Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost, Year C
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Bentonville
August 12, 2007
Gospel:
Luke 12:32-40
Jesus said, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell 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. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be 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. Blessed 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. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
"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. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."
In this morning’s gospel reading we are offered two very distinct sayings, neither of which are fully fleshed out parables. Jesus first lets the disciples know that, “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” and then offers very clear instructions concerning how it is we are to go about receiving that kingdom – sell your possessions, give alms, don’t be attached to earthly treasure. He offers directions to the kingdom that the Father wants to present to us.
The second lesson is a story of readiness. “Be dressed for action (the King James’ “gird up your loins” is slightly archaic, but makes the point clearer - though I’m still not quite sure where my loins are) and have your lamps lit”. Jesus tells the disciples about servants who await their master’s return from a wedding banquet, servants whose watchfulness is rewarded by the master then serving them. Jesus then speaks of thieves breaking into the master’s house in the middle of the night, along with an admonition that they be ready for the Son of Man’s unexpected coming.
Two seemingly distinct stories, one of detachment from material things and one of readiness, and with a confusing cast of characters: servants and masters, thieves and owners, the Father and the Son of Man. It’s no wonder that at the end of the passage (in a verse we didn’t read) we find Peter asking, “ Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” “Are you talkin’ to me?” But Jesus, instead of answering Peter’s question directly, tells another parable. I’m compelled to do likewise.
For over 40 years my father worked as a locomotive engineer for the Atchison Topeka & the Santa Fe Railway. As a younger man, before he had accumulated the seniority required for jobs with fixed schedules, he pulled freight trains. Freight trains with regular routes but unscheduled times. They usually depart when the freight has been loaded and the train has been assembled. Consequently, the train crew is always on call. One of my clearest childhood memories, clear because it was reenacted so many times, was of a phone call in the middle of night, beckoning my father to come to work. Dad would climb out of bed at irregular and most ungodly hours, answer the phone and the yard clerk would say, “Joslin, this is the round house, we need you to take the Southbound to Temple, at 4:30”. Without complaint, Dad would reply, “All right, I’ll be there.” My mother would then get up also and begin frying bacon and eggs, brewing coffee, and preparing a lunch that he would eat later, somewhere down the line. He would dress in the blue striped overalls that engineers traditionally wore, but Dad’s were starched, as was the engineer’s hat that my mother would stretch over a perfectly sized cookie jar, so that the hat would stand up straight and tall, a symbol of authority. He left for the round house carrying a leather grip that smelled strongly of the diesel fuel that also permeated my father’s skin and contained a change of clothes, the lunch Mom had lovingly prepared, a flashlight, a mileage log, and interestingly bound together his Bible and the Santa Fe Book of Rules. For 40 years Dad faithfully climbed aboard locomotives and transported the nation’s passengers and freight, always in careful obedience to the Book of Rules.
Although he was a loyal union man, he felt a strong allegiance to the company that had hired him run locomotives – a job he loved. John Santa Fe, as Dad called his master, always found my father alert. The world of the railroad was my Father’s Kingdom. As a young child I didn’t know too much about that world, only that he was always faithful to the call from the roundhouse, left home willingly, clean and neatly pressed and returned home tired and smelling of diesel fuel. I still remember the feel of his bearded cheek against mine and the smell of diesel fuel.
You know what it feels like to get up at an unanticipated hour. To be awakened from a deep sleep, in the middle of the night, by a telephone call. This was my father’s life – always in readiness for the call.
As a nine-year-old boy I was given a glimpse of my father’s kingdom. At this stage of his career, my Dad rode at the head of the Santa Fe’s most storied passenger line – the distinctive yellow and red and gleaming chrome Santa Fe Chief. Pulled by an enormously powerful, diesel fired locomotive, the Chief carried passengers between Chicago and Houston at speeds often approaching 90 mph. To my enormous joy, my Dad asked me if I would like to join him for a leg of the journey, between Cleburne, Texas and Purcell, Oklahoma. We had been traveling a few hours. As a skinny little kid I was almost lost in a seat that was twice the size of today’s airline seats. I had already finished the lunch my mother had packed for me and I was watching the North Texas countryside roll past. The conductor punched tickets as he moved up the aisle toward me. I handed him my pass and then he looked at me and asked, “Are you Joslin’s boy”? I answered, “Yes, sir”. And he said,” Follow me”. I trailed along behind him through a collection of passenger cars, a smoky club car, the Pullmans and then through the diesel units themselves. I still remember the heat, the noise, and the smell generated by the thousands of horsepower diesel engines I passed closely by. When we reached the head of the train, I first saw the fireman, who looked back at me and then glanced to his right. There sat my Dad in the engineer’s seat. We exchanged greetings and then, as I stood beside him he quizzed me on the colors of the crossing signals we approached, showed me how to operate the throttle, he explained the brakes – called “big hold ‘em” and “the dead man’s pedal” and then showed me how to blow the whistle. Slowly, it began to dawn on me what my father had in mind. I was going to drive this train. Eventually, after he thought I had it down, he climbed from his seat, bent over, picked me up, and lifted me to his throne. I pulled back the throttle, I blew the whistle, and, as a 9 year old boy, drove the Santa Fe Chief across the Red River from Texas to Oklahoma. Could crossing the Jordan be more glorious? If it is possible for a father to show his son a clearer glimpse of his kingdom, I can’t imagine it.
As a child I thought that my joy in receiving these gifts of the kingdom was unsurpassed. Only when I became a father could I see how much greater was the pleasure he knew in showing me the kingdom. These glimpses of the kingdom abound, if only we stay alert - and open our eyes to them.
Now, if I may briefly depart from the Jesus’ model of speaking in parables and make the connection more explicit. On the one hand we are called to watchfulness, to fidelity, to remain alert for the master’s call. On the other hand we are told that it gives God pleasure to show us the Kingdom, and that we can best prepare our hearts to receive that kingdom by giving up our attachment to earthly possessions. The connection is really fairly simple. If we are grasping and not giving, if we remain attached to earthly treasure, our vision is clouded. As we wait for the return of the master, perhaps even remaining vigilant, but fail to open our eyes to the glimpses of the kingdom that surround us now, our vigilance is for nothing. We are called to open our eyes and allow our father the pleasure of giving us the kingdom.