“He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

Tenth Sermon on the Apostles’ Creed

Ordinary Time IV; January 29, 2006

Luke 12:42-48

One of many wonderful jobs I have had was in a hardware store. My boss, the owner of the store, was an elder in our church and was a hard-working and very fair man. He was getting close to retirement age, though, and he had hired a young man to be manager of the store. Milt’s idea was that he would train this fellow, then retire and let the manager run the business for him.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. By the time it happened, I was away at college and so didn’t see it first hand, but I learned later that, for whatever reason, Milt and Phyllis went back to work and the manager left. They never really retired, I don’t think, until they closed the store.

Readers of Dilbert like to make jokes about managers, but a lot depends on managers. Sometimes the owners of businesses can be present day-to-day and invest their own time and energy in the business. Often, though, they need managers to run things for them. Perhaps they retire, or there are multiple owners, or they own several businesses. And sometimes the business is simply too big, and each department or location needs its own management.

And so Jesus’ parable: he is away, no longer in the flesh running his church day-to-day, and he has left managers in charge. Among Presbyterians, those managers are called ministers of the Word and Sacrament, elders, and deacons. We work together, each with our own areas of responsibility, but working for one owner: the Lord Jesus Christ. A Church secretary I know once answered the phone; it was a salesman. He asked to speak to the owner of the business and she said, “This is a Church; God is the owner. You can talk to him any time you like.”

It’s a rather scary parable, isn’t it? He doesn’t say much about good managers – that’s another parable, actually – but is quite threatening of bad ones. Lazy managers, cruel managers – that is, ministers, elders and deacons who take advantage of the church, who abuse their office – are pretty severely punished in this parable.

As a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have to look for good news, even in a parable like this. How about this? If you don’t hear the Gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in this church, then you can blame me. Does that sound like good news to you?

There must be gospel – good news – in the warning that a day of accountability will come. This last phrase of the second article of the Apostles’ Creed is about Judgment Day: that Jesus Christ will come again “to judge the living and the dead.” Incidentally, this is one place that the Ecumenical Translation is superior to the one I memorized as a child; “from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” How often do you use the word “quick” to mean “alive”? That is what it used to mean. Nowadays judging between “the quick and the dead” refers to whether you get across 16^th Street.

The first bit of good news in this parable is the assumption that your work for the Kingdom matters. This applies not only to officers – ministers, elders and deacons – but everyone who does anything in the name of Christ. If you knit prayer shawls or sew bandages, if you usher, or if you cook for Faith, Food and Fellowship it is important work. The work Elders do in seeking the will of God for the church is important. The work Deacons do in caring for the sick, the needy and the friendless is important. The work ministers do in preaching the Gospel is important.

We make a mistake if we try to recruit people for work in the Church by downplaying it. “Oh, all you have to do is attend one two-hour meeting a month; it isn’t hard.” Is something that unimportant worth committing yourself to? Being called to office in the Presbyterian Church is significant; it means that God has chosen you to lead the people in the way of Christ. You’re not the minister’s appointee; you’re not a flunky; you are one of the managers, appointed by Christ to help feed his people.

When you help clean the Church kitchen, you can think you’re doing grunt work, and I suppose you are. There isn’t a lot of dignity in cleaning the kitchen. But you can also remember that Christianity is pretty heavily about food, so keeping the kitchen clean is a spiritual responsibility. If you are a greeter on Sunday morning you can think of yourself as a glad-hander, or – as I prefer to say – you can think of yourself as responsible for the ministry of welcome. What you do for the Kingdom of Christ matters.

A second piece of good news is that what we do for the Kingdom is to feed others on behalf of the one who feeds us. It is no accident that the job of the manager in Jesus’ parable is to make sure all the other workers get their daily allowance of food. When the Church appointed its first deacons (The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6), their job was to make sure the food was apportioned fairly among the widows. The food we give here can be, of course, literal; there’s nothing quite like a good church pot-luck. But the Bread of Life is the gift of Christ himself. It’s the chance to receive the Spirit of Christ that makes each day worth getting up for in the morning.

It’s easier for the minister to see it, I suppose. When I preach a sermon, I know that my job is to give folks the Bread of Life. When I stand in Jesus’ place at the Holy Table, I know that what I’m handling is the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. But that’s what all of us are about, isn’t it? The one we work for is the one who has given himself to us as the Bread of Life.

The elders and deacons were returning from making communion visits to shut-ins. One of them worked professionally in geriatrics, so she was used to visiting with older people. But she told me the communion visit was special; she said that in taking communion to someone she felt as though she had something real to offer. Since Christ feeds his people in his own Spirit, by his own sacrifice, with his own death and resurrection he cares about how we share the Bread of Life. The good news is we have something real to offer: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.

And I hope you take it as good news that Jesus promises to come again. It is scary – this parable is scary – and I tremble a bit when I think of standing before Christ and giving account of my life. He won’t have to judge me, I think; one look in his eyes and I will judge myself. So the good news is that he comes again for all, for the living and the dead, as Paul said in his letter that we read earlier in the service (I Thessalonians 4:13-18). He will come again to take us to himself, so that we will be together in him.

You can call me a spin-doctor, if you like, for taking this parable about cutting people and beating them and finding good news in it. It’s true that this parable is full of threats, but that’s only because the work they failed to do is work that matters. I’ll leave you to focus on the threats, if you like, especially if you tend to be a little lazy or self-serving about your work for the Kingdom of Christ and you feel the need to be threatened. I prefer for you to take heart, however, in the presumption that your work for the Kingdom actually matters, in the realization that our work is to give people the Bread of Life, and in the promise that Christ will come again.

Let us pray. Come to us, Lord Jesus, to judge and to bless. Give us the gifts we need to do your work, confidence in the Bread you share, and hope in your promises. Maranatha: Lord, quickly come. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa