This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa on August 11, 2019. It’s based on Psalm 33:12-22 and Luke 12:32-40. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson/.
Psalm 33:12-22
12Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord! Happy the people chosen to be God’s heritage!
13The Lord looks down from heaven, and sees all humankind.
14God sits firmly enthroned and watches all who dwell on the earth.
15God fashions all their hearts and observes all their deeds.
16A king is not saved by the size of the army, nor are warriors rescued by their great strength.
17The horse gives vain hope for victory; despite its great strength it cannot save.
18Truly, your eye is upon those who fear you, O Lord, upon those who wait for your steadfast love,
19to deliver their lives from death, and to keep them alive in time of famine.
20Our innermost being waits for you, O Lord, our helper and our shield.
21Surely, our heart rejoices in you, for in your holy name we put our trust.
22Let your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, even as we place our hope in you.
Luke 12:32-40
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell 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. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be 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. 37Blessed 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. 38If 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. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
Do not be afraid. Be ready.
Our gospel reading for today is held within these two commands given by Jesus to his disciples. At first hearing, these may strike us as competing commands. I don’t know about you, but getting ready can easily make me anxious.
Getting ready for a trip makes me worry that I’ll forget about some important thing that needs tending to before I go. Getting ready for new responsibilities makes me doubt my abilities, worry that I’ll fail, wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Getting ready for anything that requires finding paperwork in my house (birth certificates, social security cards, immunization records) makes me face the disturbing reality that I am not nearly as organized as I think I am. There’s a lot of tension for me between be ready and do not be afraid.
Peter’s response to Jesus immediately following our gospel reading makes me smile. Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone? I hear you, Peter. You want to know if you and your fellow disciples are the only ones bearing this great responsibility of being ready without being afraid or if everyone has to wrestle with this tension.
It’s a lot to take in. Jesus is a lot to take in. He alternates between assuring the disciples that God will, with pleasure, give them the kingdom and comparing the Son of Man to a thief breaking into a home. Is there security as part of this little flock or not? What exactly is expected of us? What does it look like to both be ready and be not afraid?
I’d like to share two images with you. One goes back twenty years and the other I just stumbled upon recently. I’ll start with the latter.
Have you ever heard of a prepared piano? In the late 1930s composer John Cage was challenged with writing a piece to accompany a modern dance. He would have liked to have incorporated percussion instruments, but the only instrument available in the small theater where the dance was to be performed was a piano. Cage went to his kitchen, got a pie plate, brought it back into the living room and placed it on the piano strings. Here’s his account of what happened next:
I played a few keys. The piano sounds had been changed, but the pie plate bounced around due to the vibrations, and, after a while, some of the sounds that had been changed no longer were. I tried something smaller, nails between the strings. They slipped down between and lengthwise along the strings. It dawned on me that screws or bolts would stay in position. They did. And I was delighted to notice that by means of a single preparation two different sounds could be produced. One was resonant; the other was quiet and muted. The quiet one was heard whenever the soft pedal was used. I wrote…quickly and with the excitement continual discovery provided.1
The modern composer and pianist Hauschka employs a prepared piano in his work. He says, Somehow, it seems to me strange that once a machine or an instrument is built, only a very few people try to find out which possibilities are possible in all extremes. Among the objects Hauschka uses to prepare the piano are art erasers, wooden material (like saxophone and clarinet reeds), and light filters.
When asked which pianos can be prepared, Hauschka says, You can do all of these things with an upright and a grand piano. The gravity works differently on each type though, as the preparations are hanging on an upright piano, while they’re lying on a grand piano.2
I just love this image of a prepared piano in conjunction with Jesus’ admonition to be ready. The piano does not prepare itself. The composer or pianist brings the necessary elements to the piano—with incredible freedom and creativity—and places them exactly as needed in order to create the sound that is desired.
Every piano is capable of being prepared, but what that preparation looks like and how it manifests itself in any particular piano is unique to that instrument.
What if we were to imagine ourselves as pianos and God as the artist who comes to prepare us for music-making to accompany the dance of this modern, beautiful and brutal, world?
A prepared piano is a changed piano.
What if God transforms us so that we can be both resonant and, when needed, muted so that other voices can speak?
God works with erasers—forgiving our sins, erasing our shame and regret so that we can be free to work for the freedom of others.
God works with wooden materials—a cross that demonstrates the depth of God’s love for the world and the very real way in which Jesus knows, and has experienced, the depth of our suffering.
God works with light filters—sending Jesus into our lives as the light no darkness can overcome, making us ready to respond to hate with unconditional love, making us ready to play the music we were created to play—a song of peace, a song of abundant life for all.
This leads me to that second image. At our wedding dance twenty years ago, the first song Doug and I danced to was by Tracy Chapman. It was called I’m Ready. We somehow thought we were ready for marriage, for each other, for wholehearted love in the face of any challenges that might come our way.
When I look back on it now, we weren’t ready at all. We knew nothing of what our marriage would be called upon to endure. We barely knew anything of each other, who we were and who we would become. But as I listen to the song now, I think we got it right. It wasn’t about us being ready—being prepared for every potential disaster. It was about—and is still about—recognizing that we can’t do this on our own.
Tracy Chapman sings, I’m ready to let the rivers wash over me. If the waters can redeem me, I’m ready. I’m ready to let the rivers wash over me. I’m ready. I’m ready.3
The river of God—the waters of baptism—have washed over you and me. They’ve named us beloved, claimed us for love of God and love of neighbor, equipped us with the gifts of the Spirit: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord, joy in God’s presence. We are ready for whatever God calls us to do, ready for whatever storms prevail upon our families, our nation, our world, because God has made us ready by giving us all that we need.
I believe this. I believe it with my whole heart. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I doubt it. It doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I look at the sorrows endured by ones I hold most dear, and the suffering we humans inflict upon ourselves and upon one another, and want to join Peter in asking Jesus, Really? Are you talking to me? How can I not be afraid? How can I possibly trust? I’m not ready.
And Jesus speaks into the stillness of our hearts, I’m ready.
I’m ready to be everything you need.
I’m ready to make myself at home with you, to feed you, to serve you while you sit and rest for a while.
I’m ready to give you the gift of my faith.
I’m ready to see you, to fashion your heart, to deliver your life from death, to keep you alive in time of famine…
…when your light is dim and your fear is burning bright…
…when all you can do is weep…
…when all you can do is cry out for my love…
…when all you can do is throw your arms up in surrender and in praise and beg me to hear your cries on behalf of the ones you love, on behalf of this wounded, weary world.
I’m ready. I’m ready. Amen.
1 https://johncage.org/prepared_piano_essay.html
2 https://www.xlr8r.com/gear/artist-tips-hauschka-shares-the-secrets-of-the-prepared-piano
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mm8p47UTfo
If you’d like to hear a prepared piano in action, here’s a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRHoKZRYBlY&app=desktop.