Homily for Tuesday 20 October 2026

Luke 12:35-38

Dressed for action.

This morning we are hearing about what many call “the end times”. That phrase can be quite loaded for some people, and I appreciate the baggage it carries. But our Lord speaks about it with really only one focus in mind. He is never concerned about the specific details of the end times themselves; rather, he wants us to be thinking about how he will find us when it does happen.

Be dressed, ready for action, like men waiting for their master. Think of Bruce Wayne, when he has spent the night out in Gotham as Batman, busting drug rings and bashing heads. He comes home to Wayne Manor in the early hours, and Alfred the butler is faithfully waiting there in his waistcoat and tails, with a silver plate and a cup of hot coca waiting at the front door.

Imagine if Alfred were not the faithful butler, ever ready to serve Bruce Wayne. Batman just wouldn’t be quite right without him. And yet we are ready to skive off on our duties to our Master, the Lord Jesus!

The Lord will return at a time that only the Father knows. The end times are not for us to try and predict. We are instead to be like faithful Alfred, dressed and ready to serve the Lord when he does return. To be dressed ready for Christ's return is to be “in Christ”, as the apostle puts it: to “put on Christ”. When he returns, where will he find us? What will he find us doing? In what way will he find us thinking? Will we see him return and say “just a moment Lord, I need to finish with this first”?

Let us always be ready for the Lord’s return. It is at an hour no-one knows, and on top of that, an hour no-one will expect. So let us be the servants dressed and ready for our Master’s return. Because look at what will happen to those who are:

Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.

It is a light thing for us to be Christ’s servants now, for when he returns, he will serve us! Batman will come home, and get Alfred to put on the comfy slippers and sip on some hot cocoa! As our Lord himself says elsewhere, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Our Master is a good Master. When he returns, if he finds us dressed and ready for him, he will have us recline at the table and he will wait on us – this is the picture of the heavenly banquet we have to look forward to.

So take off those filthy rags of self-righteousness, and put on Christ, and put him on in everything you do, the big things and the little things, so that when he returns he will find you dressed and ready for action – dressed and ready to be served by God himself.