Jesus the Good Thief

Scripture:

 

Matthew 24:42-44

Preached 12/01/2013

What’s your favorite image of Jesus? There are so many in scripture and in tradition that it's probably hard to pick just one.  Maybe yours is among these: Jesus, the lamb of God, or Jesus the good shepherd.  Maybe it’s the crucified and risen Christ.  Or maybe your favorite image of Jesus comes from a Bible story—Jesus inviting the little children to come to him.  Or Jesus and the woman at the well. Maybe Jesus as the fisher of people, calling his disciples.  Or maybe Jesus as God’s living love resonates with you.  Or maybe, as we approach Christmas, you love to picture baby Jesus with his parents, or baby Jesus all wrapped up and adorable in a manger.  And there are countless other images—Jesus as the King of Heaven, Jesus as a boy in the temple, Jesus as a teacher, Jesus calming the storm—there are so many to choose from, all with good reasons to be favorite representations, maybe because they’re sweet or comforting or just so familiar they pull at your heart nostalgically.

But all those images have one shortfall.  They’re not actually images that are included in our scripture reading this morning.  As we begin a new church year, and as we begin the season of advent, our lectionary does a strange thing.  First, it starts with the end.  The verses you just heard Neal read were from a section of Matthew in which Jesus is describing the eschaton, or the end times.  It’s honestly a strange section of Matthew, based on a strange section of Mark usually called Mark’s little apocalypse. Just before our reading in Matthew picks up this morning, Jesus is using all kinds of imagery to describe the end times, and to give a very short synopsis, none of them are particularly pleasant.  And so, the image that we get for Jesus in this short little passage is also, not pleasant.  The image is as Jesus as a thief, coming in the night and breaking into someone’s house.

Not exactly the kind of image we tend to love.  Probably because we don’t tend to like thieves. We take all kinds of precautions to protect ourselves against them—we lock our door and our windows, maybe we have some kind of alarm system too.  We keep valuables out of sight.  We ask neighbors to keep an eye on our place when we’re going to be away.  We don’t want a thief to break into our homes, our cars, or anywhere else we might be.  And why is that?  Well, simply, of course, because thieves take our stuff. 

We like our stuff.  We tend to like our stuff a lot.  In this culture in particular, we like to have a lot of stuff.  We keep buying bigger and bigger houses so we can fit more stuff into them.  And now even our bigger houses aren’t enough and we pay for these little houses that we call storage sheds or even storage facilities, and we put more stuff in them.  Just to be clear, I am including myself in the we here.  Rob and I have started looking for a house, and one of the things we really want is a lot of storage space.  Specifically closets.  For all of our stuff.  We, all of us, like our stuff.  And we don’t want any thief to come and take it away.

And now, of course, we’re in the official season for preparation for Christmas.  And we’ll likely prepare with even more stuff.  With decorations, with trees and ornaments and lights.  By buying presents, and buying food maybe getting some more chairs so everyone can fit around tables at the celebrations we’re planning to have.  We are pressured and encouraged and bombarded by messages that say this season is all about stuff, and we have to get more stuff to prepare and more stuff to celebrate, and more and more and more.  We’re told to stuff our faces with food, stuff boxes with presents, stuff our schedule with parties, and then we stuff ourselves with worries and anxiety about all that stuff going right.  It’s stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

But of course, you know that the preparation we do as Christians to ready ourselves for the birth of Christ is supposed to be different.  We are preparing for more than a family meal, more than a chance to open presents, more than an opportunity to look at glittering lights.  We are preparing for Jesus, the thief who will come in the night and take our stuff.  Our job in preparation?  Stay awake.

Staying awake is really hard, though, when we have too much.  Maybe you experienced something like this after your thanksgiving meal.  You had a nice, full, stomach.  Maybe you’d had some wine, or maybe the tryptophan from the turkey was setting in.  And you started to get a little sleepy.  With an overly full stomach and a cozy place to settle in, it’s very easy to fall asleep, and very hard to stay awake.  But this isn’t just a Thanksgiving meal phenomenon.  It’s an every day life thing too.  That stuff we amass can make us just a little too full, and just a little too comfortable.  The stuff lulls us into that very comfortable, and too comfortable, sense of security, and we get sleepy too.  Maybe we fall all the way asleep.  And if we’re sleeping, we can’t get ready for Jesus the thief.

Because he is coming, and he’s coming to do what thieves do—to take our stuff.  Now, Jesus isn't going to physically take our physical possessions.  But he very well may encourage us to get rid of some of them. I’m not going to beat you over the head with the stewardship thing—but you know where you can give money and time and possessions.   But Jesus is a very strange kind of thief.  Jesus doesn’t come just to take our material stuff.  Jesus is coming to take stuff that no other thief would want.  For example, he’s coming to take away our preconceived notions of what God is like.  And he’ll do this by being a baby born to an unmarried teenage mother in an obscure little town, not some mighty military power.  He’ll do this by not insisting on perfection, but by eating with tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes.  He’ll do this by not spending his time not by judging or bragging about his connection to God, but by serving, by healing the sick and raising the dead and including the outcast.

Jesus will take away more than our preconceived notions though.  He’s coming to take away all of our burdens, all of our worries, and all of our sins.  He’s coming to take away our need to please the rest of the world with our perfect Christmas decorations.  He’s coming to take away the barriers we erect between ourselves and our neighbors, and even our families and friends. Jesus is coming to clean us out, to empty us completely of our burdens and our worries until there is nothing left. 

 And that, on this Sunday where we focus on hope with that first Advent candle, is our greatest hope.  To be robbed blind by Jesus.  Because only once Jesus has emptied us completely can we be filled.  And Jesus robs us blind to fill us with the Holy Spirit.  So that, filled with the Spirit, we can go from this place and be Jesus alive in the world, even as we await his coming again.  So how do we even begin to prepare to for Jesus the thief?  Not at all like we protect ourselves against thieves, actually.  Pretty much the opposite of that.  Rather than setting up barriers and alarms and protections, we prepare by breaking these down.  Instead of closing up, we prepare for this coming robbery by opening ourselves up, as much as we can and as intentionally we can, in hope that Jesus will empty us out as completely as he can. 

So this morning, I’m going to ask you to do some preparation for me.  We’re going to take some time, together, to do one of my favorite spiritual practices, which is meditation.  We’ll use the mantra of “Ma-ra-na-tha,” which means Come, Lord.  We'll use this meditation as a way to ask Jesus to empty us out, and a way to sit in emptiness, and silence together. . .

(time of relaxing the body, and meditation using Maranatha on inhales and exhales)

Come, Lord Jesus, and rob us blind.  Amen