Are You Ready?

About thirty years ago, I performed at an open mic night at a local bar. I got a really good response. The manager of the bar kept motioning for me to do one more song after another. And when I finally finished, I got a good round of applause. Even if I do say so myself, I’ve always been good at putting on a show. Being able to play guitar and sing is one thing, but it doesn’t really matter if you are not entertaining. Let’s face it, the whole point of performing is to entertain. That’s why people come to see you.

Anyway, I put on a good show, and after I left the stage, the manager of the bar came up to me and said he wanted me to do a regular weekly gig. Wow. That was like a dream come true. It was what I always wanted. But then he asked me if I had my own public address system. It seems the club only rented the one I used on open mic night. Other nights, the performers had to provide their own. Well, I didn’t have one. I couldn’t afford one. So I had to tell him I didn’t. So he said he was sorry, and that I should call him when I had one. And that didn’t happen for quite a few years. I told myself I would never be caught unprepared again.

So a passable P.A. system was one of the first things I bought later on, once I had some money. But on other occasions, I have been asked to join bands, only to have to say I didn’t have an electric guitar and amp. And that was that. So the next thing I bought was a good electric guitar and a good amplifier. This is because it doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you aren’t ready when the opportunity presents itself. And those aren’t just my words. Johnny Carson said the same thing. He said, “Being at the right place at the right time doesn’t matter too much if you’re not ready.” You have to be ready.

The gospel reading from Luke this week has a lot to do with being ready. This is what Jesus had to say about being ready:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father took pleasure in giving you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms.

Make money-purses for yourselves that do not become old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief comes nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

Let your loins be girded around and the candles be burning, and you yourselves like those looking for their lord who might return from the wedding banquet so that, when he comes and knocks, immediately they may open to him. Blessed those slaves whom the Lord, coming, will find watching. Truly I say to you that he will gird (himself) and sit down with them, and drawing near, will serve them.

And if he might come in the second, or in the third watch, and find so, blessed they are. But know this: that if the master of the house had know what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken through. And you, you be ready, for at an hour you think now, the son of man comes.” (Luke, Chapter Twelve—a direct translation)

The source for this reading comes mainly from the mysterious Q document, that missing gospel from which the other gospels were taken. Luke makes some important changes, however. He places this story after the story of the rich fool, about whom I wrote last week. Jesus tries to tell his followers that we have to freedom to live without anxiety. He says it doesn’t do us any good to worry about our resources, since we really have no control over our lives or environment. Jesus exhorts us to live in faith, trusting that we will have all that we need.

Society lives under the myth of scarcity. We are afraid we won’t have enough. That’s why people shop at Costco. We buy big quantities of things because we don’t want to run out (and we perceive it to be cheaper). Of course, I remember once buying several ink cartridges for my printer because they were on sale and so I figured I could save some money. Then my printer broke. So much for saving money. But things aren’t scarce. The population of the world has managed to double in the past thirty years. That couldn’t happen if there wasn’t enough for people to eat. We have all that we need. We just don’t share it.

But what if we don’t have enough? That’s why Jesus tells us that it is the father’s pleasure to give us all we need. He tells us not to be afraid. Notice that he uses the past tense. The father “took” pleasure in giving us the kingdom. We have the kingdom now. It is already given. It is not something we have to wait until we die to receive. This is the kingdom. The kingdom of God is within you, as Jesus says. We have all we need. There is plenty for everyone. We just have to share, that’s all.

Many evangelical Christians like to use this reading to frighten us into following all the rules. You better be act right and get right with the Lord, because He might be coming back tonight. You never know. So don’t be lazy. We’re the slaves in the story and Jesus is the master. So we better stay awake and be ready when he knocks on the door. You never know when you’re going to die. If you knew when the thief was coming…

But Jesus never tries to frighten anybody. That’s not what he’s all about. If you read more closely, you’ll notice that the master in the story is not coming back angry, ready to punish everybody. The master is coming back from a party, a wedding feast. Wedding feasts are often used in the bible as a symbol for the kingdom of God. The master is happy. And when he gets home, what does the master do? He gathers the servants around and serves THEM a good meal.

I remember back when I was a kid and my dad would come home after he got paid. He would always stop at the grocery store and buy some liquor for himself and my mom (hey…they were alcoholics, okay?), and he would also bring home some treats for me. And if I needed something, of course, my mom or dad would say, “Wait for payday.” So I learned to look at my dad’s payday with great anticipation. I was waiting in the living room when he got home. He was always in a good mood, and I always got stuff. I was always happy to see my dad come payday. Payday was cool. I looked forward to those days.

When Jesus is talking about being ready, he was talking about this kind of anticipation. The God Jesus talked about was not a punishing God, ready to whack all us sinners. The God of Jesus is a loving father. And this loving father takes pleasure in giving us good things and making us happy. We need to be ready when the father comes.

How do we get ready? Jesus tell us to empty our purses. He tells us to share with each other, to give alms to the poor. That is how you repay God for all the good things you have. Jesus makes that clear. If you want to give to God, give to the poor. Because the poor are God, just as you are God, and even that jerk who just cut you off on the freeway is God.

Every day, we have opportunities to give back to God. But we let them slip by. We walk past the homeless guy on the corner. We make excuses. We tell ourselves that he’ll only blow the money on booze or drugs. Or we tell ourselves that giving money to the guy won’t really help him. Give a guy a fish and he eats once. Teach a guy to fish, and he eats forever. Yeah, well, teaching a hungry guy to fish isn’t really much help, especially if he doesn’t have a fishing pole or net. You might want to feed him too, at least until he learns how to fish.

People come to us all the time in need of something. Sometimes they need money. Sometimes they need advice. Maybe they just need someone to watch their kids for a couple of hours. Sometimes they just need someone to hold them and listen to their troubles. The truth is, helping out with money is the easy way out. It’s way harder to give of yourself. Either way, that person coming to us is a child of God. They are knocking on our door. Are we ready to receive them? Or are we too wrapped up in our own lives and our own troubles to hear them?

One of my students told me that whenever he wanted to talk to his mom about something while she was watching TV, she would wave him off and say, “Wait for the commercial.” And that hurt. That kid wanted to be at least as important to his mom as a television show. That mom wasn’t ready when the master knocked at the door, plain and simple. I know that I fail in that regard all the time. But I’m trying to be better.

That reference to “girded loins” calls up the image of the first century person’s garments. Back in those days, you girded your loins when you tied your robes around your legs so you would be ready to run or to fight if necessary. That way, you wouldn’t trip over them. We are reminded to gird our loins. Be ready to do what you need to do. That’s the kind of anticipation that Jesus is talking about. We need to be ready to help.

This is because loving one another and taking care of one another is how you connect to that power, the creative spirit of the universe, whatever you want to call it, call it God or Allah, or the Tao, or the Prajna, or the Great Spirit, or the Giant Spaghetti Monster. Be loving and giving, and you connect to God.

I’ve told this story before, but I remember the third time we ran the Los Angeles Marathon. We weren’t ready. We hadn’t trained for it. The day we ran, it was raining like crazy. The streets were cruel. The city had pulled up support early. We were exhausted and in pain. We wanted to quit, but we couldn’t, not and look at ourselves in the mirror, anyway. Around mile twenty, we ran into a couple of teenage girls who were also struggling with the race. They wanted to quit, too. We started talking with them and encouraging them. Come on, just another mile. That’s it. Only five to go. Come on, you can do it. Just stay with us. We got them to mile twenty-five, and then they took off on their own, leaving us in the somewhat wet dust and finished the race. They got their finisher’s medal. So did we.

We discovered that by helping those two girls, we forgot our own pain. We smiled for them, even though we didn’t feel much like smiling. Getting them through their race got us through ours. That, my loves, is the secret of the universe. If you want to overcome your troubles, help other people overcome theirs. That’s how it works. You just have to be ready when the opportunity presents itself.

And that’s why Jesus likens himself to the thief. The thief doesn’t come in ways you would expect. If he did, you’d be ready. You would have your defenses up. But God comes to us in ways we never expect. God knows how to get around our defenses. Jesus makes it clear that everything the God does is the opposite of what we would expect. God doesn’t come in a loud fanfare. God comes in the “still small voice”. God isn’t in the high and mighty. God is in the homeless single mother.

So this story is about being ready, about being prepared. Islam holds that God often sends angels to us in disguise to test us, to see if we are ready to help, ready to love. Jesus tells us that each one of us is a child of God. God is present in each one of us. The prophet, Isaiah, said that the one to come, the messiah, would be called Emmanuel, literally, “God is with us.” And that’s what Jesus was saying. God is with us. God is all around us, everywhere, in every person we see, including the one we see in the mirror. We just have to be ready when the master knocks.