Sermons

 Preparation

Rod Frohman	Third Presbyterian Church
November 9, 2008	Matthew 25:1-13

A wedding is always a great occasion in the life of a family or community. Thanks to the British scholar, William Barclay, we know that the same was true in the time of Jesus.

“When a couple got married they did not go away for a honeymoon. They stayed at home for a week and they kept ’open house.’ They were treated like, and even called, ‘prince and princess.’ It was the gladdest week in all their lives. To all the festivities of that week their chosen friends were admitted.” Even as late as the early 20th century, middle class weddings in Israel/Palestine resembled those in Jesus’ time. Modern travelers to Israel/Palestine have discovered traditional Jewish weddings taking place in which “the greatest thing to do was for the groom to try to catch the bridal party napping. So the groom could come unexpectedly, and sometimes in the middle of the night.” Hence the young women in our Gospel parable had to be prepared for a night time arrival, with lamps trimmed. Also important to note is that “once the bridegroom had arrived, and the door had been shut, latecomers to the ceremony were not admitted.” (Barclay, Matthew, c. 1975 p. 320) Since this wedding-watch tradition took place within about a week’s time, with plenty of notice to get ready, a late comer to the wedding feast was indicating not only his or her impoliteness, but revealing that they were not properly prepared for the event.

Matthew, the gospel editor, had a couple of problems. As Matthew redrafted the final Jesus discourses from various sources, (NIB Vol. VIII, p. 429) he had to deal with his third generation church (indeed Matthew is the only one of the four Gospel editors to use the term “church”) which was being persecuted by the Pharisaic Jewish leadership as his church sought to differentiate itself from mainstream Judaism. (NIB Vol. VIII, p. 99)

The other problem was a credibility problem—the delay in the coming of the Kingdom. The Jesus teaching about “immediate impending eruption” (Bultmann) of the kingdom of God in their midst (parousia) had not come to fruition. Matthew’s church was, in effect, complaining, “Listen, Matthew, sixty years ago Jesus promised to set up his kingdom. In the meantime the Romans have sacked Jerusalem and now nothing is left there. The Jesus movement has been scattered all the way from Spain to India. When are we going to really meet Christ?”

So Matthew is not only dealing with persecution, but with great disappointment. There had been great hope for the intervention of God in human events through a Messiah who would throw off the hated shackles of oppression established by the Roman emperors for the past 200 years. This Messiah would establish a kingdom of justice and peace.

As Matthew retells the story, he visualizes his anticipating congregation to be the ten bridesmaids waiting for the groom, Jesus, to return to set up his Kingdom, his new beginning.

However, besides Matthew’s credibility problem, we 21st century people have a credibility problem—the idea of expecting Christ to return in the end times may sound quite strange. How can someone come again who has been physically dead 2000 years? There is an American growth industry speculating about the end times, such as the novels and movies popularized a few years ago called, “The Left Behind” series. The five dollar word for the study of this stuff is called “eschatology”—the ology—the study of the eschaton, or the end. In the interests of full disclosure, I do NOT believe that the historical Jesus will ever come again from beyond time and history. I do not believe in a literal, physical, second advent or second coming of Christ.

However, the heart of Christian affirmation concerns the idea that death did not stop the slain Jesus. “The spirit of the slain Jesus is unconquerable.” (Migliore) His resurrection means that his spirit is among us today as a moving dynamic force that transforms human life making freedom out of oppression and making community out of chaos. It is a movement in history that is independent of human agents but is found among us and even in us. Christ’s crucifixion was not the end but the beginning.

This understanding can be called “realized eschatology” (Karl Rahner) meaning that the second advent, or second coming, of Christ is something that is realized now, not at the end of time. That is, it is possible to meet Christ in our world today, not just in a second coming, but a third, fourth, fifth, 50th, 100th, 10,000th second coming.

While Matthew may have been dealing with disappointment that the end had not come, we are dealing disbelief—that the end is not near.

For us it is easy to assume that the end is not near. We would all like to believe that we still have a few good years of credit left. But there is nothing like lying on the floor in the middle of the night staring up at paramedics, or nothing like an incident of amnesia to send visions of the end washing over one. Short of personal end, there is existential end. Experienced in loss or radical change, unemployment is an end. Divorce is an end. A family crisis is an end. An unwanted pregnancy is an end. A newly diagnosed condition is an end. Ask a widow or widower what a painful end it is to move out of the home shared for years with a spouse. So there are realized—experienced—ends, now.

The question for Matthew and for us is: How is the end turned into the beginning, now? For sure flipping the end to the beginning is not realized by sitting around speculating about the end. So Matthew reminds us that the beginning is summarized by those famous words of Jesus, “The kingdom of heaven is like… the farmer who went out to sow seed… the mustard seed planted… and the kingdom of heaven will be like this: “Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.” (Matthew 25:1) Five were foolish and did not take a spare flask of oil, and five were wise who did. So when the bridegroom was delayed, the five wise were prepared. Prepared for what? Prepared for the new beginning to erupt in their lives. Prepared for the Kingdom of God to be realized now. Prepared to meet the risen Christ not later, but now. Matthew affirms that Christ had already returned to his congregation but only the prepared ones would realize it.

So how do we realize it, how do we get ready to meet this Christ, the “immediate impending eruption” of the kingdom of God in our midst? It is called, plan ahead.

The parable suggests, don’t sleep, because there are certain things that cannot be done at the last minute. At the risk of being too literal, there are times when even sleep must be postponed, if we are to be ready to meet our future.

Many of you can remember working on an advanced degree. While working on my Doctor of Ministry degree, there were many mornings when I would get up at 4:30 am, work for two hours on my thesis project, and then go and put in a full day’s work as a minister. There is no way that I could have been prepared for the advanced degree without such a loss of sleep.

And we all know there are certain things we cannot get at the last minute. Like the five foolish bridesmaids who went out to borrow oil, there are certain things which cannot be borrowed at any time. We cannot borrow the oil of faith, the insight that is able to see into the darkest night of our souls and the deepest winters of our discontent. Faith cannot be borrowed. Rather the oil of faith must be stored up over time. It must be refined out of the depths of our experience as we go along.

One of the hardest times in being a minister is to sit in the living room of the family which has just lost a loved one. Very often I suggest that a memorial service is a time of “solemn joy,” and that hymns or solos of praise to God are most appropriate. Most families are ready with their favorite hymns. But occasionally there are those who just sit and stare at me incredulously, as if to say “What, sing at a funeral?” It is too late then for a minister to do death education. It is too late for Christian hope to be of much consequence in that hour of trial. There are some things that cannot be borrowed at the last minute. And solemn joy at the time of death cannot be borrowed. Either you have it or you don't.

But, if we are honest, there is a certain sense in which we cannot get fully ready to meet Christ. So we are called to get as prepared as we can and then be vigilant, to watch for Christ. To be ready to meet Christ is to be prepared and to expect his presence. It is like cleaning the house for company and then looking out the window expecting their immediate arrival—even if they are late!!

So where do we meet Christ today? Where is the kingdom of God erupting? Hopefully we meet Christ every Sunday here in worship. But there is a danger of thinking this is the only place we meet him.

Now I’m just crazy enough to think that I met Christ several times this past couple of weeks.

On Wednesday October 22, your Kenya travel team met in the home of Samuel and Agnes Nieri. We four, along with eight or nine others of the Session of the Kihumo Presbyterian Church of Nairobi, Kenya, were treated to a sumptuous meal of rice, beef stew with carrots and string beans, cooked cabbage, peeled carrot and pineapple salad, watermelon and Kenyan tea. This feast took place in a home whose structure was two by fours that held up corrugated sheet metal for roof and siding. It rained during our meal and some water dripped through the roof. The electricity had gone out in the entire community. But Samuel was prepared. He had trimmed his Coleman lantern and placed it on the coffee table along with several candles, and light was given throughout all the room. Samuel is a subsistence farmer. Agnes operates a small vegetable stand about a quarter of a mile from the church. A generous estimate of their annual income would be $1000. Samuel is a member of the session, an ordained Presbyterian elder. The joy of hospitality shown to us that evening out of the deep poverty of Agnes and Samuel can be best understood as the realized presence of Christ. The last words that Samuel said to us at Joma Kenyatta Airport were, “Please don't forget us.” Samuel, we won't.

I also think I met Christ someplace in the middle of our presidential election this week. No I am not saying that Barack Obama is Christ. He’s a human being just like the rest of us. And he has his work cut out for him, and so do we. But something fundamentally different and beautiful has happened in American politics this past week. A black man has been voted into the White House, a house that was originally constructed by slave labor. Fifty years ago in America there were many houses, schools, buses, voting booths, lunch counters, in which a black person was not only not welcomed, but driven out by dogs, fire hoses and police billy clubs. I am not saying that the kingdom of God has arrived. But time has made an ancient good, uncouth. The Spirit of God has visited our land. I hope the Spirit stays.

It is important to realize that this fundamentally different and beautiful happening was deeply rooted in careful, strategic planning. There were many lamps that were trimmed, fueled and ready for the dark winter nights in Iowa and New Hampshire.

For sure, there were some rather rough edges to this election, on both sides. But the Spirit of God was also shown on Tuesday night in the gracious and reconciling concession speech of Sen. John McCain. His words were fueled by the oil of a lamp of a deep and abiding faith of a man who has spent a lifetime putting country above self.

In his 1937 classic, The Kingdom of God in America, a book that should be on the shelf of every Presbyterian, H. Richard Niebuhr reminds us that far too often in our history, one political movement or another has arrogantly assumed that it was the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. In this post election euphoria we need to reign in that idolatrous impulse.

If by analogy the church is the group of ten bridesmaids, how do we prepare to meet Christ, the groom, and his coming kingdom? By getting out the out of the church in into the world, as just sung by our choir, with our “lamps trimmed and burning.” By doing justice and mercy we discover that we meet Christ where he is already doing that kind of works among us.

“The prepared churches, like the wise maidens, begin their preparation by correctly gauging the scope and nature of their mission. The unprepared churches underestimate what it takes to be ready to meet the new life which the groom brings.” The opportunity is lost and they are too late. (Delores Williams, “Piety and Preparation for New Life,” Christian Century. 11/90 p. 1020)

It is only after we are invited IN to enjoy the party, and the doors are shut, that the satisfaction of being prepared is realized.