The Secret Work of Christ

Genesis 15:1-6

Luke 12:32-40

Ruins of a large blast furnace once operated by the Adirondack Iron Works in Tahawus

In my first years of ministry in Williamsburg, Virginia, I remember being invited to the home of a parishioner who was dying. He was tight and unyielding with both his family and the hospice nurses who were trying to care for him. Over the course of a week – when I would visit with him – he would rage about politics and culture. His family called me to intervene after he had screamed obscenities at a hospice nurse. He had lived a hard life, and he was knuckled into himself, clinging to the ways of being that he had used to succeed throughout his life.

And then, suddenly he loosened up. There was a palpable recognition that his way of being could no longer help him, and another way of being had been invited from him.  When he yielded to the invitation, there was a visible transformation, almost as if a demon had left his body. The color of his face changed; his muscles relaxed. He called his wife and children into the room to tell them that he loved them. All of his tightness and anger and fear yielded to the way of love -- to the love of God.

Moments of transformation are often a gift of those near death – when we let go of old ways of being and step into something deeper. That kind of shift can happen gradually, or it can happen in a moment, when time seems to open and something essential surfaces. The Irish poet and author, John O’Donohue, reflects on these moments, what he calls “threshold” moments, saying, “when we come to a threshold…we [are] able to be different, because secret work has been done in us of which we’ve had no inkling.”[1]

In our lesson from Genesis, Abraham experiences just such a threshold moment. He begins in a place of anxiety and complaint, focusing on what he lacks: “Lord God, what can you give me, since I remain childless?” His vision is confined, shaped by what he knows. But God invites him out of that limited space – literally bringing him across the threshold of his tent – and says, “Look up at the sky and count the stars.” That act of looking up is more than visual: it’s spiritual. Abraham crosses into a new way of seeing, where the promise of children is no longer weighed down by time or biology, but held in the vastness of God’s imagination.

What makes this moment transformative is not that Abraham gains new information or knowledge, but that he is suddenly able to trust God. Something has shifted inside him. This is the “secret work” O’Donohue names: interior change that prepares us to receive what we could not hold before. Abraham steps across a threshold not just into a covenant with God, but into a new self that is capable of trust and hope that is greater than reason. The challenge with interior change is that we don’t control it. It’s not something we can achieve or purchase. Instead, it’s something that happens to us: something that takes hold of us, often when we least expect it. We turn a corner, and suddenly everything is different. What seemed important a moment ago fades, and a new horizon comes into view.

We’ve all had moments like this. Maybe we’re in the middle of a busy day, thinking about dozens of errands or emails, when a text comes through: someone we love is dying. Or one of our children is expecting a baby of their own. The message takes seconds to read, but when we put the phone down, the world has changed. We’re not where we were a moment ago. We’ve crossed into new emotional and spiritual ground.

This is the kind of readiness Jesus speaks about in our reading from Luke. He says, “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” He uses the image of servants who keep their lamps lit and their clothes on, waiting for the master to return. But they don’t know when he’ll come. That’s the paradox of faith: we’re called to be ready, but we have no control over the shape or timing of the person for whom we wait. Jesus is telling us that we should live prepared, not because we know what’s coming or when, but because we trust the One who is coming.

The good news of Christ is offered to every one of us, but it cannot be received superficially or grasped only with the mind. It goes deeper than that – reaching into the depths of our souls, often arriving when we least expect it. This is the “secret work” John O’Donohue describes: the hidden preparation God is doing in us all the time, shaping us for those threshold moments. Like Abraham, we are invited to step out of our tents, to move beyond our limited perspective, and to trust God enough to enter His reality.

I remember so clearly when our parishioner in Williamsburg crossed the threshold.  He had been struggling to breathe, so he asked me to call his wife and children into the room. They were hesitant because he had been so volatile. He looked at them and spoke clearly and peacefully for the last time: “I want you all to know that I love you. I love you so much.” He died later that day. I can’t help but feel that God had arrived and spoken through him. “I want you all to know that I love you. I love you so much.” That’s God’s message to all of us, his children.

Amen.

[1] John O’Donohue, interview by Krista Tippett, On Being, “The Inner Landscape of Beauty,” recorded November 2007, podcast audio, 51:00, https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty/.