"People Get Ready..."

[This message was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church this morning.]

Matthew 24:36-44
One of my jobs after I graduated from college was management trainee at a paint store. Shortly after I started there, the manager went on a two-week vacation, leaving me in charge. I was assisted by a guy loaned from another store.

The first week was exhausting. But it went well. On Saturday night, we closed the place down and had Sunday off. We returned at 6:45 on Monday morning, ready to open the place for contractors. We knew things were amiss the moment we walked in. Things just didn’t seem right. We realized our suspicions were warranted when I tried to get the money for the cash register. The money we left on Saturday was gone. It turned out that a disgruntled former employee still had keys and codes, got into the place on Sunday, and took the money. He was nabbed on Monday afternoon.

There are several lessons this incident taught me, I guess. But being a bright guy, here’s one of the main lessons: Thieves never call ahead; they just show up.

Wise businesses and homeowners prepare for thievery before thieves show up. Dead bolts and security systems are engaged. Cash is deposited in the bank. Locks and codes are changed so that disgruntled former employees or occupants can’t waltz in and take whatever they want. In a fallen world in which even the best of people sometimes do bad things, you have to be prepared.

Advent is a time of preparation for all of us. In our homes, December is a time of almost frenzied preparation. Gifts are bought, travel plans made, Christmas cards sent, special dishes baked and cooked. The kids rehearse for programs at church and school. On and on our preparations go. Hopefully, at this time of year we also prepare ourselves spiritually for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, the stunning moment when God took on human flesh and entered our lives so that He could take on a cross for us and rise from death for us.

But Advent is also a reminder to prepare ourselves for something else: The return of the risen and ascended Jesus at a day and time which, He tells us today, not even He knows. “Keep awake therefore,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” And then, Jesus weaves a mini-parable, saying: “Understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Jesus won’t call ahead. He’ll just show up.

How can we be ready for His return?

Methodist pastor Derl Keefer has looked at this text and I think, rightly identified three ways that you and I can be ready for Jesus’ return.

First: We need to have the right priorities. A friend of mine and his wife were diagnosed with cancer within days of each other. They had different cancers. But each of them had to go through their treatment regimens at the same time. I’m happy to say that both of them have been in remission for several years now. But just as they were both starting to feel better and getting back to work, I had lunch with my friend.

He told me that for some time, he’d been looking forward to getting together with me. “Mark,” he said, “for years I was a believer who kept God at a distance. I’d go to Mass at Christmas and Easter. I sent my money to the church. But that was about it.”

He went on to say that just before he and his wife were diagnosed with their cancers, she’d suggested that they needed to give God a higher priority in their lives. They’d started attending Mass more regularly.

“But,” he said, “it was our cancer that woke us up.” And then, my friend looked at me from across the table to say, “No matter how this turns out, whether I stay cancer-free or it comes back, God will remain my highest priority.” If that weren’t stunning enough, my friend then said, “Getting cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me. It drove me closer to God.” Now, having cancer is never a good thing. But I understood what my friend was telling me. Cancer had left he and his wife feeling vulnerable. And from that perspective of vulnerability, they let God take a place in their lives He'd never occupied before.

At another place in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness...” To be prepared for the day of Jesus’ return, not to mention to prepare for anything else that life or death throws our ways, we need to have the right priorities. We need to let God have the top billing in our lives.

Second: To be prepared for Christ’s return, we need to be proactive. A young woman was frustrated with the progress of her life, which she linked to her progress as a Christian. She told me: “I feel like my whole life, I’ve been at the starting line, hearing, ‘Ready, set,’ ‘Ready, set,’ ‘Ready, set.’ When will I go?”

When it comes to our faith, we Christians--and I indict myself for this as well--tend to live on a place called Someday Isle. We say, “Some day, I’ll invite my non churchgoing friend to worship.” “Some day, I’ll feed the hungry...pray for the sick...work to get good afterschool programs...help prevent teenage pregnancies by talking up abstinence...fight injustices against those who are different from me.”

The Christian prepared for Christ’s return is the Christian who’s about the Lord’s business. And we can be about the Lord’s business no matter what our work. Or even if we’re retired.

In his book, Prayer, Lutheran pastor Ole Hallesby tells about the funeral of a man who had lived in a small, remote village in rural Norway. Hundreds came from many miles away. This was in the 1930s, when it wouldn’t have been easy to travel Norway’s country roads.

That was remarkable enough. But what was even more remarkable was that the man, who lived to a good age, was born with a terrible disease that had confined him to a single room in the small cottage in which he had been born, his entire life. He had never gone to school, never been to the market or the local coffee house or gain elevator, never been to church.

But as he lay in his bed, often alone for hours, this man had decided to be proactive. He would take on a ministry of prayer. So, he asked his family members to give him all the names of people with needs in his town. He prayed for them constantly and lives began to change for the better. Soon, the townspeople were coming to his room with prayer requests. They all talked about how close they felt to God in the presence of this gnarled and sickly man. Eventually, people from throughout the area came to his cottage so that he could pray for them and with them and give them godly counsel. There were adults in other towns and villages for whom he had been praying daily since they were born, although he'd never met them.

An elderly woman I once knew prayed that her great-grandson would become a pastor. Unbeknownst to the little boy, she called him her "little preacher." That woman died and the little boy spent some time wandering far from God. But eighteen years after she passed away, her great-grandson began studying at a seminary. He stands before you now, the product of one woman's prayers, herself long gone, but her prayers lodged in the heart of our eternal God!

Any follower of Jesus can be proactive about their faith. When we are, we’re prepared for Christ’s return.

Finally, we’re prepared for Christ’s return when we’re positive. You know, there’s a lot of fear-mongering about the day of Jesus’ return. Whole shelves of Christian stores are stocked with books meant to scare the bejeebers out of people over what they call “the second coming.”

But for the Christian, any time Jesus comes to us, it’s a good thing--whether it's at Christmas, at our Baptism, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in the Bible, in the preached Word, during our times of celebration and our times of sadness, at the moments we die, or on the day of His return. It’s always good when Jesus comes to us!

When I was a boy, I was a fan of The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Batman. A common theme of all those shows was that people who were up to no good were always frightened by the masked men. Others had nothing to fear and always welcomed them. As silly and homely as it may seem, I think about those characters when I remember that the return of Jesus isn’t a fearsome thing for the Christian. It's a happy thing!

An old joke says, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Jesus is returning. The bad news is that He’s really ticked off.”

Funny, but not true. Jesus is coming back and the sin of the world breaks His heart. It breaks His heart that many, if not most, of the world chooses to sleepwalk through life, to sleepwalk away from Him.

But when Jesus returns on what the Bible calls “the Day of the Lord,” it will be a time of joy. We can be about the business of living today with the certainty that our lives with Christ lead to a joy that never ends!

How can we be ready for Christ’s return?

Or for the day when we will stand before Him in eternity?

We keep Him and His kingdom as our highest priority.

We live our faith proactively.

We remain positive people, believing that the God Who comes to us in Jesus Christ is our Friend, our Lord, our Savior, our King. Amen!