August 10, 2025 Sermon
Sermon title: “Be Ready!”
Scripture: Luke 12:32-40
(Other lectionary suggestions include Isaiah 1:1 and 10-20, Psalm 50:1-8 and 22-23, and Hebrews 11:1-3 and 8-16.)
Luke 12:32-40
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Watchful Slaves
35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
The sermon title is “Be Ready!,” but that may not be the best title for this particular passage. True, Jesus does tell us to be prepared. But he also urges us to be prepared for the SUMMONS of God. We should understand that perhaps God is calling us forth from our normal, comfortable ways. One definition of faith is a willingness to venture forth on the basis of God’s invitation to go on a journey with him.
In addition to our Gospel reading today, the lectionary offers us the book of Hebrews as well, and one person Hebrews mentions is Abraham, along with his son Isaac and his son Jacob. They all obeyed God and set out by faith to a land they had never seen.
On the lighter side, Harlane and I still laugh at the fact that I have lived in several states, and she was born in So. Cal, and one time she said in all seriousness, “I don’t know anybody in any other state.” Well, she was like Abraham in that he didn’t know anybody in any other state, either, and yet he trusted God to show him where to go. One of the things about our faith is that God always seems to be on the move, and we need to move with him. The Gospel of Luke presents Jesus as being on a perpetual road trip, and so are his followers. They don’t just sit at his feet and take good lecture notes. They move with Jesus as they attempt to keep up with him as he goes from place to place.
We may want to settle down and stay in one place. But that’s not the way it seems with Jesus. Says commentator William H. Willimon, “He is always on the move. Discipleship means being on the road with Jesus.” Willimon goes on to say that being a person of faith means more than understanding a book about Jesus. “To be a Christian means to be on a journey with Jesus. Jesus makes all of us itinerants, sojourners. Jesus said that he was homeless. He had nowhere to lay his head, no permanent resting place, and neither would his followers.”
When the writer of the Book of Hebrews speaks of faith, he doesn’t list a set of beliefs that each of us must affirm. No, he speaks in terms of faith in ACTION, faith as a journey in which people who have been met by God venture forth WITH GOD. To quote Willimon, “Faith is a venturing forth with God, just like Abraham and Sarah.” Willimon tells a story about a college student who had come to study to become a doctor. But after a religion or philosophy course, the kid wanted to go help starving refugees in Haiti. The kid’s parents jumped on Willimon, telling him to “DO SOMETHING.” But Willimon said that you can never tell what’s going to happen when people meet Jesus for the first time! He says the idea of the Risen Christ makes people do all sorts of things that they never would have considered before. Writer Marcus Borg called his faith “a relationship to the Spirit of God - a relationship that involves one in a journey of transformation.” In the Book of Hebrews, the writer says people such as Abraham and Sarah “had their eyes set on a better place. Perhaps that’s the vision that gives birth to real faith - to have some sense of discontent with present arrangements, to long for more, to expect that God has more interesting things to do with us than we have been led to believe.”
Jesus tells his disciples not to be afraid. “Sometimes we are afraid to venture forth. We hold tight to old securities, comfortable patterns. We want assurance that the trip will be worth it. Where are we headed, anyway? Will there be difficult hardships along the way? But this God is forever on the move....And if we want to be related to Jesus, we must be courageous enough to move with him.” For some people, faith has been a walk in the park. But not for Biblical folks like Abraham and Sarah. If you listen to the Letter to the Hebrews, you see that the life of faith has its ups and downs and its hills and valleys. Or - to put it another way -you don’t simply take Jesus into your heart. Sometimes it’s Jesus who takes YOU places! Where are some places Jesus has taken you?
Pastor Skip
