle John expands on Daniel’s vision:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

According to John’s vision, the face of the earth is renewed and all suffering is erased.  Ironically, no one flies away to heaven in either of these visions because heaven comes here! Isn’t this exactly what we ask for each week when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?

I believe that one of my favorite modern-day prophets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had this eternal vision in mind when he spoke about that day “when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing together in the words of the old negro spiritual: free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

So, when Jesus tells his followers to “be ready”, I believe this heaven-on-earth is what he had in mind, not some apocalyptic vision of destruction through fire and brimstone.  Later in his vision, Daniel states explicitly that “the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever” (Daniel 7:18).  Daniel’s vision bears remarkable similarities to Jesus’ words of comfort in Luke 12:32: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  This is beginning to sound like good news, isn’t it?

How then, do we make ourselves ready for the fulfillment of these visions?  I think Jesus gives us a hint in verse 33: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

This little nugget of advice from Jesus is part of a larger block of teaching found in Luke 12.  It starts when someone comes to Jesus in verse 13, asking him to resolve a family dispute regarding an inheritance.  Jesus declines to get involved and embarks instead on a teaching about greed and anxiety.  From God’s point of view, the acquisition of material goods is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end.  The only worthwhile end, in God’s eyes, is that vision we read about in Daniel and Revelation.  Material possessions are only helpful insofar as they contribute to the establishment of that kingdom of heaven-on-earth.

You and I live in a world where we are inundated with messages telling us that true happiness can be achieved if only we would purchase this or that product.  I recently saw a commercial for a brand of beer that is apparently favored by “the most interesting man in the world”.  I don’t know about you, but in my experience, consuming alcohol has little to no effect on how “interesting” a person is!

Jesus, in today’s gospel reading, invites you and me to check out of this empty process and invest in projects that have eternal value.  To the person who came asking him to arbitrate a family dispute, Jesus had this advice:

…why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? ⁵⁸Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. ⁵⁹I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. (Luke 12:57-59)

Whether the world’s game for you is consumerism, fear, or conflict, Jesus’ invitation is to stop playing.  If you play, you will lose because the game isn’t fair.  This is why Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” When we stop playing this world’s games, we are liberated to participate more fully in God’s vision of heaven-on-earth.  This is what it means to “be ready” for the unexpected coming of the “Son of Man”.

So, what does the Bible really say about all that end-of-the-world stuff?  We have seen that God’s vision for the final destiny of the world is one of redemption and not destruction.  The best way for us to “be ready” for this redemption is by checking out of this world’s silly games of fear & greed and living lives based on spiritual values such as generosity and reconciliation.

Living our lives according to these values will necessarily put us at odds with the world around us.  The world says that the only way to successfully establish a kingdom is through violence and anxiety.  But our ace in the hole as Christians is that we don’t have to build anything!  As Jesus told his followers in Luke 12:32: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” We already have everything we need to accomplish this task and more!  It’s not up to us to produce or construct or build God’s kingdom of heaven-on-earth because it has already been given to us.

I ask you this morning: how are you making yourself ready to participate in God’s vision?  Jesus told his followers to sell their possessions.  Most of us in this room probably aren’t ready to take that step.  But maybe we can begin to ask hard questions about our relationship to those things.  Do we own our possessions or do they own us?  How does my use of time, talent, and treasure communicate the spiritual values upon which I base my life as a Christian?  As you seek to answer these questions for yourself, remember that you already have everything you need.

I met a woman several years ago who had been very anxious about the turn of the Millennium.  In preparation for a global disaster, she stockpiled food and water in her basement.  When New Year’s Day came and went without a hitch, she was suddenly embarrassed to have an entire barrel of wheat berries and no idea of what to do with it.  Over the next few years, she slowly emptied the barrel and gave bags of wheat berries to family and friends as gifts.  I love this image: the unnecessary byproduct of this person’s fear and anxiety was transformed into a nourishing gift for an entire community.  What better illustration can there be for how God wants to redeem our anxieties about the end of the world?  Amen.

Preached this morning at the Twin Churches in Holland Patent, NY.  The text is Luke 10:38-42.

One of the most common misconceptions about Christians is that we’re mainly interested in getting our “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by”.  People tend to think that Christians want to escape from the harsh realities of this world and live in an insulated bubble until they receive their blessed reward after death.  Karl Marx shared this misconception when he wrote in The Communist Manifesto that Christians are interested in salvation when what the world needs is revolution.  That’s why he referred to religion as the “opiate of the masses”.

To be fair, many Christians have earned this reputation for being too heavenly-minded.  Some of us sing hymns like, I’ll Fly Away and This World is Not My Home. Some of us use our faith as an excuse to disengage from important discussions about problems like poverty and injustice.  We say, “I’m just glad that Jesus is coming back soon to take us away from all this mess!”

Certain passages of Scripture, such as the one we read from Luke’s gospel this morning, are often used to justify our disengagement.  Many believe that Jesus is honoring Mary over Martha for investing in spiritual pursuits rather than worldly ones.  Several theologians have even taken the two sisters as metaphors for the life of Action (Martha) and the life of Contemplation (Mary).  The great reformer John Calvin attacked this interpretation head-on when he wrote about this passage in his Commentaries, “no sacrifice is more pleasing to God, than when every [person] applies diligently to his (or her) own calling, and endeavors to live in such a manner as to contribute to the general advantage.”  What Calvin is trying to say is that a life of passive contemplation lived in isolation from the harsh realities of the world is actually less holy than a life lived in service to God and one’s neighbors, not vice versa.  I tend to agree with Calvin in believing that what Jesus has in mind for Mary (and for us) is not a life of cloistered mysticism, but a life of discipleship.  To put it another way, Jesus does not want to take us out of the world; Jesus wants to change the way we interact with the world.

Let’s take a closer look at this passage in order to get a clearer picture of what Jesus is talking about with Mary and Martha.

Our story begins on a rather bizarre and radical note.  Jesus is welcomed into the home of a woman named Martha as he makes his way toward Jerusalem.  We see first that Martha is the one to welcome Jesus into her home.  This is odd because we know from John’s gospel that Mary and Martha had a brother named Lazarus who lived with them as well.  In first century Palestine, it was customary for men to do the welcoming and govern all interactions between the household and the outside world.  Why then is Martha the one to welcome Jesus?  Second, the house itself is referred to as Martha’s house.  Again, property was traditionally owned by a male member of the family.  We can see already that this family tends to push boundaries when it comes to gender roles and stereotypes.  Martha comes across as a strong woman with an independent personality.

Things get even stranger when we learn about Martha’s sister Mary.  We read that she “sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to what he was saying.”  This might sound like a passive and submissive posture at first (maybe even a little demeaning to “sit at someone’s feet”), but it’s important to realize that to sit at the feet of a rabbi in the ancient Jewish world meant that you had been accepted as a disciple of that rabbi.  This should have been impossible for women in that culture, yet Jesus welcomes her into the community of disciples.  While we are most familiar with the famous twelve disciples (who were all Jewish males), the author of Luke’s gospel seems to be telling us on the sly that Jesus accepted women as disciples as well.  In another passage we see Jesus doing the same for a Gentile (a non-Jewish person).  In that culture, theological education under a rabbi was a privilege reserved for Jewish men only (no women or Gentiles allowed).

The next thing we learn is that Martha seems to be having a hectic day.  Our translation says she was “distracted”, but the term in Greek is periespato, which literally means “yanked around”.  So it would be fair to translate the sentence to say, “Martha was being yanked around by her many tasks.”  Have you ever had a day like that?  I sure have!  Sometimes I feel like there just isn’t enough time, money, or energy to get everything done that needs doing.  Sometimes my appointment calendar and to-do list run my life so efficiently that I forget to leave enough time for myself, my family, or God.  It’s not long before I start to feel like a spinning top that starts to wobble as it runs out of energy.  Stop me if this doesn’t sound familiar!  I think we can all relate to what Martha is going through.  Isn’t that just the way life in the real world goes?  So it makes sense that Martha gets upset when she perceives that Mary might be checking out of reality.

Martha snaps, “Rabbi, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”  Martha expects Jesus to help her sister snap out of it and get back to work, but Jesus does something surprising and gives Martha the reality check.

After acknowledging all the hard work that Martha is doing, Jesus tells her that “there is need of only one thing” and that Mary had “chosen the better part”.  What is this “one thing” and “better part” that Jesus was talking about?  We have already established that Mary had taken the position of a disciple and was listening to her rabbi teach.  We are not told exactly what Jesus was teaching her at the time, but we can assume it was probably consistent with the kinds of things we’ve heard Jesus teach elsewhere.  In these ten chapters of Luke’s gospel (9:51-19:27), Jesus and his disciples are moving slowly toward Jerusalem where he will suffer, die, and rise again on the third day.  His teachings in this section have a few common themes that run through them: the cost of discipleship, the inclusion of outsiders in God’s family, and principles for living as spiritually-centered people in difficult world.  Jesus constantly finds himself getting into conflict with the political, religious, and economic realities of his day.  These days, we call them governments, churches, and corporations.  Jesus taught his disciples to resist the effect these things have on our consciousness by practicing things like simplicity of life, care for neighbors, regular prayer, reconciliation with enemies, and non-anxiety over daily needs.  Jesus then sends his disciples back into this hostile world as agents of healing.  Theirs is an active and engaged spirituality that doesn’t prepare people to “fly away” to heaven, but instead shouts out loud in the streets, “The kingdom of God has come near you.”  Jesus doesn’t send people to heaven; he brings heaven here!  Remember the Lord’s Prayer?  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

This, I think, is the “one thing” and the “better part” that Jesus had in mind when he was talking to Mary and Martha.  I also think this is what God has in store for you and me.  We don’t have to be constantly yanked around anymore by the demands of this broken world-system.  Nor do we have to cloister ourselves behind walls of piety and heavenly-mindedness.  We can choose instead to sit at the feet of our Rabbi Jesus and face this world again as spiritually-centered agents of healing.

May God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.