Jesus gives us a response to the questions of our time. In the face of fear and confusion, he offers something clear: a world to transform.
And you’re too afraid to answer
Proper 14C | Luke 12:32-40
When somebody says
“Do not be afraid,”
my first response is
Wait, should I be?
I want to know what he thinks I’m not supposed to be afraid of! What does he know that I don’t?
And Jesus doesn’t really calm our nerves with this talk of lighting lamps, and being ready for the moment the master knocks. It sounds like we’re slaves who are on 24/7. Can’t we ever get a day off?
Or maybe we’re going to need to get out of dodge any minute now. Like he’ll show up and we gotta go. Maybe we’ll hit a drive-thru, but don’t count on that. So eat now or pack some protein bars.
If Jesus is trying to calm our nerves, this is not how you do it.
Unless we’ve got it backward.
Disappearing
Most of us in this congregation probably don’t know what it’s like to fear authorities. If the cops are knocking on the door, most of us here are likely to be relieved. Not all, but probably most.
So most of us have to imagine living in fear of a knock at the door. And imagining who is on the other side. Perhaps wearing brown shirts and jackboots.
I think of Chile after the U.S. pushed Pinochet into power. And under his cruel tyranny, his citizens would be “disappeared.” That’s what they called it. Thousands of people in just a few years would “disappear” in the middle of the night or on the way home from work.
Notice the grotesquely passive language with its plausible deniability. Pinochet’s regime murders thousands and he turns around and says Where did they go? Who knows? Just like “mistakes were made.”
Jesus is warning his followers of impending persecution. The vultures are circling and his followers feel powerless.
And all these religious leaders confronting Jesus are tied up with Rome. So the threat is real. And it will be physical.
Another Image
But Jesus’s description also reminds me of the Passover. In that story, God warns Moses and Aaron that the final plague will be the one that frees them. They are enslaved in Egypt under the ruthless authority of a mad Pharaoh. And God gives them the instructions to color the door, roast the lamb, and prepare before you eat dinner! Literally, be dressed to run!
So when Jesus says “Do not be afraid,” he isn’t just calming nerves. He tells them to be prepared. He’s orienting their hearts for the road ahead.
They are following Jesus through the obstacle course of hate, remember. Like Moses leads the people out of Egypt to the Red Sea. Freedom is on the other side, not sitting at home pretending the haters will stop hating. And as if Pharaoh frees his slaves willingly.
The Turn
Sometimes we get this backward because we aren’t thinking of this like a person who is scared to open that door. We’re not thinking like slaves waiting in dread for the master to show up.
Because usually on the other side of that door is somebody with a whip waking you up before dawn to toil in fields that are not your own. You will bring in the fruit of your labor and give it to somebody who will never let you leave.
And if you’re lucky he might let you have some of the crumbs left over. He won’t let you glean the field, of course. But you can have crumbs. You won’t starve. He needs to protect his investment. But at the same time, don’t think that means you’re worth more than chattel. You’re a disposable dehumanized investment.
So when the knock comes, we don’t want to open the door.
But…it is late. And come to think of it…The master never comes after sundown.
Every muscle in our bodies is tense. The skin on the back of the neck rubs the shirt collar.
This is not normal. But we have been praying for a miracle…
We open the door to the strangest sight. The slaver doesn’t have a whip; he has food. He is coming to feed us. He’s here to treat us as people.
We’ve misunderstood God’s power this whole time. God brings down the mighty and raises up the lowly.
This is an image of freedom.
When God liberates the Hebrew people from Egypt, he is freeing them from literal slavery.
But when Jesus shows up, the people are in a different kind of slavery. They are trapped in economic slavery to the empire. And the leaders are just as trapped in it as the people they oppress. It is a sick system of subjugation and exploitation. Because its power comes from dehumanizing others.
Jesus tells a weird story so we can see what’s missing. He doesn’t only turn the image of a slaver upside down. He juxtaposes this image with every other slaver in human history who would never do that.
Slavery is dominating others. Jesus offers something completely opposed to that—and entirely unrecognizable in our world.
We offer George Washington’s desire to free his slaves after Martha’s death like a sort of heroic compromise. We whitewash the evil of his benefitting from oppression. But this isn’t the epitome of generosity! Freedom shouldn’t come only when the powerful are done with it.
Because justice delayed is justice denied, Jesus is telling us something else.
What if we backed up.
Let’s go back to the knock at the door. We’re swallowing our fear. Lamps are lit and we’re wide awake. And when we open it, we don’t see a slaver or an arresting officer. No fascist soldiers making us disappear or ICE to divorce us from our families. What we see is freedom.
Freedom never looks like Superman swooping in. Or one magnanimous slaver freeing the slaves he owns.
Freedom looks more like a town or a whole community of faith telling a group of slaves they don’t have to fear this family anymore. You won’t be owned by another person again. And above all, you are one of us.
Jesus reminds us
“it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
That means the Kin-dom is ours.
We have the power to make earth as it is in heaven.
Today we might feel scared and solutions might seem complicated. We’re facing people who would control our hearts through fear and silence us through cruelty. To ultimately separate and isolate.
Jesus’s solution to separation and isolation isn’t more separation and isolation. He gives us a direct response to that feeling. Seek God, not safety; generosity, not possession; love, not hate.
We can’t overcome our common challenge individually. God doesn’t send us all out here to make a solo-expedition up Mt. Everest. God lowers mountains so we can all come along. God lifts us out of pits trapping the weakest and slowest among us. So we can all come along.
It pleases God to give us the kin-dom! So we feed the hungry and “persist” to our leaders that all must be fed. And we love the hell out of this community by the grace of God.
This is Jesus’s response to fear: we get to transform the world.
We are not simply trying to persuade a few people to be better. We challenge our world to be better by showing all our neighbors what God’s freedom looks like. Because we bring the kin-dom with us.
Food, shelter, healthcare, safety, equality. Not just for some, but for everybody. Together. Forever.