I heard some advice that if you can get something done in two minutes or less, then do it.  Don’t put off until mañana what you can do today.  In some parts of the world, though, it seems everything happens mañana.  Little Orphan Annie sang hopefully about tomorrow only being a day away: mañana is always mañana away.  If you remember, the Spanish word for tomorrow is mañana.  You might be surprised, as I was, to learn that “it actually means ‘NOT today.’”[1]  “Not today” is not quite the same as “tomorrow.”  When you’ve asked for something to be done, and you’re told in reply that it shall be done mañana, you’re going to need to consider that carefully.  As one source puts it, “Reading between the lines, when you ask a Spaniard to do something for you and they say Manana [sic], what they actually mean is ‘What you asked me to do is not important (to me) and I’ll get around to it when I can be bothered.”[2]  And in these busy times, who can be bothered?

It all depends on who is doing the asking and who the answering.  Don’t put off until mañana what you can do today takes on a different aspect when God is in the mix.  Maybe not for those who assign no value to God and rarely if ever think of God, but for those who have a true relationship with God, there is no good reason to put off until some other time what can, what should, be done for Jesus now.  Does that sound like a recipe for constant exhaustion?  Only keep in mind that doing a disciple’s work becomes a joy the more the disciple makes it his or her way of life; disciple living is no burden, though it is a habit that must be formed by ongoing practice, ongoing reflection, and ongoing prayer.  Discipleship is meant for inextinguishable joy.  What can you be doing for Jesus now?  How can you be living for Jesus, right now?

“Be dressed ready for service” (12:35).  This robe I’m wearing is not the uniform of Christian service.  In the days of the Reformation, scholars and teachers wore robes like this to keep themselves warm—rooms were colder and draftier, five hundred years ago.  Glass windows became common only about three hundred years ago.  I’m wearing the costume of a teacher—I hope it’s not all playacting!  There is no uniform of Christian service, there is only Christ, whom Paul encourages every disciple to put on.  To dress ourselves with Christ is to emulate his example: to walk a mile in his shoes is to stop for the one, remembering that love looks like something.  To take the name of Jesus with us is to be in his character in every situation of our lives: outside, inside, among others and alone.  Christ was always ready for service, even when it seemed he would have every reason to feel put out by it, inconvenienced.  Just consider how tired he must have been—talk about a full schedule!  Jesus saw the need, knew he could do something to help, and helped.

Yes, the need is acute and ongoing.  You and I aren’t being asked to fill all need at all times everywhere for everyone.  We are asked to become aware of the need around us and do what God makes the way open for us to do.  We can buy some cereal and mac and cheese so some children in our community needn’t go without breakfast or lunch for the week before Thanksgiving; maybe we can even bless them with a surplus.  We can get a few things together for the orphans, foster children, and at-risk children under the care of Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services, so that they can know some Christmas cheer, too: so that they can know, see, that people who don’t even know them care about them.  We can’t do everything for everyone; we can each do something for someone, including those not here this morning.

Let us remember that the key need everywhere for everyone always is need for Christ Jesus.  We’re sharing him with one another here right now, praise God!  How can we share him with those not here?  Beloved, Jesus went out to let others know; he sent his own out to let others know.  How are we going to let others know?  This isn’t optional.  It’s not just a nice add-on to an already content Christian life.

“Keep your lamps burning” (12:35).  We can be dressed but we can’t really be ready without light by which to see.  Would you load or unload the dishwasher in the dark?  Or split firewood?  How about sewing without light, or putting an addition on the house at night?  No, obviously not.  In the same way, disciples cannot serve without light by which to serve.

So, we need to keep our lamps burning.  God gives light.  Where?  In our hearts?  Maybe, but our hearts can be factories of falsehood as well as thrones for God.  No, that’s not a fun thought, but I hope you can take a look inside your heart, too, and see that there is indeed truth in what I’m saying.  A darkened lamp is no help.  In biblical times, the lamps were oil lamps.  Light required oil and fire.  In the Bible, those are often signs of the Spirit.  We keep our lamps burning by having the oil and fire of the Spirit with us: don’t lose the Spirit!  Can a Christ follower lose the Spirit?  Yes.  When that one takes a way that isn’t Christ.

So, emulate Christ; hold onto the Spirit who is guiding us in Christ’s way; do as the Spirit prompts and urges you, remembering that the Holy Spirit will never urge you to do what is not in keeping with God’s Word.  To emulate Christ and hold onto the Spirit, then, keep yourselves in God’s Word.  Are you reading the Bible, even if only a bit, each day?  You know that you can do it on your phone?  You know that you can even listen to someone else read the Bible to you, through these horrible, wonderful gadgets?  You can listen to a lot of good preaching on KHCB.  Get some of the good old hymns and some of the best praise songs on your playlists.

We are to be “like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet” (12:36).  He will return.  We are his servants.  Servants serve.  Servants serve their master.  Some servants can be slow to serve: mañana servants.  Others are quick to serve, waiting with eager expectation, “so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him” (12:36).  Behold, he stands at the door.  There is an old English comedy.  In the film, one of the characters is a very old butler—really old.  A visitor who has been away many years knocks on the door.  The butler goes to open the door, and goes, and goes, and . . . well, you get it.  Anyway, the butler finally gets to the door, opens it, and the visitor, who has been away many years, says, “How long has it been?”  The butler responds, “I came as quickly as I could.”

Let’s try to keep a little closer to the door than that poor old butler.  The door is the heart.  We open the door to let the light in, the fresh air, the Spirit; we open the door and we serve, immediately, like second nature: carefully, prayerfully cultivated habit.

“It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes” (12:37).  The servants can be watching for their master, eagerly, ready, or they can be doing other things.  There are many other things we could be doing: just look around at what everyone else seems to be doing elsewhere today, and having so much fun doing it, too!  Let us, however, be mindful of our faithfulness to our master, our Father in heaven, our Lord and friend, our guide and comforter.

When Jesus returns, as our faith teaches us he certainly will, how would you want him to find you?  How would you not want him to find you?  Which way are we living?  There will be a reward for those whom Jesus finds ready, serving, waiting faithfully, prayerfully, alight with the Word and a light for their fellow servants and neighbors.  “Truly I tell you, [our master] will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them” (12:37).  Have you ever considered what it means that, here, the bread and juice come to you?  In many churches, you must go up to receive it from the hand of the minister or priest.  The Presbyterian way has for long been that the bread and the juice are brought to you, right where you are.  This is a beautiful thing.

Jesus tells us, in all seriousness and also joyfully, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak” (12:38).  There are times during our day when we are most likely to be least attentive.  Some of you are morning people and some are night owls.  I’m good from about 7 until lunch; after lunch gets iffy, and by about 4, I’m done.  We get distracted; we get worn out.  We need sleep, and God gives the blessing of sleep; some of us pray for the blessing of a good night’s sleep—it can be so difficult to come by, some nights!  Jesus isn’t telling us that disciples must never sleep.  Jesus enjoyed sleeping—he needed his sleep, too—just remember him asleep at the back of the boat in the middle of the storm: how exhausted he must have been.  But when he was awoken, he doesn’t say, oh, go away, let me sleep.  He said, I’m awake; how can I help.  Jesus is saying don’t be as those who will be so surprised, shocked, unprepared, when he returns and knocks.  Don’t be as those who grow tired of waiting, and turn to other, more interesting things, just little diversions, little amusements.

Have you ever missed an appointment because you got caught up in some project and lost track of the time, even though you woke that morning remembering that the appointment was for that day at such and such a time?  One T-Rex says to another, as the door of the ark is being closed, “Oh (cuss word), was that today?”  Jesus speaks of his return as something about which there can be no mistake, yet how many will miss it completely?  So long as we keep ourselves dressed in Christ and ready for service, with our lamps lit and ready to open the door so soon as we hear the knock upon it, we will have done what Jesus asks of us.  We won’t be surprised or caught off guard.  That’s for people who no longer care, who don’t believe, who aren’t paying attention to God or to others around them whose hearts are crying for Christ.  It can feel like those ones are hard to find, hard to see, but Jesus will lead you to them, and lead them to you.

Readiness, preparedness—when you are living your discipleship rather than mostly talking about it or considering it from a critical distance, you will be ready; the Spirit is with us to keep us prepared; God’s Word is for readying us.  “But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into” (12:39).  What does a thief do to the inside of a house, a business, or a church?  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (Jn 10:10).  He makes a terrible mess, a wreck of it: breaks things, tumbles things everywhere, without regard to what any of it might mean to you—your keepsakes ruined, broken, or stolen.  Oh, if only we had locked that door, closed that window, left the radio on or a light!

We don’t know the hour.  That’s the thief’s advantage.  Oh, if only.  Our advantage is preparedness, acting in the certainty that the thief will prowl.  What will he find: opportunity, or too much risk?  Preparedness or loss; readiness or disaster.  “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (12:40).  So, Jesus is a thief?  No, no.  Be prepared.  Because one of two will come, Jesus or the thief.  To be prepared for both is to be prepared indeed.  To be prepared for neither is to be . . . well, is to be left sorrowful and forlorn.

Christians can’t afford to be mañana people.  There are no mañana disciples: the mañana disciple is telling the master, “What you asked me to do is not important to me, and I’ll get around to it when I can be bothered.”  Our master, finding us ready for Him, “will dress himself to serve [and] will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them.”

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

               [1] https://www.answers.com/other-arts/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_Spanish_word_manyana

               [2] See above.