First
Presbyterian Church of
Luke 12
“Are You Ready?”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
You would think that hellfire and
brimstone would be loud. You would think
the fear of God would be made grander by shouting, but it’s not. Giving it a second thought it makes sense:
the more you shout, the less people listen.
A rant is pretty easy to turn off.
In the 1740s, Jonathan Edwards was
known for his hellfire and brimstone sermons.
If you read them they are filled with images of death and damnation and
God’s judgment. "We are all sinners
in the hand of an angry God," is his most famous claim. If you want to read the sermon, which is
rather provocative, you can find it as the Enfield
Sermon. Edwards delivered the sermon
at
I am sure that many high school History
or English teachers have tried to reproduce the effect it had upon the
listeners by shouting and the waving of hands and the pounding of podiums
become pulpits. Yet all of this would be
false. Edwards- it turns out- never
waved his hand, never pounded a pulpit, and never, so it is recorded, changed
the level of his voice. He was a clergyman;
he was a Puritan: he was reserved and careful; he offered his words without
theater or emotional fanfare. Even so it
was common for women to faint, men to cry, and someone to shout in conviction
for their sins as he preached.
It would seem that if you really
listened to what he said and were not distracted by how it was said, if in
closing your eyes, the words had as much power as if they were open, then the
soul was free to experience the truth Edwards spoke. I don’t want to follow this line of thought
too far- for to rail against the current need to see pictures while people talk
is a rather unnecessary fight. Needless
to say, there were no power points or scrolling video for the folks at
As a teen I heard sermons like
these. They weren’t as artful or theologically
profound as Edwards- and they certainly weren’t as long, but they had a similar
topic and were given with the same measured tone. A few times a year the “are you sure” sermon
would be given to the youth.
As we leave here tonight, and you are driving
home, you just never saw it coming. The
other car drifted over the line and in an instant you’re gone. Are you sure?
It can happen in a moment; it can happen tonight. Are you sure?
Are you sure you’re saved? Are
you ready to stand before God?
The youth pastor’s
voice never rose or fell. It was
a steady stream of unsettling questions for a group of teens. Are you ready? Are you sure?
Now, given that most sixteen year olds feel ready for just about
anything and often perceive certainty as something to be grasped the sermon had
quite an effect. Much like the Edwards
sermon at
Although effective, I do feel
compelled to mention that- to my knowledge- all of those who heard those
sermons are still with us today; although we all drove home too fast and with
little skill, we all made it home each time.
Surety, certainty, readiness to face
the precipice of what is eternal, to stand before God prepared for judgment:
that’s a pretty big deal. It’s one thing
to get your affairs in order, to have a will, but to be good with family and
friends so that if you died tomorrow there would be no bad blood, no messes to
clean, no regrets- that’s a tall order. I can remember signing our will and feeling
good and rather adult, but also unsettled that it took me so many years to do
the easiest part.
The Reformed Tradition in many ways was
crafted out of this dilemma. In the
sixteenth century, Martin Luther as a young monk was terribly obsessed with his
readiness to stand before God. Daily he
confessed, often times numerous times a day.
Each time he prayed to his confessor his hope was to be ready, to
cleanse his soul so that he was right with God and others. Legend has it that he kept his confessor
quite busy. Walking away to his room, it
was common for Luther to turn around half way and return so to confess whatever
lustful thought hit him as he walked away.
I have an image in my head of an exasperated priest knowing his knock at
the door or counting the seconds it would take for Luther to be back with yet
another sin to confess so to be ready.
How this shapes us even today is what
saved Luther’s soul and his poor confessor from a nervous breakdown. What saved him was that he came to see readiness,
certainty, assuredness were the stuff of Christ. We can never be ready, he came to believe,
but at the same time we are ever ready because we wear the robe of Christ. No one is justified; all are sinners in the
hand of an angry God, but in Jesus Christ we are covered, ready, and we can
rest assured that our salvation is complete in his death, his resurrection, and,
now, his judgment.
What Luther came to believe is that
in the moment before the Father we would wear the robe of the Son and that is
what would be seen, judged as it were. This
robe stands every ready for us to wear by his victory and atonement.
Luther and the reformers that
followed him would develop this, craft this into a doctrine that shapes our
lives everyday. Like anything it can go
too far, it can be forgotten; it can be relegated to the confines of
history. And while we do not speak of it
often enough it is the unspoken, invisible foundation of our fellowship. It is the very nature of our freedom and
assurance.
In contrast, the passage from Luke
displays a kind of restlessness, a kind of un-freedom. The images are rife with questions of
readiness, surety, certainty- but mainly as a threat. It is easy to read this passage as an image
of judgment:
When the master comes will you be ready? Driving home today the other car passes over to
your side and it is all over in an instant?
Are you ready? We are all sinners
in the hands of an angry God, yet, are you a sinner that will wear the robe of
Christ before the Father?
There is also a kind
of vigilance here.
Did you prepare the stores for the late
dinner; keep the house in order even when there is room for decadence? This passage always reminds me of a warning
from Laverne and Shirley, “when you least expect, spect
it!”
I don’t know about you, but this is
not how I want to live; running about in a kind of nervous anticipation
worrying if all is in order for death.
Do I have my soul prepared? Is it
ready? What if the master arrives
tonight? What if Christ returns
today? This is what drove Luther and his
poor confessor to the brink of insanity.
Fortunately for the confessor and for us, Luther came to believe in the
freedom of grace and he got married. In
many ways the Reformed Tradition has as much to do with rejecting bad theology
as it does in devising a practical, realistic approach
to lust. But that is a different sermon.
Are you ready . . . are you
sure? You can read this passage as a
kind of end times, apocalyptic, judgment seat where we stand before God. It is there.
There is the image of settling accounts, being prepared to have your
deeds reviewed, the notion that what you do counts in the end.
I can remember teasing a Roman
Catholic who made the assertion that going to Mass on Christmas Eve counted for
Christmas no matter what day it was. “It
counts,” I said with a bit of protestant sass.
“Yes,” was the answer. “Where does it count,” I said? “Where is this count? A book, a ledger, a notch.” Not fair, but fun.
Reading over the words that Jesus
speaks to the disciples in Luke it is as if he is advocating this kind of
counting. You don’t know when but the
master will return and look to settle accounts, to see how you have done, to
check how many services you went to. How
many times you prayed is juxtaposed with how many times you swore- a kind of
debit and credit ledger. At this point,
if you are good Presbyterians, you should be saying, we don’t live that
way. We don’t get caught up in the count
because we are freed from this foolishness.
And you are right. We have been.
We have been freed to live without
fear of the end, the count, the judgment, because we are justified by faith not
deeds. And if we look carefully at the
story, though, we may not need to contradict what is being said here, but to
find a compliment to what we believe.
For at no point does it say that the servants are dying, or that the
arrival of the master is about the judgment at the end of life. In fact everything in the passages is about
the mundane, the day unto day, not the end of days.
Look again: there is the question of
meals, and chores, and how much instruction one is given; there is the notion
of common sense in the need to lock the house from theft; and in all these
there is an image of a master who is coming and going, not just coming once for
all time.
Jesus was living in a time where
people speculated about the end of time and the arrival of a messiah to change
everything. These passages, while they
can be seen as a time of judgment at the end, really should be read as about
being ready to live in the mundane each day and not the one great moment in the
by and by.
The news from
What intrigues me is that the big
moment of his life has come and will soon pass.
For the chances are very good he will never again be called to rescue
lives at risk because a bridge collapsed.
It was a moment of heroic action and it was a selfless act and it is now
done. Like almost everyone called upon
to act in such a moment he would defer it to a kind of impulse; he would not
speak as if he were ready or even sure of what he was doing.
And here is the rub, what fascinated
me: after the cameras stop clicking and the reporters move on, in short order,
his heroic deed will have to be put into the mundane of his every day. Even though he has been offered a scholarship
to return to school in the Fall, probably tomorrow, he
will have to go to work, be a good man, speak the truth, love his
family and friends, and no matter how many times he
is lauded during the night, he will have to get up the next morning and see
what the day brings.
It could be that Jesus was trying to
create a group of neurotic disciples that kept a kind of frightened watch to
see what was coming next, when he would return, what he would say to them. It could be, but that has little to do with
the freedom I have found in following Christ.
I need to pay the bills, treat the people around me with kindness, speak
the truth, be sober, and ready to do what I am called to do. No matter what robe I will wear in the end, I
still have to get dressed today.
Am I ready for the end? Is my soul in the saved category? That is the promise I have in Christ. The questions that dog me are more about
today than tomorrow. Will I be a good
man today? What does it mean for this
church to be faithful here and now? Can
I be a better father, husband? Was there
love and truth in what I spoke or was it heavy in the big words meant to
conceal, or obfuscate?
Edwards didn’t need to shout to make
people concerned in
For this one we need to ask are we
ready to live today- just today? Are we
ready to be good here and now? That is
what the master in the story hoped from the servants; I believe it is what God
hopes of us today and each and every day.
No big flourish at the finish, no excuses for years of neglect, or a
cover over a time of misdeed, just a daily prayer life, a readiness to speak
the truth, a sober end to the day. That
might be enough to take on, to try. Maybe
we can let the big questions abide for a time, for a tomorrow, since we are so
busy getting ready for today. Amen.