Advent 1 B

Imagine your house is up for sale and a stranger comes to the door with an interest in buying your home. What happens if you haven't kept it clean, if there are dishes in the sink and the garbage that hasn't been taken out.
Advent is about staying prepared and being ready.

Advent 1 B

Transcribed from a sermon

By Valerie Ann Hart

On November 27, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The little story or tiny parable that Jesus tells at the end of this reading about the servant that is left in charge of the house as the master is away doesn’t really resonate with most of us. I know all of you pretty well, and I don’t think any of you have servants at this point in your lives. And as far as I know none of you have served as a slave or a servant. So we don’t really have a good sense of the meaning of this story.

In Jesus’ time people understood that a rich household would have servants or slaves who would have authority. Whoever was the doorkeeper would have authority over the whole house, to keep it safe and to be sure everything ran smoothly. Sine that doesn’t resonate with us, I thought I’d tell it in a slightly different way. Something that some of us at least have had an experience with ‑ that is selling our houses.

Imagine that you are putting your house up for sale. There is a lot of preparation to get ready for that. You paint the things that you’ve always meant to paint. You get the carpet cleaned. You do all those little things to make it show well. Then during the time when it is up for sale you need to keep it really clean all the time. You never know when somebody is going to come to view it and see it. You hope that the real estate agents will call first so you can do a quick straightening up of the house, but there is no guarantee. Sometimes the amount of time you have isn’t very much. Now, imagine that you are trying to sell your house. It’s been on the market for a while so you’ve gotten a little relaxed about keeping it nice. Suddenly the doorbell rings. There is a man at the door who says that your house is in exactly the neighborhood he wants and is exactly the style house he wants. This is his only chance to see it and he asks to come in. You go through your mind and you realize that there are dirty dishes in the sink, you haven’t dusted in a couple of days and you meant to take the garbage out last night because it was already starting to smell a little bit bad then. Then there is the bedroom, oh my gosh, the stuff, the clothes that are sitting around. Oh, my!

“Could you come back in a little bit?”

“No, this is the only time I have to see the house.”

Needless to say you’ve lost your sale because the house doesn’t look or smell or feel like home to this person. You’ve lost the opportunity because you haven kept awake - you haven’t kept things in order.

Symbolically in literature or in interpreting dreams, or any kind of work like that. the house represents our bodies, ourselves, who we are. So when Jesus talks about keeping the house and keeping awake for the master to return, he is reminding people whose house it is. This body, this body was created by God. We didn’t make it. Whatever it is that says “me” and “I” is really just using this body. The body is on loan.

I’m a servant of the master, or as it is put in the old testament, “He is the potter and we are the pot.” What we do in keeping our house represents ourselves. So, symbolically if we had a messy house, then we might have a messy inner life. If we leave the garbage sitting around till it starts to smell, that could represent those parts of ourselves that we haven’t dealt with. The old angers and resentments that still are sitting there, that we’ve never cleaned out, that we’ve never dealt with. After a while it just starts to putrefy and effect our whole being. Like the places where we haven’t asked for forgiveness, or we haven’t forgiven. It is all those ways in which we are not paying attention, not being awake.

This particular story comes right after Jesus has been talking about the end time. This was a very common theme in prophets in the couple of hundred years before Jesus. The idea that world was unjust, that things were terrible and at some point God was going to come and wipe out things the way they were and bring back the glorious kingdom of God. During that time the Israelites were pretty much under the thumb of some empire, whether it was Asyria, or Rome or some other empire. Things were tough and they wanted things to change. The prophets predicted there would be an end to the world as they knew it and a new life in God.

Jesus is referring to, and using the language of those prophets as he talks about the Son of Man coming on a cloud. Right after he was talking about the end time he uses this image of being ready - of being prepared.

It wasn’t too long ago, less then a month ago, I don’t remember the exact date, when there was a pastor somewhere in the south who said that he knew exactly when the end of time was going to come. It didn’t, so he recalculated it and said it is coming at a different time. He must have missed this part of Mark. It is strange for a pastor to not have read that even Jesus and the Angels don’t know when it is going to happen. I don’t know how he thought he could know.

And I don’t know when it is going to happen, or if it is going to happen, or what it is going to be like. But I do know that each and every one of us will have a time when the world darkens, and the sun, moon, lamps will give no light. We will no longer be able to see, we will no longer be able to hear and everything will be different. Each and every one of us at some point is going to die. We don’t know whether we are going to die at the same time everybody on earth dies, which would be the end time as it is described, or whether our death will just be the end of our relationship with this earth. But we all will have a time when we die.

We as Christians believe that at that point we are going to encounter Christ. What is that going to be like? Well, if you haven’t kept your house clean, if you haven’t kept your house in order, what is it going to be like? Now there will be some of us, some people who are graced with knowing they are about to die. They have an opportunity to reconcile with those people they have never reconciled with. They have an opportunity to express their apologies, to receive forgiveness, to forgive others, to put their house in order. It’s like the person coming to the door giving you a call a couple of hours ahead so you can race around the house and clean everything up. Some people are given that grace.

Some of us aren’t. Some of us may die in and automobile accident or a heart attack or a stroke with no knowledge ahead of time. No chance to clean up those lose ends. There will be the knock on the door and we will have whatever it is we have.

Now if the person at the door is a stranger it is going to be pretty tough.

Let’s suppose instead of that being a stranger that wanted to buy your house, suppose in that story it was your mother. Your mother comes and knocks on your door and your house is a mess. Well, my mother is no longer alive, but I would have been embarrassed. I’d feel like I let her down. I wasn’t living up to what she wanted me to live up to.

She probably would give me that look. Every mother has a look. Each mother has her own look which is some combination of “you’ve done it again” and “I love you anyway”. We all know that look, and those of us that are mothers are really good at doing it. So if my house is a mess and my mother is at the door I might be embarrassed - I might feel bad -  I might apologize, but I would know that she would still love me. There would be no question about that, assuming I had kept a good relationship with my mother.

What if you had a really good friend and they drop by. A really good friend is the sort of person who can drop by and you don’t feel bad about the fact that you haven’t pick up the house because they have been there before. They have helped make some of the messes in your house. They know you. They know who you are and how you live, and they appreciate you for who you are. You are comfortable with them no matter what and you trust their love no matter what.

When we die, when we encounter Christ, who will Christ be to you? Will Christ be a stranger that you feel judged by? Will Christ be a loving parent where you will feel sort of embarrassed by the life you have led but they are going to love you anyway? Or is Christ going to be a good friend who has been with you through each day of your life so at this point knows you completely? What will it be like?

Teresese of Lisieux who wrote about the “Little Way” was a very simple and profound nun. In one of her writings she included a little prayer “After earth’s exile I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. In the evening of this life I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you Lord to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish then to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.”

Keep awake, prepare of the coming of Christ. What is going to matter at that moment is not what we have done or what we have left undone. What is going to matter I our relationship with the one who comes to greet us.