Readings:
Sermon:
St. Luke has Jesus make a really significant connection at the beginning of today’s gospel reading. He says, “Do not be afraid …sell your possessions”. The inference is clear - that the hoarding of possessions is a manifestation of anxiety - not dissimilar to what we might call ‘retail therapy’ today. This is why the gospel writers are so keen to emphasis Jesus’ teaching on this matter - the accumulation of possessions serves to mask anxiety, and thus enable us to avoid addressing the root cause of the anxiety. If we are to live full, God-focused lives, then everything that holds us back needs to be brought into the light of God, and this includes our anxieties. It is only by the ridding ourselves of our ‘possessions’ that we can bring our anxieties to light and thus hold them up to the healing power of God.
But what are our possessions? Well, sometimes they are literally our possessions. Much of our western culture self-soothes by buying stuff – a new phone, and new car, new clothes, whatever…. But we can also have non-material possessions, our plans, our visions, our beliefs, our ways of doing things, our belief in our own efforts, and it’s important to say that there is nothing wrong per se with any of these things. The problem comes when we use them to mask anxiety, and when we cling to them defensively.
Jesus calls us to an alertness and an attentiveness to the present moment and to the infinite possibilities of God within it. ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit…’ Jesus says, and he praises those slaves who the master finds them ready and waiting when he comes in the middle of the night. The problem is that if we are too caught up with our own possessions, be they material or immaterial, we risk Jesus not finding us alert.
So, there is something deeply paradoxical at play here. We need some possessions to live and to get by – not to have any means that we become a burden on others, but we need to have few enough not to be encumbered by them. We need our visions of God and of the kingdom and a plan to work with God in making the kingdom a reality our society through acts of compassion and justice. Yet we need to realise that we cannot achieve all this by our own effort – we are always dependent on the action of the Holy Spirit that works in us and beyond us.
There’s a nice joke that capture the need to sit light to our plans and by extension to our possessions. It goes “How do you make God laugh?” to which the answer is “Tell him your plans!”
So we are called to be dressed for action with our lamps lit. And this involves us not being weighted down by our possessions be they material or immaterial. We don’t need possessions of whatever kind to cover our anxieties, because in the end there is nothing to be anxious about, because as Jesus says ‘…it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’
Questions:
- What are the anxieties you try to cover over with possessions, be they material or immaterial?
- What do you need to let go of to be ‘dressed for action and with your lamp lit’?