Aiding and Abetting

Clare L. Hickman

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale

August 7, 2022—Proper 14C

Genesis 15:1-6; Luke 12:32-40

I have to say, thieves make a worrisome intrusion into metaphors about the kingdom. Because thieves make us uneasy. Some of us worry so much that it shapes the way we construct our lives; we set up gated communities, alarm systems, and barking dogs. Our worry can affect the way we interact with people, encouraging us toward suspicion, to be cautious and self-protective, always on the lookout for anyone unfamiliar or “sketchy.”

Which isn’t the most attractive side of human nature, but I have to say … I’ve been robbed. Probably some of you have too. I’ve been mugged on the street, and I’ve also come home to realize that someone has been in my house, has taken my things. And it felt … awful. I felt violated, and vulnerable, and yes, I’ve had an alarm system ever since. It helps me sleep at night.

But it’s also true that when that robbery was being investigated, the neighbors told the police about a suspicious van and some young black men who’d been in front of our house. Which turned out to be my kids’ best friends, getting out of a van driven by their mom, because they were 11 and 13 years old at the time, and they were coming over for a play date.

 So our feelings about thieves are complicated. They are a mixed bag of reasonable and unreasonable, of a very real vulnerability and also a destructive paranoia. And all of that rumbles around in the background, as we listen to Jesus talk about thieves. It might make it difficult, in fact, to hear what he says, as he describes the problem as he sees it: which is not that we might be robbed, but that we are afraid.

Do not be afraid, he says, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. According to Jesus, fear is the problem, not thieves; and this is the remedy. To know that God’s kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, is all that we need.  If we desire a treasure that we don’t need to protect, and worry about, and live in fear of someone taking it away from us, all we need do is begin to treasure different things. Is let go of the hold that our possessions have on us, that makes us worry SO much about them. Sell them, he suggests almost airily, daring us to believe that he’s joking. He’s not joking. He wouldn’t joke about something this important, this terrifyingly wonderful. Sell your possessions, and give the money away. Make generosity your treasure. Try it. It might actually feel … amazing to have a treasure that can never be lost or stolen. To have a treasure that actually brings you closer to the heart of God.

It’s a breathtaking invitation, and already enough to have knocked us off balance as a response to our worry about thieves. But Jesus isn’t done yet, and he launches into a startling series of images about the messiah and discipleship. Once again, there’s a thief. But this time, the thief who arrives in the night nestles between two other figures arriving unexpectedly: the master who returns home from a banquet and the Son of Man, predicted to return. Which confronts us with the unsettling possibility that the thief here (can it be?) might actually be Jesus.

Which then begs the question of the who the master of the house might be. Immediately before this, the master was clearly Jesus, but here, Jesus performs a rhetorical flip, reminding us that we should never get too comfortable with parables. He’s switched up the roles, deftly illustrating how difficult it can be to identify who is the real thief in this world, and who we’ve allowed to be in control.

Seriously, if Jesus is the thief, who is the master? Who stands to lose, when the messiah comes? Who is threatened, who gets robbed by the coming of God’s kingdom? On a cosmic scale, the Gnostics would later refer to a lesser god who rules over this world (a fallen being, from whom we need to be saved by the Creator). Similarly, later thinkers could understand the master as the devil, robbed of souls by the coming of the Messiah.

Neither of those cosmic characters was particularly well-developed at the time of Jesus however. So we return to the questions, pointing us toward the powers in this world who might be threatened by the values of the kingdom of God. We ask ourselves: who stands to lose, if society is transformed by the Jesus movement, if people truly begin to escape fear and greed by embracing generosity and trust?

There have always been those in this world who make their money or solidify their control by making us afraid; by setting up a zero-sum game and then setting us against each other to compete for those scarce resources. There are those whose power rests in their ability to convince us that we need their protection, and we need their products, and we need to act and think in a certain way, and we will somehow never survive if we don’t do or have all those things.

They are in many ways the masters of this world, and they are really quite good at what they do. One or another falls from power occasionally, but they’re easily replaced. Not much changes.

But Jesus tells of a disruption to this pattern. There is a thief coming. Jesus is coming, like a thief in the night. To cause good trouble, if I may borrow a phrase from the Civil Rights movement. To upend things. To free us all from these systems of fear and control (even if we ourselves are the ones currently in control, we still need to be freed). Still need Jesus to throw open the cages and set forgiveness and generosity free to run through the streets.

Our salvation might not come through the front door, apparently. It might need to sneak in the back way. In the story, we as disciples are told to be ready for the arrival of the thief. And no matter what our first instinct might be, our job isn’t to keep the thief out. Honestly, we’ve done more than enough in our lives to keep Jesus out! Now’s the time to find ways to let him in. To leave the door unlocked … to disarm the alarm system … to crack a window.

So that the thief can come in and show us a new kind of authority and a love that’s grounded in service. So that Jesus can come in and overturn the master’s chair, then sit down on the floor with everyone and share a feast.

The powers of this world want us to lock our doors. Jesus urges us to throw them open. To make more room for the ways of God’s kingdom, in our hearts and in our society.

We can choose fear or we can choose generosity. We can choose to protect the worldly masters’ house or we can find ways to let Jesus in, so that he can take and break and give it all away. That’s the invitation of the gospel, my friends. And it’s the story Jesus tells about the working of God in this world. May it be so, Amen.