19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel – Luke 12: 32-48

Be Prepared!

Zucchini Bread

Growing up in the rural farmland of Southern Maryland, we never had the chance to join the Boy Scouts.  So we never specifically learned the motto – Be Prepared!  We were 4H kids through and through, learning to be good citizens and learning how to grow and cultivate potatoes and Japanese yews, for example.  I can still remember harvesting our little plot of potatoes and then the joy of ‘selling’ them to my Dad for him to sell in his country store.  After he subtracted the original cost of the seeds, fertilizer, and a few other things, my brother and I earned a whole 25 cents each.  Of course, we immediately spent it on candy/ice cream in the store!  Wow!

Granted that wasn’t much of a profit but there were plenty of lessons learned, not the least of which was all the time and effort necessary to produce a crop - the daily care and weeding, and the tilling of the soil.  It wasn’t just throwing some seeds in the ground and waiting for things to happen.  It was a lot of preparation and effort just to reach the “harvest”.  You had to prepare and be prepared (even if we weren’t Boy Scouts).

Even when Ginger and I had our little backyard garden in Chicago, it was never as simple as pick the zucchini and then bread magically appeared! I still had a lot to prepare in order to turn those zucchinis into zucchini bread.  Shopping for enough flour and sugar, loaf pans, eggs, oil, cinnamon, vanilla extract etc!  And then all the prep work of shredding the zucchini before I could even begin mixing all the ingredients together.  And then all the after-work of cooling the loaves, wrapping them in foil and loading them all into the freezer.    A good reminder that nothing really happens by accident!  It all takes time and preparation.  For those interested, my best harvest ever was back in 2022– 25 zucchini from the garden turned into 53 loaves, along with a few other assorted zucchini creations, many of them going to a fundraiser we had for “Brendan Brave.”

And that is what Jesus is addressing in today’s Gospel – be prepared!  Be prepared for the Kingdom, for the Master.  You can’t just sit around and then suddenly rush in a flurry of activity when the Master suddenly shows up.  We need to approach every day as a day of preparation. 

Jesus makes it very clear – this is work and it is daily work.  Gird your loins!  Not an expression most of us are familiar with but very appropriate here.  Literally it means something like hiking up your pants, tightening your belt, rolling up your sleeves, and getting to work!  I keep getting this image of “buckle up, buttercup, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”  Being prepared is NOT a part-time job!  Neither is being a Christian!  Face it, you never know when another zucchini will be ready for picking. 

We all have work to do TODAY and every day to prepare for the Kingdom.  So let’s get to it!  Zucchini bread doesn’t just magically appear!