I pastored a church in Illinois, right out of seminary. A fellow pastor in that presbytery served two congregations. Those of you who remember Rev. Swinney remember that sort of arrangement. This fellow pastor in Illinois was also a volunteer fireman. Did I say he was motivated? I never did ask him what happened when his pager went off during worship at one of his two churches. Maybe that never happened.

Firemen, police officers, EMTs, soldiers, sailors, musicians—always practicing. Even if you never were a fireman, soldier, or a musician, it’s not as if you aren’t familiar with practice. You had your school exercises—endless pages of multiplication and division, fractions, learning cursive, dependent and independent clauses, Spanish conjugations, and so on. If you played any sport, you had to practice. No, we didn’t exactly enjoy the drills. Maybe you just wanted to get right into the game, right into the fire, right into the recital.

Now, if you never practiced, how would the game go for you, the recital? If you never practiced, what sort of firefighter would you be? Even firefighters with hundreds of hours of experience, even athletes who have trained and trained, are still challenged, sometimes to their utmost—some succeed, and others still falter, still make a mistake. God-willing, they can learn from that. Mistakes and stumbles can be part of our training, too, if we have the heart and mind to accept responsibility and amend what needs amending. We will need help doing that.

Preparedness, proficiency. We don’t know when we will be called upon, so we must become ready to be called upon at any time. This is what Jesus is talking about. We are taught that Jesus could return at any time. That’s true. That shouldn’t be cause for fear, but rather cause for hope and joy: when Jesus returns, it will be to set everything right, to do perfect justice, and to bring us into the full glory of the kingdom, come.

He could return at any time. My sense is that it will not be soon: I’m not moved by the cable preachers with their charts and graphics, their allegories and countdown clocks. Whether Jesus will return soon or far into the future, beyond the lifetimes even of our great-grandchildren, really isn’t the point. The point is that we do not know when that day will be. This presents us with a choice: we can practice, expecting his return, living for his return, or we can goof off, mess around, and not concern ourselves about it.

It seems obvious that we would want to be practicing. Are we, though? Let’s not be anxious about our faith, our discipleship, or Christ’s promised return. Let’s not be nonchalant about these, either. Jesus tells his disciples that it is God’s pleasure, His will, His plan, His delight, His promise, to give us the kingdom (12:32). The kingdom will come. Christ will return. He will lead into His kingdom those who are prepared for it. Those who are not prepared for it have a less certain outcome to contend with.

Jesus has some advice for those expecting the kingdom: live focused on your wealth in heaven—store up treasure for yourselves there (12:33). Here, all things are perishable; there, your treasure is imperishable. There are times when Jesus seems to speak of our acts as treasure: when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe those who lack adequate clothing, open our homes to those who have no home, no shelter. I think he means these things personally and corporately. Organizations already do this work effectively, but not very personally. When you give food to a hungry person, when you, personally, bless the poor, you are connecting with that person, establishing a human point of contact between that person and the grace of God: this is a most Christ-like thing.

Our acts of blessing may be counted as treasure in heaven, but to my Reformed, Calvinist ear, that way of looking at what Jesus says doesn’t seem complete. What is our treasure? Our deeds? Are our deeds our most precious possession? No, surely not. Love? Is our love our most precious possession? We want to say yes right away, but the answer is still no. We love all sorts of things, people, but we might not love them in just the right way, for the right reasons.  We have to practice love, too. Isn’t that strange!? Surely love just comes naturally? Beloved, does love require no work? Infatuated love, fickle love, doesn’t. Love that is infatuated and fickle isn’t really love. Does love require no practice? Where do we go, to whom do we turn, to learn how to love? God, Jesus. So is our treasure love, or the one who truly shows us how to love truly?

When Jesus tells us to focus on our wealth, our treasure in heaven, I suspect he means God: focus your lives upon God, rely fully upon God, bank upon Him, your true and only treasure, your true and only wealth, imperishable in heaven, who has promised the kingdom to those who have prepared themselves by practicing love for—for whom, others? That’s important, but we can love others in all sorts of wrong and imperfect ways. We can. We do. No—the kingdom comes to those who have prepared themselves by practicing love for God.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (12:34). True, that. What is your treasure? Your life? Your spouse—no, that couldn’t be! Your children? Your career? Your accomplishments? We can take pleasure in all of these; that’s not wrong, but don’t get so wrapped up in any of them that you begin to lose sight of God, lose touch with God, God’s Word, God’s call and claim upon you who have claimed Jesus Christ.

We lose sight, lose touch, when we cease to practice love for God. We grow complacent—Jesus loves me, this I know, and that’s all I need to know. If that’s as far as your faith goes, I have to tell you it hasn’t gone very far. Jesus forgives and Jesus will always forgive. If that’s the sum of your knowledge of the faith, I have to tell you, for your own good, that your knowledge hasn’t gone very far. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but,” what does Jesus say? How does he conclude that very significant sentence? “But only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7:21). Elsewhere, he asks, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” (Lk 6:46).

When the alarm comes at the firehouse, what happens depends in large part upon how well the firefighters have been trained, which is to say, it depends on how often and how seriously they practice. How seriously and how often they practice has a lot to do with how much they want to be good firefighters.

Another illustration—It’s 9:50 p.m. The restaurant has been slow all day: dead, really. The four servers are joking, talking, checking their phones, not really paying attention to the dining area: no one is there, and the restaurant is just about to close for the night. The host is already closing out the register; the busboy is sneaking a piece of cake from the cooler; the chef is having a cigarette out back; the dishwasher is calling out for somebody to tell him whether it’s time to go.

One of the servers decides she might as well start getting the glasses off the table. She asks one of her fellow servers if he’d get the napkins and silverware picked up. They’re in the midst of this when a customer comes in. Somebody could get a tip tonight, after all! The host is irritated: he just closed out the register. So, he takes his time acknowledging the customer. If the host were just rude enough, the customer might leave, which would make the host’s life easier. But the customer comes up to the host and asks to be seated. Well, in that case!

Which of the servers will get the table? Each of them is sort of hoping it won’t be him, won’t be her: they’re ready to go; it’s time to hit the bars, have some drinks, some cigarettes, some jokes and innuendo before they stagger off for the night. The host seats the customer at the table of the server he likes the least: a little punishment. Where’s that busboy? They catch him with a mouthful of cake, again! Pour some water into the customer’s glass, you good for nothing thief! Sullen, he goes, spills some water as he pours, doesn’t apologize or even try to blot the spill. The chef has to get called back in. He was in the middle of a call to one of his lady friends: now his plans for the night are ruined. The order comes in; the chef throws it together, throws it on a plate, and calls out, a little too loudly, “Order up!” He can be heard out in the dining area. As the server brings the plate to the table, she looks at her watch and asks if the customer will have anything else, before he’s even had a bite of what he ordered. She stops by a couple minutes later with the check.

The next day, at the start of the dinner service, that same customer comes back. He introduces himself. He’s the owner. He had flown in last night. Now, he wants to share some of his thoughts.

Readiness. Even if it is quite late, readiness: alert, watchful, prompt.

Jesus urges, encourages us, to be ready, prompt, prepared. He speaks of a thief who’s going to come (12:39). What’s that about? Is Jesus a thief? No. Different scenario, same message: preparedness, readiness, watchfulness. But if we aren’t ready, aren’t watchful, if we aren’t prepared, a thief may indeed come and plunder our treasure, what we regarded as our treasure, anyway. Sin comes, prowling, prodding, probing. Of course, we don’t want sin to break in and plunder us! Then we let sin in—well, it gets in . . . somehow! And sin plunders us.

We either make a habit of practicing sin, or, by grace through the power of the Spirit, we grow in the habit of practicing love for God. How do we practice this? Your being here, as regularly as you are able, is one of the best ways to practice this love for God. Worship forms us, supports us. My hope is that we are mature enough in the faith to know that worship is not about us. Worship is what we give to God, where we glorify God through our prayer, through our song, and through our celebration of the Word and the Sacraments. We are here to do something, give something, for God. We also know that, yes, we are looking for something in worship: something to help us leave with a feeling, a thought, something to hold on to, maybe to share, to ponder, to wrestle with, something for which we may give thanks to God later in the week. We are called to give, and we want to get, too. We’re all human, here.

Worship is a main way in which we put our love for God into practice. Self-examination and prayer—this is another way. Making regular time for God’s Word, to get into it, hear it, and to be shaped in God’s Word—this is yet another way to practice love for God. You know other ways, too, but have you been availing yourselves? Have you been practicing those ways? Preparedness, proficiency, and prayer, in Christ, through the ability of the Holy Spirit, who accomplishes in us what we cannot accomplish by ourselves.

Beloved, it’s about living like you want to get there.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.