Luke 12:32-40; Jesus' Three Commands

"32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 35 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39 ‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’"

Introduction

Scholars differ on how to outline the passage in which these verses are embedded. These verses occur in a longer disourse of Jesus about a coming persecution (12:1-7), about the right attitude toward possessions (12:8-31), and about watchfulness regarding the coming of the "master" (12:41-48). By being unclear about the natural "dividing points" of the text (e.g., one commentary I read has 12:13-34 and 12:34-48 as the logical units of the narrative), the text gives us encouragement to link the verses and stories in ways that fit our tastes and that are true to the narrative flow. In that regard, I read vv. 32-40 as a series of three ever-more-difficult commands that Jesus gives his disciples. I will exposit them in this order: (1) Banish Fear (32); (2) Sell Goods (33-34); (3) Be Alert (35-40). Let's try to understand each. My contention or "thesis" in these essays is that it is easier to banish our fears than to sell our goods and follow Jesus, and selling our goods is far easier than being alert.

I. Banishing Fear (v. 32)

The context in which this passage opens is where Jesus is teaching about worry. He knows the human tendency to be concerned with material goods and the shape of our lives, but Jesus resolutely tells us: "do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you shall wear" (v. 22). Why not? Because the ravens neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them (v. 24). Since we are of much more value than ravens, God will so much more take care of us.

This really is a very simple message, but we have trouble believing it in 2007 or any year. Our special difficulty in believing it today is driven by the economic anxiety of those born after WWII. This economic anxiety manifests itself in an obsessive concern with one's "net worth," with daily or hourly "checking up" on the stock markets, with repeated "planning" about how much money we have now for how many years, etc. A 50 year-old man recently told me, for example, that he was pretty happy because he had spent the weekend figuring out just how much money he had and how much he would need for the rest of his life, and he figured that he was "covered" until he reached 91 years of age. Of course, he still had some anxiety because what about if he was especially long-lived? Thus, he had to keep massaging numbers, planning for the future, working extra hours, etc. until he was sure he had enough, come any eventuality, to make it until he died.

Is this man's situation unusual or rare? Not at all. I practiced law in Portland at the end of the "internet boom" times in 1999-2000, and I saw that the more money people had, the more they thought they "needed" to have more. But the "markets" did a number on me. The week I began work at my "prestigious" firm was the week that the NASDAQ hit its all-time high. It was downhill from there. I often say to others that the time I lost the most money was the time I had the highest-paying job. I lost most money in those years because the markets crashed and because I got a divorce. It was, as I now think about it, the universe's "message" to me about the correctness of Jesus' words in this passage and about the need to get my financial priorities "straight."

So, we tend to be pre-occupied or even obsessed with having "enough" money or resources on which to live, heedless of the fact that things not only change rapidly but if we live just worried about having "enough," our attention will be so diverted that we don't recognize the beauty of the lilies of the field, or the arcing flight of a bird. The contemporary political philosopher and writer EJ Dionne (Why Americans Hate Politics and other works) has a theory about the Clinton Administration that I think is correct. He sees it as an administration of great promise, which promise was derailed because the President had to focus excessive concern in 1998-2000 on his sexual peccadillos and impeachment. That is, things tended to enter into his life to distract him from paying attention to more important issues before the American people. I, picking up from Dionne's argument, would argue that America was so obsessed with Bill Clinton's extra-marital flings that we really weren't vigilant in foreign affairs. That is, preoccupation with one thing often makes us unaware of more important things.

Returning to Verse 32

Let's now return to the text of v. 32. "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." We are called a "little flock," a term of endearment also present in Ezek. 34 and other Biblical texts. God's pleasure is to give us the "kingdom" (i.e., the presence of Jesus), but we are worried about our clothes, our money, our bank account and assuring our future economically. We live in fear, and our lives reflect the fear that grips us. Fear erodes our creativity, occupies our mental space, distracts us from enjoying the true beauties all around us, and ultimately shortchanges us. We may indeed gain our lives by assuring that we are financially secure until we are even 92 years old, but we probably will lose our souls in the process.

So, how do we get rid of this fear? Remember, I say that this is the easiest of the three of Jesus' commands in these verses to observe. How do we get rid of the fear? Start to major on what your heart says is your true love. Let the cacophony created by fear ("I need to do X and then Y and then obtain Z and be vigilant on this deal and that investment and that sale") gradually be subsumed by a greater "sound"--the sound of you listening to the alluring music of love. What is it that you truly love, that you would give yourself to in a moment if you had the courage to give yourself that moment? Perhaps you don't even know what this is because you are so wrapped up in the life of fear that you don't even permit yourself the "luxury" to think of what life would look like without being consumed by "what you should wear" or "what you should eat" (to quote Jesus). But when the noise stops and the glitter fades for the evening, what is it that your heart craves? Does it desire to explore other cultures? To learn a skill? To gain certain knowledge? To serve in some capacity to others? To move to a different region? To put on a different "persona?"

Fear keeps us from doing these things. Fear sends us back to the office when we know we really don't have anything of importance to do at the office. Why not let other things begin to take over in our lives? Jesus' words are clear to us. "Do not be afraid, little flock..." We are afraid. We need to learn to put the fears aside. That is the first (and easiest) point.

The other two are more difficult, and the next essay describes them.

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