Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

How long does it take to get ready for visitors coming over for dinner? Well, it depends on the state of the house and if you are worried about what the visitors think. There may be a lot of cleaning to do, or clearing out some clutter to make room. Perhaps you have to pick up your toys and help to vacuum the floor. And how long does it take you to get ready? That might depend on what kind of a day you have had and where you were. You may need a bath or a shave. You may just need to change your clothes, but it could take a long time to find just the right thing to wear.

 

Jesus was coming to visit Jerusalem. How long did it take the people to get ready? How long did it take to find the donkey and bring it to Jesus? While the Gospel reading tells us that Jesus said they would find the donkey “immediately” (Matthew 21:2), it also tells us that this moment was being prepared more than 400 years ago when the prophet Zechariah prophesied, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). In truth, the Bible tells us that the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem to be humbly crucified for our salvation, was being planned before the foundation of the world. That gives people a long time to get things ready.

 

Were the people ready for the coming of Jesus? The Gospel reading seems to suggest that they felt they needed to make some special preparations on the fly. “Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matthew 21:8). They hadn’t swept the street or rolled out the red carpet in advance. So they made due with what as at hand. Maybe they weren’t all that prepared? Are you?

 

How long will take until you are ready for Jesus’ coming? What needs to be done? Are there things you need to put away? Are there things that should be set out that you haven’t had time to put in their proper place? Do you need to take a bath, change your clothes, perhaps undergo a spiritual deep clean?

 

One famous Christian recognized that it took 33 years for him to be ready for Jesus to come to him, even though preparations had been ongoing before he was aware of them. St. Augustine lived in the 4th century, about the time the Nicene Creed was formulated. Although his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian woman, Augustine was no saint in his youth. In his “Confessions” he confesses to God that he used to look for trouble and be upset if he missed an opportunity to do something naughty with his friends. And as he grew older it only became worse.

 

He enjoyed getting drunk at parties and engaging in all kinds of sexual activity. He stole things from his neighbours and cheated in his schoolwork. He had a child outside of marriage and although he claims to have loved him, he didn’t hang around to help raise the boy. He wasn’t much concerned for other people at all. He knew that his mother longed for him to embrace the Christian faith, but Augustine was more concerned with his reputation of being a philosopher, and he went wherever he thought that further study would make him more famous. Perhaps there are some things in his life that are similar to your own.

 

But when he was in his thirties, Augustine began to be troubled about what he had done with his life. He remembered the horrible things he had done to other people. He saw how he lived without a care for anyone else. He also realized that this was no one’s fault but his own, and that it was a problem with his very nature. He wanted to escape it and to be a good man, but found himself powerless to do so. He slipped into a deep depression and went away to a country house to spend some reflective time with a friend named Alypius.

 

This is what Augustine later wrote to God about wanting to stop his sinful ways and yet not thinking he could:

26. The very toys of toys, and vanities of vanities, my old mistresses, still enthralled me; they shook my fleshly garment, and whispered softly, “Do you part with us? And from that moment shall we no more be with you for ever? And from that moment shall not this or that be lawful for you for ever?” And what did they suggest to me in the words this or that? What is it that they suggested, O my God? Let Your mercy avert it from the soul of Your servant. What impurities did they suggest! What shame!

 

And now I far less than half heard them, not openly showing themselves and contradicting me, but muttering, as it were, behind my back, and furtively plucking me as I was departing, to make me look back upon them. Yet they did delay me, so that I hesitated to burst and shake myself free from them, and to leap over whither I was called — an unruly habit saying to me, “Do you think you can live without them?” Confessions. Book IX. Chapter 26.

 

How long would it take for Augustine to be ready for the Lord to come to him? Was there to be further delay while he continued to struggle to give up the addiction of his sins?

28. But when a profound reflection had, from the secret depths of my soul, drawn together and heaped up all my misery before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by as mighty a shower of tears. Which, that I might pour forth fully, with its natural expressions, I stole away from Alypius; for it suggested itself to me that solitude was fitter for the business of weeping. So I retired to such a distance that even his presence could not be oppressive to me. Thus was it with me at that time, and he perceived it; for something, I believe, I had spoken, wherein the sound of my voice appeared choked with weeping, and in that state had I risen up. He then remained where we had been sitting, most completely astonished.

 

I flung myself down, how, I know not, under a certain fig-tree, giving free course to my tears, and the streams of my eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice unto You. 1 Peter 2:5 And, not indeed in these words, yet to this effect, spoke I much unto You —But You, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Will You be angry for ever? Oh, remember not against us former iniquities; for I felt that I was enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries —How long, how long? Tomorrow, and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness?

 

As Augustine wondered how long, he didn’t realize that was the very moment.

29. I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighbouring house, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; take up and read.” Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like.

 

So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it no other way than as a command to me from Heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon....

 

So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I put down the volume of the apostles, when I rose thence. I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell

[the very words from our Epistle reading today]

—Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the  lusts  thereof.  Romans 13:13-14 No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended — by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart — all the gloom of  doubt  vanished away. Confessions. Book IX. 28-29

 

This revelation from our Epistle proclaimed to St. Augustine the grace of God granting conversion for salvation. This one moment of his conversion consisted of more than the time it took to read the last two verses of our Epistle reading. The preparation for the coming of Jesus for Augustine was made up of 33 years of God responding to the prayers of his mother, Monica.

 

And so it was that Augustine was baptized at the following Easter having been instructed by St. Ambrose. He put off his former way of life and put on Jesus Christ, not living a perfect life but a life of repentance and forgiveness whereby he became one of the greatest Christian theologians, the bishop of the city of Hippo, and a father of the Church, whose written contributions are still of immense value for us today.

 

So how long did it take? How long was Augustine crying in the garden? How long was he struggling with the sins of his past? How long did he continue to struggle with temptations to those old ways of darkness? It took until Christ came. He was not ready until Jesus’ coming for him. How long did it take for the people in Jerusalem, who put off their garments, to place them on the donkey and on the road? The apostles had been with Him for three years, and still they would not comprehend until after He had risen from the dead.

 

How long is it taking for you to put off the works of darkness and throw them into the street to be trampled by the coming Christ? How long is it taking for you to place the garment of your will under the seat of Christ as He comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey?

 

It takes as long as the coming of Christ, because it is He who accomplishes it in you. He is the one who takes away your sins and fills you with His holiness. He came to you at your Baptism, washing away the filth of your wickedness, even cleansing you within from the desires of the flesh. “For as many of you who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27).

 

He has already come to you through baptism and He is preparing you for His coming again. He is placing within you that contrition to cast off the filthy rags of your sin and to be renewed by the absolution He purchased for you through His coming to the cross. It is in the power of your baptism that you are prepared for His coming to take you home—putting off the old self with its sins and desires of the flesh and putting on Christ, the one who loves His neighbour as Himself, who gave Himself to save you.

 

He has come to you in answer to the prayers of your parents and grandparents and godparents. He has come to you in the Word that has been read to you and that you have taken up and read in response to a relentless prompting through the childlike chanting of the Holy Spirit. Christ has come to you in His body and blood so that not only may you clothe yourself with Him outwardly, but be filled with Him inwardly.

 

“The hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation—the Saviour, Jesus—is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone and the day is at hand.” (Romans 13:11-12). Christ is coming. This is it. Jesus is coming for you today.

 

He comes to cover you with His armour so that you are defended from the fiery darts of temptation to your former way of life, to guard and keep you from “orgies and drunkenness,” from “sexual immorality and sensuality,” from “quarrelling and jealousy” (13:13). We wish these things were not a part of our past and at the same time we wonder how we might live without them—only in the way that was revealed to St. Augustine as it was to the apostles and to all disciples of Jesus, to all those for whom Jesus has come and taken them out of this great tribulation. It all happens in a moment, over the span of your lifetime, from before the foundation of the world, as Jesus comes (our humble king) to give us His victory.