Stay alert

  26th October 2023

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Then Jesus said to the disciples,

Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit, like servants who are waiting for their master to come back from a wedding feast. When he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him at once.

How happy are those servants whose master finds them alert and ready when he returns! I tell you, he will take off his coat, have them sit down, and will wait on them. How happy they are if he finds them ready, even if he should come at midnight or even later!

Luke 12.35-38

There was a T shirt people used to wear which said on it: ‘Be alert!  The world needs lerts.’

In today’s reading Jesus is telling the disciples to stay alert. He uses picture of the servants whose job it was to welcome their master back into the house after the wedding feast – or maybe the honeymoon. They don’t know when he’s going to come – it’s probably going to be late – but instead of taking themselves off to bed or going off to have a good time themselves they stay ‘dressed for action’ and with their lamps all lit, ready to greet him. It’s a picture Jesus uses several times.

We might think that this is about Jesus’ return – the coming of the Son of Man at the end of the age. There’s another T shirt that people used to wear: ‘Jesus is coming – look busy!’ But you can also think of this as being about having an attitude of readiness – being expectant each day for how Jesus will be with us, and what God will bring to us.

I’ve borrowed these hands from my Mum – we used them for the Gatherings for Peace. They say something to me about being open to the gifts that will come each day. If our hands are constantly busy, or clenched shut, or laid down because we have ‘switched off’, then they can’t be open to receive. It’s quite demanding to stay in an attitude of openness and expectancy.

I can across this poem this week, by Mary Oliver:

As deep as I ever went into the forest
I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old,
and around it a clearing, and beyond that
trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence.
It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed
all the clocks in the world had stopped counting.
So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility.
What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.
I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something.
An angel, perhaps.
Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because
I didn’t stay long enough.

Such Silence by Mary Oliver

She is in this special space – in a time that feels different – ‘waiting for something’. Maybe in a way she received what she as waiting for… ‘such silence.’ But she feels that there could still be something more, if she could stay longer.

Two weeks ago in our Communion in Oxstalls Sanctuary we were thinking about some other words of Jesus – ‘Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened’. What is there, in between the asking and the receiving? I think it’s this time of waiting, ready and alert, with open hands.

Often, I know, my hands and my head are busy – I’m impatient or anxious, and I try to sort things out myself. But just sometimes, when I’m not sure what to do, or what to say – or maybe when I’m exploring some bigger questions about my future, I do have this sense of active, alert waiting. Not just in my times of prayer, but somewhere deep inside of me. And when I look back on my life, it’s those times which have led to being given something from God – a hint, a nudge, a thought.

Jesus says ‘How happy are those servants whose master finds them alert and ready when he returns! I tell you, he will take off his coat, have them sit down, and will wait on them’. If we wait on God, alert and open and expectant, then he will come to us, he will ‘wait on us’, he will place into our hands what he wants to give to us.

You might like to close your eyes and open your hands, as an expression of your openness…

Lord Jesus, you know how busy our minds are and how impatient we can be to do things ourselves…

Help me to hand over to you all that makes me anxious or over busy.

Help me to be open to all that you want to give to me.

Help me to tune in to all that you want to say to me.

Help me to wait on you – awake, alert, and ready to receive.