What Are We Waiting For?

Anna Blaedel
First UMC, Osage
November 9, 2008
Psalm 78:1-7
Matthew 25: 1-13

My mom happens to be here in worship this morning. So, now I don’t have to talk about her behind her back. This morning’s gospel reading first took on meaning in my life, first became the Living Word, the good news to guide my life, because of my mom. She takes this text seriously. She wants, always, to have oil in her lamps. And she orders her life around this spiritual practice of preparation. She orders her life around being ready for God’s unexpected visits. She, more than maybe anyone I know, is open to receiving uninvited visitors, unexpected interruptions, unanticipated events, as a sacred gift from God, an invitation into God’s grace-filled living, an opportunity to experience and serve and praise God. Let us pray: O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, be acceptable and pleasing to you, our strength and our redeemer.

This is not an easy text to hear, to live, or to preach. Anna Carter Florence, a preaching professor, has these words about this text: “The story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids is not a text for the faint-hearted. It’s scary and damning and irrevocable, as stories about the end of the world have a tendency to be. In it, Jesus is the gate-keeping troll.” Scary. Damning. Irrevocable.

This story is about the coming reign of God. The inbreaking of God’s kingdom here on this earth.

I heard a story about a high school science teacher in Nashville who takes great pleasure in slamming the classroom door as soon as the bell rings, and then saying with relish to every late student knocking on the door, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you!” I promise I will not take up this practice here at church! The response of this teacher is true to the text, but not, I believe, true to it’s meaning. True to the letter, not the spirit. God does not call us, Christ does not teach us, to be gate-keeping trolls. So what does this story offer?

Perhaps we are to take from it a reminder of God’s grace, the oil for our lamps, which is offered us in abundant supply, if only we take the time to stop. To fill and refill. To carry this oil, this blessing, with us as we journey.

Perhaps we are to take from this story a warning, to wake up, to look around us. To look at the pain and injustice in the world, to refuse to ignore what is hard to see, and then to respond in love and faith. For it is the broken places, we are taught, where God will visit first, and will pour out God’s blessing.

Perhaps we are to take from this story the invitation to prepare, now, for meeting God, in the people God sends into our lives. Like Frances Morse keeping homemade pies in her freezer to welcome guests. Like my mom, with big tubs of flour and bundles of yeast for baking delicious bread whenever, or keeping dozens of eggs and almost as many cake keepers so that every birthday is celebrated, everyone born lifted up as a child of God, a gift from God, or choosing her new car with the conditions that it fit up to six birthday cakes and a pot of soup and a loaf of bread for Wednesday night church soup suppers, and that it fit her friends, disabilities and walkers and wheelchairs and baggage and all, when they need a ride. Keeping oil in her lamps. Preparing herself for God, and God’s inbreaking in her life every day.

Perhaps this text can help assess our own reserve of life and light giving oil, can help us see clearly, as children of God, our own expectation, preparation, and creation of the Kindom of God here, now.

Perhaps it can warn us, if our oil is running dangerously low.

This text is about God’s unexpected visit, God coming not when we are scrubbed clean and sitting, shining, in our pews on Sunday morning, but God coming when we least expect it to judge and to bless, to assess our situation and our faithfulness. The word foolish in this story can also be translated, lukewarm. Not quite cold, but not really ready.

What if we waited, watched, for this coming with the same attention and eagerness with which we watched the electoral numbers coming in last Tuesday night? What if we spent the time and money and energy and prayer of these past campaigns, complete with yard signs and bumper stickers and commercial spots and Saturday Night Live spoofs, what if our collective conversation carried on past the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, and into how we can participate in creating the Kingdom, in this community, this country, this world.. How we can be part of the change this country and world needs? Ending poverty. Loving our neighbor. Welcoming the outcast. Visiting those in prison. Sharing the good news of God’s love not just with those we love, but with those God loves. Each and every one.

Jesus and Matthew are always warning about those who attach themselves to the Church, but fail to do God’s work. Cautioning against speaking the language of faith, but forgetting or failing to follow through. Proclaiming our part in the Kingdom of God but acting in ways that would leave Jesus wondering, “Who are you? Do I know you?”

When, O God, are you coming? How shall we meet you? How shall we greet you?

This text begins the 25th chapter of Matthew, and paves the way for the story this church chose at Charge Conference to guide and reflect our ministry as a faith community. Matthew 25. When, God, did we welcome you or feed you or clothe you or visit you? When did we have these opportunities? And Jesus replies, “When you did it to the least of these, the lost and the last, you did this to me.” Oil in our lamps. Being ready to meet God.

This text may be scary and damning and irrevocable. It is exciting. Invitating. Again, from Anna Carter Florence. “I think preachers who use this parable as a way to scare us all straight are missing the point. God doesn’t want us to fill our lamps because we’re afraid we’re going to get locked out of the Kingdom. We aren’t to stockpile oil because then we can turn everybody else away. No. We are to stop and fill, and take it with us. Fill our lamps with joy. With eager anticipation. This is the biblical price of oil: the desire to meet Jesus when he comes. Which he will and which he does. Soon. Now.”

As we gathered, we sang: “This is the day God has made! Let us rejoice, and be glad!” Did we mean it? We say we want to serve God, to follow Christ. To make disciples and to transform the world. Are we ready to follow through?

Remember the words from the psalmist: “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from our children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deed of God, and the wonders God has done.”

God gives us the oil we need. No further drilling, required. Our lives are lamps, offered to light the way to God and for God. For ourselves and for others. Will we remember to take our lamps with us? Will we be faithful to refueling and refilling? Will we watch, attentive and eager, for the unexpected arrival of God in our midst? What are we ready for? What are we waiting for?

Thanks be to God. Amen.