Jesus tells us this morning: “Be
sure of this, if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into. You too must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Vigilance,
preparedness, indeed, but with a twist.
In a
sort of coded language, Jesus seems to be dropping some clues about how he
operates and how he understands
himself - perhaps as a bit of a sneak, even a thief. Literally in this passage having
your house being broken into means having it burrowed through. In the Palestine of Jesus’ day, walls were made of mud bricks, and to break in all a thief had to do
was dig through the wall. Perhaps the Son of Man, is like a
thief sneaking around in the night, just outside and trying to burrow through the
walls of our resistance and fear, the thick wall of our supposed self-sufficiency.
That’s hard stuff alright, and Mercy wants to dig right through, invade our
space and suffuse it with his gracious presence. The Son
of Man has come to dismantle all barriers to God’s tender mercy.
What
is more, his coming is not only a verb in the future tense but a verb in the
continuous present, a present reality. The Son of Man is always coming, trying
to break through if we will only come to greater awareness of his desire.
Remember he is the One who tells us, “Behold, I am coming soon,” while insisting
at the same time, “I am with you always.” Life in the kingdom means living in
that reality. And if, as we believe, the kingdom will come to fullness in the
age to come, Jesus’ plea is for us to believe and live with the realization that
it is happening even now and that it can flourish with our cooperation. The “unexpected
hour” we await is now.