In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus says, “Do not fear.”  God wants to give us the kingdom.  So we can focus on doing God’s work rather than on worrying about the future and about money.  That’s a tough message for retired folks on a fixed income.  Obviously, Jesus is not telling us to give away all the money we need to live on and move down to the homeless encampment on the other side of the tracks.  Books about retirement talk a lot about money, because it is important not to run out of the stuff, but the books rarely talk about what you will actually do after giving up your job or your home.  The people who write those books seem to assume that all we want to do is to count our money, eat, and amuse ourselves.  Jesus wants us to live more fully than that.  God wants us to live more fully than that.

Jesus says that we should get money bags that don’t wear out.  What does that mean, exactly?  This passage in the Gospel of Luke immediately follows last week’s Gospel story about the two brothers who were fighting over their inheritance; the younger brother wanted Jesus to make the older one split the inheritance.  Jesus told the parable about the rich farmer who died while making plans about how to store his huge harvest.  These brothers were making the same mistake;  they didn’t realize that the real treasure was their relationship as brothers.  They were willing to lose that in order to get a bigger share of the farm.  The money bags that don’t wear out are the ones that contain our relationships with brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, friends, aides, nurses, workmen—all the people we encounter each day who can enrich our lives with love and shared concern.

Then Jesus says to gird your loins and be like servants waiting for the master to return.  Luke’s readers in the first century probably understood this as referring to the second coming, when Jesus will establish his kingdom.  But I have to think of those fairy tales in which a beggar knocks at the doors in the village and most of the people send him away, but one person welcomes him and feeds him; of course, the beggar turns out to be Christ, in disguise.  Shouldn’t be a surprise.  He has told us that what we do for the least of these we have done for him.  He may even be disguised as a bore, or somebody with an annoying habit, or even a grouch.  Will we greet him with kindness?

What if he comes in the second or the third watch?  Our experience with Covid suggests that we won’t do very well.  When Covid first hit, there were lockdowns; everyone wore masks all the time.  We ministers of communion had to stop coming here for communion services.  But Americans are tired of Covid.  People are no longer required by law to wear masks, and most people don’t.  We’re like the householder who got tired of locking the door and setting the burglar alarm, and nobody told him when the thief would come.  Or like servants who got tired of waiting for the master and decided to eat dinner and watch some television. 

Realistically, of course, we can’t always be watching for the Christ to appear.  When he comes, it’s going to be a surprise.  We need to develop habits of kindness and generosity in order to greet him the way we want to think we will.  We all know a few people who treat everyone like that, like the kind householder in the fairy tale who welcomes that beggar because he is kind by habit.

Although Jesus starts by telling us not to be afraid, he ends on a note of dark warning, after Peter asks him whether the parable is meant just for the disciples or for everyone.  Now there is no more “Do not be afraid, little flock.”  I can’t help but think of this last part of today’s Gospel passage as aimed directly at the priests and leaders who abused children entrusted to their care, and to the bishops who cared more about the institution than for the people of God.  To these people, and to others who abuse those they should take care of, Jesus seems to be saying, “Be afraid.  Be very afraid.”