Awake, Alert, Dressed for Action

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return….”

Have many of you have ever been part of a trauma team? Probably there isn’t a person in this parish who hasn’t spent some time in an emergency room. But have any of you ever been part of the group of people in the ER who stand ready to treat traumatic cases when they come in? I have. As part of my chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, I had to be on 24-hour call in the Emergency Department. When my pager went off – often with only minutes to spare – with the rest of the trauma team I sprang into action, ready to meet the ambulance the minute it arrived. Everyone in the trauma room was dressed and ready for action. The physicians, EMTs, and nurses were in their scrubs, their stethoscopes around their necks. The pharmacist was already wheeling in a trolley of drugs. The operating room nurse was standing by ready to alert the surgical suite, the X-ray technicians were ready to prepare for a CRT or other test. The social worker and I, in my blue chaplain’s coat, stood ready to do our jobs. Between patients all of us might relax a little, chat, or get a drink, but we remained dressed and alert, ready to reassemble and spring into action the minute our pagers went off.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples to be like the Children’s Hospital trauma team: on the alert, ready, “dressed for action,” with “lamps lit.” All summer in Luke’s account, we have been on the road with Jesus. We have been hearing Jesus instruct his friends, the rest of the crowd, and us, about the demands of discipleship. What have we learned so far? We have learned that our commitment to Jesus is to be total, that we are to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of God, that we are to pray daily for even our most basic needs, and that we must put our commitment to God first in our lives. Now, Jesus shifts gears slightly. He continues his instruction by suggesting that we also must always be on the alert, “dressed for action,” ready for the “master’s return.” He uses two parables here to make his point. In the first he alludes to slaves being ready to greet their master when he comes home from a wedding banquet. In the other he warns us to guard against sudden theft. Both parables underscore the need to be on the alert. Perhaps Jesus is referring here to the final coming of God, what we call the parousia, or Second Coming, when God will finally bring in God’s Kingdom. We have no idea when that event might occur, but both parables suggest that we need to be ready for that moment when Christ will return.

One of the ways we prepare for that moment is by having faith that Christ actually will return, and that God will bring in God’s Kingdom. Our reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews suggests what such faith might look like. The passage holds up the figure of Abraham as the supreme model of faith. You remember that, although Abraham had no heir, God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and that Abraham and Sarah trusted God’s promises. Although Abraham and the others mentioned in today’s passage, could not actually see the fulfillment of God’s promises, nevertheless they trusted God and pressed on along the road marked out for them by God. So believing in God, trusting in God’s promises, seeing the Kingdom, if only from afar, is one of the ways that we await the Second Coming, one of the ways that we stand “dressed for action.”

But I think there is also another way. As the spiritual writer Barbara Crafton reminds us, Jesus’ coming is not just a future event. Jesus comes to us even in this middle time, this time between his Incarnation and his Second Coming. As Crafton tell us, “it could also be that Christ is coming into my life today. That Christ constantly comes into my life, steadily inhabiting every moment and every chance, consistently stands ready to fill the random things of my random life with meaning. It could be that Christ is in my life and I haven't noticed….” Indeed, Christ comes to us all the time, every day, throughout the day. We deepen our relationship with Christ and become more alert to Christ’s presence with us by cultivating disciplined practices of prayer and Scripture reading. We let Christ nourish us with his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. More importantly, we also let Christ come to us in our ethical choices and in our outreach to others. As he warns us, sometimes Christ comes when we least expect him. Sometimes Christ comes to help and support us, and sometimes Christ comes to urge us on to fuller participation in the bringing in of God’s Kingdom. However and whenever Christ comes to us, if we are living faithful, disciplined spiritual lives, we will be dressed and ready to let his grace change our lives.

Make no mistake. In commanding us to remain dressed for action, Jesus also suggests that when he comes into our lives he will call us to serve him. When the master finally arrives, the slaves leap up. When the ambulance arrives in the trauma bay, the team springs into action. When we hear Christ’s call, we too must be ready to do whatever he asks of us. And he may ask us to do something difficult or scary. He may even ask us to follow him all the way to the Cross, as he did Jonathan Myrick Daniels, whom the Church remembers this week. Daniels was a native of Keene, NH, the son of a Congregationalist physician. He became an Episcopalian during his high school years and began to sense a call to the priesthood. However, after graduating in 1961 at the top of his class from the Virginia Military Institute, he entered Harvard University with a fellowship to study English Literature. On Easter Day 1962 he had a profound conversion experience at the Church of the Advent in Boston. Hearing again, now strongly, the call to ordination, he entered the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge in 1963, expecting to graduate in 1966.

In March 1965, Christ called to Daniels. Martin Luther King, Jr. appealed to people to come to Selma to assist in a voting rights drive. Daniels went to Selma under the sponsorship of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. He wrote of the moment of clarity about his decision that came to him during Evening Prayer at the chapel:

“…as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence that I have always felt for Mary’s glad song…. I found myself peculiarly alert…. Then it came. ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things.’ I knew then that I must go to Selma.”

Following a brief return to ETS in May, Daniels returned to Alabama to work with legal aid agencies. He was arrested with three other people on August 13 as part of group picketing local businesses. Shortly after their unexplained release from jail six days later, the four went to a local store to buy a soda. As one of them, Ruby Sales, a sixteen-year old African American girl, came up to the entrance, a deputy sheriff aimed a shotgun at her and cursed her. Daniels pushed her to the ground, saving her life. The shotgun blast killed Daniels instantly. Another of his companions, a Roman Catholic priest, was badly wounded. When Martin Luther King heard of Daniels’s death, he said, “One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.”

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was alert and dressed for action. When Christ came to him that night at Evening Prayer, he was ready to carry out Christ’s command. What about us? Are we asleep or awake? Are we dressed in our scrubs or our pajamas? Is our pager turned on? Are we ready to receive Christ, ready to hear his call, ready to follow his bidding? Christ may not ask us to make the ultimate witness that he asked of Jonathan Daniels, but Christ does expect us to be ready to do our parts to help bring in God’s Kingdom. Are you willing to let him into your life? Are you willing to make space in your life for him? My friends, the good news is that Christ continually calls to us. Christ is continually present to us. If we remain alert, if we are “dressed for action,” he will transform us. He will give us the grace and strength to follow his commands and partner with him in the bringing in of his Kingdom.