Anyone who’s had kids has a story or two like this. Your boy gets his first baseball or football uniform and you find him waking up in bed having slept in it the morning before the game. Rhett is too old now for me to tell you he did things like that. I told you last week about the trip to California I took with Jillian. What I didn’t tell you is that she was so excited about our early morning flight she slept in her clothes so she would be all but ready at the break of dawn.

Be dressed for action, Jesus says in his parable of the household slaves awaiting the return of their master. Have you ever thought of your relationship to Christ that way? What difference would it make in the way you lived if you spiritually slept in your clothes so that you would be constantly ready at any moment for the coming of your Lord?

Some Christians have taken these words more literally than others. The fascinating book by Dava Sobel called Galileo’s Daughter gives an inside glimpse of the intimate relationship between the great Italian genius and his illegitimate daughter. Galileo actually had three children by his mistress – a woman he couldn’t marry in those days because she was considered below his station. The two girls he placed in a convent outside Florence. They joined the Sisters of Poor Clare.

The founding abbess was Clare, a privileged young woman who was moved by the life and work of St Francis of Assisi. Like him, she renounced her wealth, and then she started a contemplative order of nuns who would pray for the souls of the world. The Poor Clares took vows of poverty and sequestered themselves behind cloister walls for their entire lives. They prayed together and worshiped day and night. To the point, though, all the sisters slept every night with their clothes on. Sobel says: Should Death come to call for one of them in the night, she would be dressed and ready to enter the next life. Or, when the bell summoning the nuns to Matins disturbed the darkness at midnight, all could rise from their straw mattresses and go at once, without delay, padding in barefoot procession to the choir to meet their bridegroom Jesus by candlelight. [Penguin, 2000:122]

Can you just imagine that life? Maybe for a weekend retreat, but for your whole life? Anyone ready to take the Bible that literally? Didn’t think so. And Baptists don’t have monasteries or convents, so you’re partially off the hook. Whew! We are not really off the hook at all. Though Jesus certainly could not be displeased by the devotion of the Poor Clares. The question is, how do we dress for action? How do we who are loved by and betrothed to Christ prepare ourselves day or night for the coming of our loving Lord?

Well, the first thing is to have your heart fired with a love ignited by the Lord himself. Love craves love. Love given desires love returned.

When you look at this little story of the household slaves awaiting the return of their master from the wedding banquet, notice that the master is not awaiting for the slaves to get the house ready before he returns. And neither is God asking you to do all sorts of things to clean up the house that is your life and make it ready before Christ will come to you. He is coming on his own schedule, and he is hoping to find you ready. He is not waiting for you to love him first before he loves you.
We love, First John says, because he first loved us. So quit thinking the whole point of Christianity is to do this or that and not do this or that in order to get your reward. The reward of love is love. It is the joy of being happily and fully in the presence of the one you love who loves you. Do you know what it’s like to ache to be with someone you love? Well, that’s it; so start there. Get dressed for action by going to sleep with your clothes on—that is, by draping yourself with a sense of expectancy in your love for Jesus and a desire to be closer to him and know him better.

Too many people think that the use of being a Christian is that it gets your past sins forgiven, or that it gives you the courage to deal with the difficulties of this life, or that it is the best therapy possible for the awful things that have happened to you, or that it will allow you to go to heaven when you die. All of that may be true as far as it goes, but the deeper, bigger truth is that Christianity is about union with God. It is about the intimate consummation of love between you and Christ.

Can you imagine getting married and never getting to the honeymoon? Yet some of you have an all-too-formal relationship with Christ. It’s official, vows, duties, all that; but what about the love?
It’s not all your fault, though. There has to be a sense of the future in Christian faith or it isn’t Christian faith. You have to always be waiting for something, hoping, preparing for something. Or Someone.

This is the meaning of the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ. What God has started, God will finish. What we know now in part we will know in full. What we see now only in hints and pointers, as glimpses and signs, we will one day see as clear as day. What we feel in spirit now, we will know face to face.

But we live between these times—the time of what is and what will be. We do not know when what will be will be. The coming of the bridegroom for his bride, the coming of the master to his house, is going to be comparable to a thief coming in the night.

Kim and I have two different ideas about security in our house. Actually, she says I have no idea at all about security. She goes round locking doors without even thinking about it. She never takes a chance by leaving a door open or a car unlocked. I, on the other hand, am totally vulnerable most of the time. I am usually thinking about other more ethereal things, don’t you know?!, which is a nice way of saying I can be pretty heavenly minded and no earthly good.

But what if the one that comes unexpectedly is not actually a thief? Jesus is saying his coming is LIKE a thief, not that he is a thief. If we see that the one who comes for us is actually the bridegroom coming for his bride instead of a stern master coming to check on his slaves, we begin to get the point. Jesus is using parables to make the point about his coming again and at an unexpected time. We should be ready for him because it can be a joyful and happy occasion.
Can be. If we are looking for him and not taken off guard by his coming. I mean, imagine that someone who loves you comes home and catches you with someone else. For some of you, sadly, you don’t have to imagine; it is altogether fresh and painful. Well, what of Christ’s return at an unexpected time? Think for a moment about how you spend your time. About some of your hobbies and habits. Does anything need to change in the way you life your life so that—if you will excuse the phrase— you don’t get caught without your clothes on? Spiritually, I mean. Don’t you want to be dressed up and ready to welcome Christ, whether that be at your unexpected death or his unexpected return?

Okay, so what does that mean in particular? It may be different things for different ones of us, but curiously, Jesus makes money and possessions an issue here. And don’t we hate when he does that! Sell your possessions and give alms, he says. He is very specific. And here we are back with the sisters of Poor Clare. Are they the only ones getting it right? Well, maybe, but it is hard to believe that it can be an all-or-nothing-at-all proposition.

Tony Campolo, the powerful, outspoken lay evangelist and sociologist, says we need the Poor Clare types to point the rest of us in the right direction and not let our feeble attempts at discipleship lull us into thinking we are really on the heels of Christ. We can all take new steps, though; we can all make progress on the road with Christ. You have to get started somewhere.
Maybe it’s a little thing like developing a disciplined prayer life that leads to the next thing. Maybe it’s volunteering to work with a group like Habitat for Humanity and build homes for the poor. Maybe it’s teaching preschool Sunday school and learning what it means to love those in Jesus’ name who can’t do anything for you except love you back. Maybe it’s a commitment to clean out your closet of all those possessions you have socked away that someone else should be wearing. Or maybe it’s a simple thing like redirecting your tax rebate check to an almsgiving ministry that helps the poor—like your church or a community charity. If you need help figuring out where to give, we’ll be glad to help you decide.

Just taking Jesus at his word and dealing with the matter of your possessions is the beginning of being prepared for his coming. You let go of your grip on this life in order to open your hand to the kingdom God wants to give you. As long as you are holding on to the stuff of this world, you will be fearful of losing it. as soon as you realize you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by letting go and trusting in God, the fear will leave you. Faith takes over and Christ fills you with courage and joy.

Curtis Mayfield was the lead singer for the Impressions back in the ’60s. During the civil rights struggle and the Vietnam War, he sang: People get ready/ there’s a train a comin’/ You don’t need no baggage/ you just get on board. All you need is faith/ to hear the diesels hummin’/ Don’t need no ticket/ You just thank the Lord.

Contrast that to the opening of The Shops at Willow Bend this week. New mall up in Collin County. Anybody been yet? The newspaper chronicled all the preparations for the coming shoppers. They were making ready their purses for the onslaught of consumers. They wanted everything to be just right, to make a good first impression, to put the shoppers in the best spending mood possible. They worked frantically in the last days and hours to be ready to meet them. And all for a failing treasure that moth and rust corrupt.

How ready are you to meet the one who is coming to you as the lover of your soul? You can let go of everything else. You can’t buy a ticket. All you need is faith.

Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!