Y'all Ready for This?

By Steve Leininger

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071120.cfm
Isaiah 6:1-8
Matthew 10:24-33

Picture yourself attending a professional basketball game. You’ve been watching the crowd, the pre-game antics of the team mascots, and the hustle and bustle of the camera crews getting into position. Clouds roll out onto the arena floor from the fog machines as the lights fade to black. Clap clap clap clap – you join in with 20 thousand other fans. Colored lights pierce the fog, sweeping across the floor up into the stands and back around to the floor. The music starts* – hard driving synthesizer chords. The players enter the arena, hard driving to take spectacular hoop shots. Eight measures into the song the music stops a moment before continuing. “Y’all ready for this?” The beginning of another epic game!

Cecil B. DeMille was an icon of Hollywood movie production, including The Ten Commandments in 1956. DeMille is the subject of many Hollywood legends. According to one famous story, DeMille once directed a film that required a huge, expensive battle scene. Filming on location in a California valley, the director set up multiple cameras to capture the action from every angle. It was a sequence that could only be done once. When DeMille shouted "Action!", thousands of extras playing soldiers stormed across the field, firing their guns. Riders on horseback galloped over the hills. Cannons fired, pyrotechnic explosives were blown up, and battle towers loaded with soldiers came toppling down. The whole sequence went off perfectly. At the end of the scene, DeMille shouted "Cut!". He was then informed, to his horror, that three of the four cameras recording the battle sequence had failed. In Camera #1, the film had broken. Camera #2 had missed shooting the sequence when a dirt clod was kicked into the lens by a horse's hoof. Camera #3 had been destroyed when a battle tower had fallen on it. DeMille was at his wit's end when he suddenly remembered that he still had Camera #4, which he had had placed along with a cameraman on a nearby hill to get a long shot of the battle sequence. DeMille grabbed his megaphone and called up to the cameraman, "Did you get all that?" The cameraman on the hill waved and shouted back, "Ready when you are, C.B.!".

Readiness is a common theme here in the mountains above Colorado Springs. Most of us are ready to evacuate on short notice if we are told to do so if a wildfire threatens. When we go shopping “in these difficult times”, we make sure we have our shopping list AND our facemask. To go to church, we need to be ready by reserving a seat ahead of time, due to limited seating availability. In my “stay at home” world, I have been cleaning out the garage. This is made easier by sorting random stuff into organized piles of stuff in the driveway. But I have found I need to be ready for that sudden afternoon thunderstorm and plan accordingly.

The motto of the Boy Scouts of America is “Be Prepared”. Much of the practical skills training that is part of the Boy Scout program directly addresses this quest for preparedness. First aid, knots, teamwork, fire starting, fire extinguishing, poisonous plant identification, knife and ax handling, cooking, camp hygiene and more. A scout is ready! Or will learn from mistakes to be “more ready” next time. Learn, practice, teach, and repeat. Readiness is at the crossroad of knowledge and preparation.

In today’s first reading, we join the prophet Isaiah in the middle of a spectacle of Revelations proportion. Using the descriptive phraseology that John will one day use in the last book of the New Testament, Isaiah paints a dramatic picture of the Lord in his long flowing robe, on a “high and lofty throne”. Seraphim, the six-winged angels, hovered above and cried to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!” At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke. It’s beginning to sound like that basketball game opening we started with. 

But Isaiah wasn’t quite ready for all of this. “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

The spectacle continues. One of the seraphim flies to Isaiah, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar and touches the ember to Isaiah’s mouth. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”

The voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Roughly translated -- Y’all ready for this?

“Here I am,” replies Isaiah; “send me!”

In today’s gospel, we have Jesus talking about courage under persecution. Who is he talking to and under what context? At the beginning of Matthew Chapter 10, we find the answers. Jesus has just selected the twelve men from his followers to become his apostles and was giving them a preview of their life missions. He gives them their charge, to proclaim “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.” Sounds simple and comprehensive at the same time!

Additionally, Jesus has given instructions on where to go (in search of the lost flock of Israel), what to take with them (nothing for the most part), and what to do if not welcomed (shake the dust from your feet and move on).

But there are words of caution: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves”, Jesus warns. But don’t worry, he assures the new apostles, when you are arrested and turned over for prosecution, the Father will give you the words you need to say at the last moment.

One more warning before we get to today’s gospel reading. “You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

Jesus then encourages the disciples to become like the teacher. There are no expectations that they will do better than the master. Though they will face persecution, the apostles are told to not fear the persecutors.

“Therefore do not be afraid of them. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.”
[Matthew 10:26-27]

With these words, Jesus has assured his brand new apostles that they will learn all of the secrets, that Jesus will tell them everything, and that they will be expected to proclaim what they have learned openly to everyone.

The Father, Jesus says, knows the number of hairs on your head and when an insignificant sparrow falls from the sky. The apostles are worth more than many birds, so the Father most assuredly knows them well, too.

In the last part of today’s gospel, Jesus says

“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” 
[Matthew 10:32-33]

This doesn’t sound complicated to a Christian of today, but as a newly minted apostle, this must have been an awful lot to try to understand in one session.

If you read to the end of Matthew 10, you will find Jesus gives some more perspectives and commands on being an apostle of Jesus, a member of the twelve. They will be learning a lot more in the following year. Their mission has just begun.

Y’all ready for this?

* Note on the song played at many basketball games.

Title:  Get Ready for This
Year:  1991
Artist:  2 Unlimited
YouTube:  2 UNLIMITED - Get Ready For This (Official Music Video)