If we prepare, we can handle just about anything. Preparation allows us to handle both negatives and positives. If we are ready, we can take the negatives and deal with the blows that fall on us. And if we are ready, we can also enjoy the positives and receive the blessings.
When I was growing up, on the 5th of September each year we would celebrate my dad’s birthday. The ritual was always the same. My mother would prepare some of his favorite foods, Hoosier stuff from where he grew up in Noble County, Indiana. There would be a cake with candles, from which he would, on this one day a year, serve himself an extra large slice. Most of the time he was concerned that everybody at the table get exactly the same size portion of everything, but on his birthday, he indulged himself a little. And then, when the last crumb of cake had been consumed, he would sweep aside the dirty dishes and would clear a space on the table, saying, “Now IT should fit right about here.” “IT” was, of course, whatever he had been hinting about for weeks. Small or large, he anticipated that what he had been mentioning would show up as his birthday gift, and so he was prepared. Sometimes, however, we did not meet his expectations. Sometimes the gift was not what he thought it would be. But still, in one fashion or another, he was prepared, my dad, to accept his gift. It was, after all, a gift; and whether it was what he expected was irrelevant. It was a gift, though it might not fit exactly the space he had marked out on the dining room table.
If we prepare, we can handle just about anything. Preparation allows us to handle both negatives and positives. If we are ready, we can take the negatives and deal with the blows that fall on us. And if we are ready, we can also enjoy the positives and receive the blessings.
The Advent season is one for which we generally prepare a gift-sized space. We think we know what this is all about. It is about getting ready for Christmas. It is about shopping and dropping hints. It is about celebrating the birth of a lovely infant on a starlit night, surrounded by adoring shepherds and caroling angels. We are preparing for tidings of great joy again, right?
Except that there is an edge to Advent. There is a harsh edge to this season. The passage we read today reminds us that the other side of blessing is judgment. The other side of God’s gift is disappointment for those who are not ready. This passage warns us to be prepared, always prepared. This Scripture refers to the coming of the Son of Man on the Day of the Lord; that’s Old Testament language that speaks of judgment. The prophet Amos cried out, “The Day of the Lord is darkness and not light.” For, mark it down, whenever God breaks in, there is always both judgment and blessing. Whenever God intervenes in human history, He comes with both wrath and mercy. He is not always the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” of our naïve songs. He is also the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the terror of those who walk in darkness as well as the bright and morning star. Advent says, “Be prepared, always prepared, for the coming of our God.” Semper paratus – you know it as the motto of a number of military units – always prepared.
I
Consider what it means to be prepared to receive judgment. Start with me on the dark side. The Bible speaks of the coming of the Lord as a day on which some will be taken and some left behind, some given rescue and some denied. There is judgment when the Lord breaks in – something we try not to think about. But we must – and we must be prepared, semper paratus. For if we are not prepared for judgment, then the blows that fall on us may shatter us, and the consequences of our unreadiness may destroy us.
Some years ago, early on a Sunday morning, I set out from my home in Lexington, Kentucky, to preach in a church toward the western part of the state. The only effective way to get there was to use two toll roads, the Bluegrass Parkway and the Western Kentucky Parkway. I struck out with no advance thought and no preparation for the drive, with no stash of cash to get me through the tollgates. Well, I made it down to my preaching appointment just fine; I did my thing, spent the afternoon visiting with a church family, preached again for the evening service, and somewhere around 9:00 p.m. headed for home. It was then that it hit me – I don’t know whether I have enough money to pay the tolls. I went through one tollgate and found enough to get through. I hit the second tollgate, and discovered that I had nothing but a big bunch of pennies, and so started throwing in my pennies. It must have taken five minutes for the machine to count all those coins, but I got through once again, with scarcely anything at all to spare. What would I do on the next Parkway? I did the only thing I could do; I got off the highway and drove a myriad of old twisting two-lane roads home, there to be confronted by a very worried wife who said some things not normally repeated in a church pulpit. “Where have you been? I thought maybe you had been abducted!” No, not abducted, nor raptured either, just not prepared. And did judgment ever fall on my head that night! Something about leaving her alone all day and most of the night with two squalling children! If that’s not judgment, I don’t know what is!
The trouble is that you and I seem to think that God is either a patsy or is asleep, but that God does not judge. However, God is not mocked, says the Bible, and we do reap what we sow. When God comes, as He does day by day; or when God COMES at the end of history, either way, we need to be prepared for the judgment that comes down on our foolishness. This passage of Scripture is a warning; it tells us that we need to clean up our acts. We need to get ourselves together. We need to stop doing those things that do not represent God’s will. We need to put aside, as the Bible has it, the works of darkness, and embrace the light. For the time is coming, and we do not know when it is, when it will be too late. One will be taken and the other left; one will be shocked at the inbreak of truth, and the other will be ready for it. Be warned, be prepared, always prepared. Semper paratus, for judgment.
When I was growing up, and the big issue among Baptist young people was ballroom dancing, I had a Sunday School teacher who put the clincher on the argument. She said, “If Jesus were to return tonight, would you want Him to find you on the dance floor?” Some brash kid – I wonder who? – answered that he would not particularly want Jesus to find him in the shower either, but that did not keep him from showering! Ah, but here is the crux of the matter! It is not just about the future, when He shall come with trumpet sound; it is about now, it is about each day, it is about His coming moment by moment. What is He seeing now? What must He judge now? Be prepared for the judgment that must come; for if we are prepared and repentant, then we can handle the judgment. It will be loving correction rather than condemnation. Be ready; semper paratus.
II
Now there is, happily, the other side of His coming. There is His coming to give us blessing. If we prepare, we can handle just about anything. Preparation allows us to handle both negatives and positives. If we are ready, we can take the negatives and deal with the blows that fall on us. And if we are ready, we can also enjoy the positives and receive the blessings.
As ominous as this passage of Scripture is, I can hear its promise of blessing. Two are in the field; one is taken and the other left. Two women are grinding meal; one is taken and the other left. There is a word here about being just as ready to receive the Lord’s blessings as we must be to receive His judgment. There is an insight here about preparing for the good things that our Lord wants to give us. When He comes, we need to be prepared for the disguised and hidden blessings.
I did my first feeble sermon almost fifty years ago – you know, when I was in Kindergarten – yeah, right! I did my first sermon under the tutelage of a superstar preacher, who insisted that I write my message, memorize it, and not bring any notes into the pulpit. Well, you talk about preparation! I wrote that thing and must have repeated it twenty or thirty times around the house, and thought I was ready. I stepped into that pulpit, read my text, and launched out into the deep with three points and a poem. The first point went well, but the second point … the second point … what was the second point? I could not bring it up. I even turned to the choir, where my brother was sitting, and said, “You’ve heard this thing before, what comes next?” After he shrugged his shoulders, I went on to the third point, then remembered the second point, hit on it for a while, and ended up in a puddle of perspiration behind that pulpit. I thought I would never again emerge as a preacher.
But I got a blessing from that. Because I was prepared, I got a blessing. My pastor was right to insist on having the sermon well in mind – a practice I still try to maintain – but it was presumptuous of me to think that I would be superhuman and would never need help. So, as you may have discovered, I have my notes with me, and sometimes refer to them, but often do not. The blessing is that when I prepared I became free to be me, free to do what works for me. I would not have received that blessing had I not prepared that first time; nor would I continue to receive blessing did I not still prepare the same way. Semper paratus.
The Lord our God is urging us to stay awake and alert, and be ready to receive whatever He has to give, even though it be veiled and not what we expected. It will be a blessing.
I have heard in the voices of parents who have disciplined their children a fulfillment that would never have been there had they not prepared their children for life. Semper paratus.
I have witnessed in those who have learned how to share their faith the victory when someone they have worked with comes to make a profession of faith. It would not have happened were they not semper paratus. The Bible says, “Be always ready to give a reason for the faith that is in you.”
I have grasped the hands of those who face surgery, feeling the confidence that is theirs when they have prayed and have put their trust in well-prepared surgeons and in a good God. They are ready. Semper paratus.
And I have seen in the eyes of those who have prepared to die a peace and a joy that passes human understanding. They are semper paratus, always prepared.
III
So today I see in this table of bread and wine the signs of Him who has said to us, “I go to prepare a place for you.” He is semper paratus; He is always ready for us.
I see in this table the fruits of our labor, markers of Him who told His brothers, “Go find an upper room, and there prepare the supper for us, for I would sup with you yet once more before I am taken away.”
I see on this table the very dying form of one who suffered there for us, that we need not experience the most ultimate of judgments; the intimation of the cross of one who died for us, blessing us with eternal life, giving us abundant life beyond compare.
I see at this table a warning and a promise, that He will come again, in glory, to judge both the quick and the dead, at a time that no one knows. But He will come not only to judge, but also to bless. For it is a gift; whether it is what we expected or not, it is a gift. I want to be ready. I want to be semper paratus.
