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The Master Comes to Serve Text:
Luke 12:35-40 Are you going to a New Year's Eve party tonight? Folks everywhere gather on this night for the “momentous occasion” of the marking of time and of our days with the impressive changing of the last digit on the calendar from “5” to “6.” Wherever you are the television sets are probably tuned to see the light show in Madison Square Garden, New York. Everyone waits with great anticipation, all dressed in everything from their finest suits and gowns to the silliest hats or outfits they can find—all this in anticipation of the inevitable, inexorable, unstoppable ticking of the clock towards midnight. In fact, we're so aware of our accuracy that we're even adding a “leap second” to the countdown this year, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, um 1, Happy New Year!” On this night all people, regardless of any other differences in race, nationality or religion, are one fellowship in the passing of time.
It has been the tradition of Christians to gather for the Divine Service on this night. Some view receiving communion on New Year's Eve as a confession of faith, attending to the one most important thing that gives meaning or substance to everything else in our otherwise improvised lives. Others, I fear, see communion as a sort of “good luck charm” to carry them into an otherwise foreboding future.
There are similarities between the secular and the sacred view of the marking of our days. In our text from Luke's Gospel Jesus mentions a Christian “dress code,” special lamps, two festive meals, and the need to stay awake, with one important difference: unlike the dropping of the crystal ball in Times Square at the precise moment of the beginning of a new calendar year, Christians are waiting for an event the arrival of which cannot be calculated, scheduled or known. The occasion is that to which the passing of time and the ticking of the clock ultimately point, namely, the return of the Master, our Savior, for the Last Day of Judgment and Deliverance. In our text, it is because we do not know the hour or the day that a brief introduction leads to two parables concerning the need for Christians to be ready at all times.
Jesus first mentions the dress code, saying, “Stay dressed for action.” The older translation says, “Let your loins be girded,” words that remind us of God's instruction to Moses and Aaron on how to eat the Passover, “with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover” [Exodus 12:11 (ESV)]. In other words, this is no time to relax. The meal is not the point, but points beyond itself to the greater meal or Messianic banquet of heaven, which is yet to come. Hence, the need to be “dressed for action.”
Our “dress for action” is the white robes of Christ's righteousness that we received in Holy Baptism. Only dressed in this way can a person hope and count on being admitted to the banquet. Refusal to accept what seems to some as a silly thing, a righteousness not based on our own efforts or works but to be received as a gift, will result in being thrown out by the bouncers if you even happen to sneak in in the first place.
“Be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast.” These words remind us that the heavenly banquet has already begun. The Master already has everything prepared. He has gone to prepare a place setting for you. Having brought salvation through the forgiveness of sins by his death on the cross, his rest in the tomb, his mighty resurrection from the grave and his ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on High where he has received all authority in heaven and on earth, the victory celebration has already begun. All that remains is for the Master to come and receive us to himself that where he is we may be also.
Secondly, you must keep your lamps burning. The darkness threatens. Only the light of God's Word can keep you ready. Every other light will deceive as Satan, Lucifer, the devilish angel of light seeks to extinguish that little light of yours, the light of faith fed by the Word of God. The light of God's Word is no mere good luck charm but the power or fuel for the saving faith. From the Word, whether in sermon or catechism or devotion or even Christian conversation, the Truth is impressed deeply—the truth of God's true attitude of love toward you and his world; the truth of salvation by means of God's justification of the sinner by his grace through faith in Christ alone. So must we daily “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” God's Holy Word to keep our lamps of faith burning.
In the first parable there are two beatitudes surrounding a solemn promise. “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.” On the one hand, God's gift of faith continues to burn whether we are physically awake or whether we sleep. Yet it is this awakening of faith to which our Lord refers, the constant awareness of the Lord's grace for us even and especially in our otherwise darkest moments. Faith is a living and active thing, always clinging and counting on the Lord's promises.
Therefore Jesus issues a solemn promise, saying that he himself is dressed for service and has us recline at table. The amazing thing is not that we are to serve him but that he, the Master, comes to serve us! The first Christians gathered in their house-churches could not hear these words without thinking of the Divine Service, and especially the table fellowship of the Lord's Supper. Unlike the mere riding of our planet around the sun for the 2006 th time that affects everyone, this table fellowship includes only those who by repentance and faith in Christ have been called out of time and the world to be citizens of heaven, the Body of Christ, the Holy Church that spans all time and every place. For every time we gather around the Table of the Lord our crucified and risen Lord Jesus is, at once, the Victim, the Meal and the Host, feeding each of us and all of us together with his very body and blood, he himself entering and living in us as his ever-new, ever-living flesh and blood.
It is thus, to the servants constantly awakened with his service in Word and Sacrament, that they are doubly blessed because we are dressed for action, ready and awake.
The second little parable is short and easily understood. At first it may shock us that he compares his return to that of a thief breaking in to a house, but the point is the abrupt and maybe even surprising arrival. It goes without saying (though he says it) that if your surveillance could accurately pin down the moment a thief had planned to break into your house, you would certainly take some further or even extraordinary action to prevent it. When he says we “also must be ready” for his return, he means to constantly be about the further and extraordinary action of the strengthening of faith. Again, this is done only by means of faithful attendance to God's Word and Sacraments. And maybe this means to remind us of how extraordinary and all-important is the Divine Service especially when other things, anything seeks to gain power over us to separate us from this chief activity. Is “worship,” the Divine Service more important than anything else in your daily planner or calendar? The clock is ticking. St. Paul writes, “you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” [Romans 13:11-14 (ESV)]. Be dressed for action. Keep the lamp of faith burning by remaining connected to its fuel, Word and Sacrament, where the Master serves us. Have a happy new year. But be ready and prepared to have an even happier new life for eternity in Christ Jesus our Lord. ___________________
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