Sermon Nov 8 2020

P23A 2020 Matthew 25:1-13
Think back, if you can remember, to the middle of March. We were slogging through the
cold, wet, grey end of winter. We were working our way through the somber season of Lent.
We’d hardly heard of COVID, didn’t know about wearing masks, didn’t really understand the
threat—plus it sounded like something that was happening far away to other people. Yet
suddenly school was cancelled for two weeks and we were told to limit our interactions to slow
the spread and buy time for the medical community to prepare and respond, so we didn’t
become another Italy or France or New York City. Honestly, I didn’t think it would be too hard
to spend the last couple weeks of winter snuggled up at home, waiting. But of course, it wasn’t
just two weeks. Well meaning people have suggested over the course of the last several months
that we should have used this time to start a new hobby, to learn a foreign language or how to
bake bread, to finally clean out our closets or repaint our houses or write the great American
novel. Maybe your biggest accomplishment has been learning how to live through a pandemic,
which is something that none of us knew how to do before and not an easy thing. But whatever
you may have done with this time, this whole year has been a master class on patience,
perseverance, and waiting. And although I am nowhere near trying to find a silver lining to this
very serious situation which we are still trying to survive, I do think I have a little better
understanding of Matthew’s gospel than I did when all of this began.
Matthew was writing to a community which had been waiting longer than they expected.
None of the gospel writers were eye-witnesses to the events they narrated. They lived in the
first generations following Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promise to come
again. Although Jesus admits that even he doesn’t know the day or hour when God will
ultimately redeem creation, Jesus does say things like, “Today you will be with me in paradise”
and “Some who are standing here will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his
kingdom”…yet, Jesus hadn’t come back. However figuratively Jesus may have been speaking,
there was a sense of urgent anticipation among the first disciples who kept staring into heaven
after Jesus had ascended—an expectation that the next great event of cosmic history would be
accomplished in their lifetime. They expected to wait…but they didn’t expect to wait so long.
Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids describes the kingdom of God as belonging to those
who do expect to wait a long time. All the bridesmaids expected to wait for awhile, because all
of them bring lamps in anticipation of waiting until dark. And all of them become drowsy and
fall asleep. It’s not until the bridegroom approaches that the difference between the two groups
of bridesmaids is revealed: some brought extra oil and some did not. When the delay took
longer than expected, half of them were caught unprepared. By the time the bridesmaids realize
their mistake, fail to get the others to share, go buy more oil for themselves, and make it back to
the banquet, the moment has passed and the door is shut. They’ve missed out on the wedding.
In our effort to not get too wrapped up in end-time predictions, in our attempt to honor
Jesus’ teaching that nobody, not even him, can guess the day or hour of his return, we may end
up not thinking very much about the next phase of divine history that Jesus has promised. Our
liturgies remind us that that we are living in the last days, the end of the ages, but most of us
keep an eye on our retirement account just the same. 2000 years since Jesus promised he’d be
back, we don’t wait like the very first disciples, with an eye to the sky. We may be spared the
disappointment of Matthew’s community, that something they all expected to see and see soon
hadn’t yet come to fruition. But when we lose that sense of eager anticipation, it is also easy to
lose the energy and the stamina to keep doing what we are called to do.
The charge given to us in baptism, taken from earlier in Matthew’s gospel, is to let our
light so shine before others that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in
heaven. There is no time limit provided for how long we’re expected to let that light shine.
Whether we anticipate the world ending tomorrow or not for fifty more years or not for five
hundred more years, our instruction is still the same: let your light shine.
That is how we participate in the kingdom, because although this passage points us
toward the future, the call to kingdom living begins now and has no expiration date. The end of
this passage is a little confusing, that the bridegroom doesn’t know the bridesmaids whose
lamps went out as they waited. But, never knowing how long we have to live or how long we’ll
be expected to wait for what God does next, if we either let our enthusiasm for discipleship burn
out or if we think we have so much time at our disposal that we never get started, we will be the
ones who won’t recognize the kingdom of God when it comes in its fullness, because we
haven’t practiced living into it now. God calls us into the long haul of discipleship, not a brief
and brilliant flare but a slow burn throughout all the seasons of our lives, whether we get to see
the results we expect or not. Let us pray to God our Provider to give us oil for our lamps, to
keep us burning to the break of day, so that we continue to shine our light before others,
glorifying God, as long as there is darkness that has yet to be dispelled.