“Know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
Jesus is … a thief.
Maybe it’s difficult for many of us to imagine the Son of Man, the Risen One, Jesus the Good Shepherd, as a thief. Just a few moments ago, we imagined God as a caring parent (“Have no fear, little flock”), and then we heard about Jesus as a loving master, happily coming home from a wedding party. (Of course, the master image is more complicated: a master — loving or not — can’t be a master without slaves.)
But then Luke the evangelist sharpens the imagery even further: Now Jesus is … a thief, arriving unexpectedly in the wee hours, not unlatching the door but breaking in.
This is a warning. Jesus is challenging us to get ready, to be ready. He’s confronting us with the dangers of complacence. He’s not kidding around: “Listen! I’m like a thief in the night,” he seems to be saying. We might feel an instinctive resistance to this comparison: we love Jesus, you and I (or at least most of us try to), and if you ask me, I find it hard (maybe impossible) to love someone who gives me a jump scare and takes all my stuff.
A few months ago we suffered a robbery at St. Paul’s. A thief came in the night and took our copper downspouts on the south side of the office building. It had already been a long two and a half years, disruption everywhere, noise and dust and commotion and seemingly endless complications in our effort to refit this mission base. That morning was a new emotional low for me. I didn’t reflect on the metaphorical insights of “God as thief.” I confess I didn’t (at least in the moment) pray for the thieves. I tried to remind myself that this is just a building, and that if we’re not careful we could fashion our possessions into idols. But I mostly just got mad. I fumed, helplessly. Then we installed new, less attractive downspouts, and moved on. And no, that theft doesn’t even register, even a little, on the long list of outrages plaguing the planet right now. “Come on, get over it,” I told myself. And so I did.
But now I can reflect. Jesus as… thief. God as… thief. That God or Jesus is unpredictable, even dangerous, coming by night to take things from us: there is something here. There is something to this idea.
If Jesus is a thief, then he likely takes from us things we don’t need, or worse, things that damage us the longer we hold on to them. What do you hold onto that might damage you, or diminish you? It’s easy to get materialistic, particularly in an anxious time, and those objects, or those mutual funds, can become like household gods, little idols. So Jesus the thief tells us to “make purses that do not wear out,” that is, set our hearts on our deepest commitments, our deepest values, and our deepest passions. Self-giving love — Jesus takes up that theme, once again. Self-giving love: when I give away what I would rather hoard, my treasure is stored in a flourishing community, and my heart soon follows.
But Jesus the thief may be pickpocketing a few other things, too, when we’re not looking. He might take from us a cherished belief, an old attitude, or a prejudice. I have most of the privileges that make life easier here on Earth, and while I’ll keep many of them all my life — I can’t divest myself of white privilege — Jesus steals from me the easy comfort of ignorance. The more we learn about privilege and power, the harder it gets to ignore how we benefit from it while it harms and even kills others.
But let’s reflect on all of this a bit more. I suspect this idea, this metaphor, this image — Jesus as thief – makes more and more sense to us as we get older. I am well into my fifties, and I’m discovering that certain things have gone missing, or have just fallen away. Things like the ease of sleeping through the night, or remembering why I came into a room. Illness, particularly later in life, can feel like theft, like a thief coming in the night and taking pieces of a person away.
I’ve long feared that I might have a crisis of faith when I lose physical abilities, because my spiritual practices are been centered on physical wellness and fitness. But nowhere in the Bible do we read that God favors the physically fit, or that as long as you’re young, hale, and hearty, God smiles on you. And we definitely never read in Holy Scripture that we will retain all the blessings of this life. Quite the contrary: Jesus is reliably found breaking bread with those who live on this earth but do not walk on it, and those who see into the souls of their neighbors but can’t physically see anything at all. Jesus is particularly concerned with those who are rejected from their communities or from the temple because they don’t meet a rigid standard of health or ability.
Now, I don’t believe and would never preach that Jesus the thief takes our health from us as we age. God or Jesus does not take things from us to teach us lessons, or test our mettle, or make us stronger. That heresy is always close at hand, so be alert. But maybe Jesus the thief takes away our complacency about health, our easy assumptions about physical ability, our vain beliefs about personal strength. “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength,” Paul, our patron, teaches us. Maybe this is partly what he’s talking about.
Some of us who are still quite young might occasionally feel robbed, as well: you may feel robbed of your innocence, or your future. If so, I hasten to say that Jesus the thief is not the guilty party in all of these losses. Maybe, for younger people, Jesus the thief is present in quieter ways, in your deeper moments of reflection and insight. Maybe you feel powerless and frustrated, or not taken seriously, or desperate for security. You’re facing years of student debt, or forbidding housing costs, or a changing and shrinking job market, or the specter of rising seas and rising temperatures. If Jesus is a thief for you, maybe he steals a belief you may have had that you alone can solve these problems, or that you were invincible. Maybe he takes from you your easy but unfair judgments of the older generations! But hear this good news: Jesus the thief also steals loneliness: in all of these struggles, you are not alone.
So… Jesus the thief takes one thing or another from us: the idols or household gods of possessions or money that isolate us and damage our communities; our easy assumptions and our casual tolerance of evil and injustice; the worldviews, or the views of ourselves, that no longer work for us as we age; the basic belief that we’ve got this, that I’ve got this, that we don’t need one another, that we don’t need a savior and shepherd, a teacher and guide. In all of this stealing, Jesus is, well, a holy thief.
But there may be one more thing that Jesus the holy thief takes from us, and that is this: Jesus the holy thief steals from us our casual assumptions about himself, about God, about the Holy Three. We gather here week by week and praise the One God whose open hand showers us with blessings, and turns us toward one another in love. Yes. We affirm that God in Jesus says to us, “Have no fear, little flock,” and that Jesus the Good Master is warmly opening the door for all of us — particularly those we have harmed — to come inside where it is warm, and the table groans with food. Yes.
But Jesus the holy thief steals from us our limited, sometimes simplistic ideas about who God is, and what God does. God is not a cosmic problem solver, and we who preach Christ crucified know this well. God is not tame, or under our control; God is not predictable. But we keep coming back, we keep giving thanks, we keep saying Yes to the mission, even as we work to accept that God does not save us from everything, or explain everything; and accept that God may take from us things we treasure — all those easy assumptions and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
I want to close with a story about God that may not imagine God (or Jesus) as a thief, exactly, but certainly appreciates that God is always beyond anything we would call easy, or controllable, or tame. The Anglican writer C.S. Lewis, in his children’s stories, imagines God as an enormous and dangerous lion. A good lion, yes! But not tame, not easy. To be in the presence of God requires our bravery, and our humility. In one vivid scene, a girl named Jill encounters the lion when she is desperately thirsty, and the lion sits between her and a refreshing stream of water. These are children’s stories, remember, so it won’t surprise you that the lion is able to talk. When Jill encounters this enormous, dangerous, yet strong and loving beast, she grows up a lot in a few moments. She finds courage she didn’t know she had, the courage of the daughter of a holy thief. Here is the critical moment in their encounter:
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. “I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. “Then drink,” said the Lion. “May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. “Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. “I make no promise,” said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said. “I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. “I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” “There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
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Preached on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14C), August 10, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40