1. 16:15 (Look! I will come like a thief!
Blessed is the one who stays alert and does not lose his clothes so that he will not have to walk around naked and his shameful condition be seen.)
The first part of this verse again brings to mind the words of our Lord as recorded in the Gospels when he was warning his disciples about things to come, including what the world would go through before his final return, his Second Coming (e.g., Matt. 24:42-44).
It scarcely needs to be said, but Christ’s Second Coming, which is what the first part of this verse refers to, is going to be a major event. As I write this, our world is going through a coronavirus pandemic. For many, this has become the end of the world as we know it. Indeed, nothing most of us have ever experienced compares to it. For some, or in some ways, it is the end of the world as we have known it. However, Jesus’ return won’t only increase our anxiety, as a pandemic or the unexpected coming of a thief can do. It will be the end of the world as we know it.
This verse, the warning and the beatitude, is bracketed. One has to wonder why. The most reasonable explanation is that this is the voice of Jesus himself interjecting into the messages John is receiving from angels. The imagery of Jesus’ coming like a thief might seem unusual. Jesus is no thief! Of course, it is a figure of speech to make us think about what Jesus’ coming will be like. At the same time, the content of the preceding and immediately following text, is such that Jesus himself wants to get across to us the gravity of the situation being described
The imagery of Jesus’ coming as occurring like the unexpected intrusion of a thief can be traced back to the gospels where Jesus refers to his Second Coming (Matt. 24:43, Luke 12:39. The Apostles Paul (I Thess. 5:2) and Peter also then use this imagery (II Pet. 3:10). Indeed, Jesus himself used this expression in his address to the church in Sardis (Rev. 3:3).
We can say three things about this:
1) We don’t know when a thief might come. So, what do we do? We might take measures to safeguard our more prized possessions, such as locking them up in a safer place in our home. We might have locking
windows and we might lock our doors, especially if we are home alone or at night when we are sleeping. We leave most of our money in a bank, or even put some of our valuables in a safety deposit box at home or in a bank or similar place we think is more secure. Many of us even alarm our homes and apartments, sometimes with direct communication with a security firm we pay to keep an eye on the alarm system.
But what does that way about most of us. Are we excessively are concerned about our possessions, our ‘earthly goods,’ as we sometimes say? Too many of us in our Western society at least, really have too much, and become too concerned about it. There is a truism about life that the more you have, the more you are concerned about what you have. Indeed, it has been also shown that in too many instances, the more we have, the less we give! Some of us who have more personal contact with the less fortunate, or find ourselves among those society would consider such, know from experience that the poorer tend to share a lot more than the wealthy. What a sad comment on what happens to us when we succumb to the lure of success, wealth and possessions. My father, who spent 25 years working among Canada’s indigenous citizens used to talk about their freely sharing what they had with their neighbours. Indeed, we know – or should - that many of our indigenous neighbours are still among the poorer in our society, thanks to some of our laws and our continued discrimination when it comes to things like giving them a job or a place to live.
2) So, perhaps Jesus is saying in a subtle way – for many of us, His coming might be as unwelcome as that of a thief. We are so caught up in the affairs of our daily lives, our world, that we don’t pay attention to what
Jesus might have to say to us about being really prepared for his coming. Have we made preparations for his coming? How do we prepare?
We do not prepare by spending hours and time listening to speakers, reading books, going to so-called prophecy conventions about detailed predictions of when Jesus will return. Jesus himself was very clear that this was not to be our focus. Read Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, and especially Luke’s record of what Jesus said before he returned to heaven in Act’s 1:6-8. What did Jesus say in these passages. He clearly said ‘the times and the seasons’ of his return were not to be our concern. What Jesus said in the gospels is that we are to pray that we will have the strength to endure whatever might come in our lives prior to Christ’s return. Our concern is to stay awake, like a homeowner who really does not want to be caught off guard by a thief. What he says in Acts is that it is our job to go out and spread the gospel so that others can learn to be prepared for Jesus coming. Those are our tasks in this age.
3) Fortunately, most of us never experience the unexpected arrival of a thief in our homes, which is what this is really referring to. But what happens if we do? What is it like to experience the arrival of ‘a thief in the
night,’ or any other unexpected time for that matter? If this has happened to you, as it has to us, it can be quite traumatic. Our home was one broken into when we were away at work and the children at school during the day. Even then, some of us experienced a feeling of disease for some time. There is a feeling that the place you most feel at home and comfortable in, where you thought you were most secure, has been violated. Your life is not the same. Depending on the violence of the situation, where there might have been not just a break-in but an assault or worse, some even go through what we nowadays call post-traumatic stress. For those who are already prone to be anxious, this can tip the scales into a clinical situation (as a retired psychiatrist, I know about these things). In other words, this a majorly intrusive event.
The good part, the blessing, the beatitude is this. In the first place, we can be better prepared for Jesus’ coming than we can be for the arrival of a thief. I have already mentioned briefly what Jesus said we ought to be occupying ourselves with. Indeed, one could say all of his teachings and all of the rest of the New Testament tell us how to be prepared for Christ’s coming. We prepare in what we believe, in having faith and in how we live. The faith we need is that Christ’s death has removed the barrier to our being able to experience eternal life with Jesus in the new or re-created world to come. It is believing that his resurrection illustrates the power of God to raise us to life after our death too. The how-we-live part is summarized succinctly by Jesus himself when he talks of the questions at the final judgment on our lives being - Did you feed the poor? Did you give a cup of cold water to the thirsty ‘least-of-these’? Did you welcome the stranger? Did you clothe the naked? Did you take care of the sick? Did you visit people in prison?
I have really already dealt somewhat with the second part of this verse in The Joy of Revelation III – Messages to the Churches, which was posted to my blog January 26, 2020.
Do we know when a thief will come? Not likely. The second part of this verse is really telling us that we should stay alert, but not to the extreme of losing our clothes. Those reading this might well have understood first the symbolic meaning of this phrase. It refers to losing the white robes always described when the faithful are seen in heaven, before the throne. The white robe, always the sign of purity, was the mark of the one who had overcome, who was victorious. There is judgment and punishment for those who outright reject Jesus or who do not live as best they know how with the knowledge they have. This last would have been the case with everyone before Jesus’ own first coming. But the loss and shame will be even greater for those who have known Christ, but then turned their backs on him. Those who denied him under persecution, of which was a risk in the time of John’s writing when Rome was persecuting the Christians to the point of death. They would lose these clothes if they were led astray, if they fell away from following the true gospel, maintaining their allegiance to Christ alone. They would not wear the white robe of the victorious. They would not be seen among the throngs John sees in his visions of heaven.
There can be further meaning here too. We are not to give up everything and just sit around waiting for Christ’s return. We are to keep our clothes on and continue to live as our Master taught. We have work to do while we are on earth. We will also be shamed if we neglect that. We are not to just lounge around undressed, living the life of ease. But what a reward if we stand firm and do the good works God has prepared “beforehand to be the way of life” of us who believe (Ephes. 2:10)!
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