 |
|
| Home Sermons |
The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost The breeze of God’s love and grace is ever blowing; may we set our sails to capture that breeze, and may it inspire these words and those who hear them. Amen. If you were ever a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout like I was, you remember the scout motto, “Be prepared.” Be prepared—that sounds like good advice, but it is sort of open ended—what are we supposed to be prepared for? Of course there are MANY things we could prepare for, but all too often, it seems, what we try to prepare for are all those things that threaten or frighten us. Sometimes that is essential—preparing for a hurricane, for example, but other times we let our fear get the best of us, and our preparations take on ridiculous proportions. As a child of the sixties, during the height of the Cold War, I remember well when being prepared meant knowing where the nearest fall-out shelter was, or perhaps even building one in your yard. In the first year or two after 9/11 and the anthrax scare, we were told that being prepared meant having duct tape and plastic to seal ourselves into our homes in case of bio-terrorism—I know this because there was a shortage of duct tape in my local hardware store which caused great consternation; in retrospect, of course, this seems a bit silly, but it illustrates, I think, how fear can dominate our lives. Being prepared is a theme that runs through today’s readings, and just as in our world, there is an undercurrent of fear in these readings as well. But fear doesn’t have to be the basis of our being prepared. Instead, the heart of these readings seems to tell us that, rather than being a fearful response to some coming danger, being prepared is the outcome of living the life that God calls us to lead. We hear this in the voice of the prophet Amos, sent to the people of Israel in the 8th century. This was a time when Israel was experiencing a period of peace and unprecedented prosperity, a period in which a wealthy upper class had emerged. Life was good for many people, and on the surface it might have looked like a very good time indeed for the often-beleaguered people of Israel. But at the same time, traditional morality and ethics were on the decline, and the plight of the poor, despite the overall prosperity, was grim as the disparity between rich and poor grew ever wider—not unlike our own times. Amos came at this point in time as prophet, proclaiming the words of God to get God’s people back on the straight and narrow, as it were. In today’s reading we hear Amos railing against the festivals, worship and sacrifices that were at the heart of Jewish life—not because they in themselves were wrong, but rather because these practices, when they were undertaken mindlessly, without regard to life outside the Temple, became hollow and meaningless. Amos is calling God’s people to be prepared—be prepared for the day of the Lord. It’s easy to see how Amos’ preaching could invoke fear—it’s a message of wrath and impending doom. Rather than a time of celebration and reconciliation, he tells them, if they remain on their current path, the day of the Lord will be a time of judgment, a time when they are called to answer for their behavior, a time when justice will roll down like waters—justice for the poor, for the oppressed, for the downtrodden, those who have been mistreated or forgotten in this time of prosperity, but also justice for the oppressors. But even with this fearsome message, what Amos is calling the people to do is not to try to protect themselves when judgment comes but rather to prepare themselves by returning to the way of life God set out for them rather than the lives of self-indulgence they were leading. The gospel echoes a very similar message. The setting is Jerusalem in the days just before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus has been teaching in the Temple grounds, and having predicted the destruction of the temple, he withdraws to the Mount of Olives where his disciples follow to ask him what the signs of his second coming will be. The parable of the bridesmaids is one of three stories Jesus tells as part of his answer, an answer that becomes a longer discourse on his second coming and the time of judgment that coming will herald. This story is one that often makes us uncomfortable because on the surface at least it seems to contradict some of Jesus’ other teachings on how to live. So we end up wondering—why didn’t the ‘wise’ bridesmaids just share their oil? Why did the bridegroom not admit the latecomers? We try to identify the bad guys and the good guys in the story, but in doing so, we miss the point. All of the bridesmaids were part of the community; all of them were friends of the groom. And they all became drowsy and fell asleep, perhaps a natural reaction since groom was delayed. The problem arose when the foolish bridesmaids went to light their lamps and realized that they didn’t have enough oil. They had failed to come prepared and at that point, last minute sharing by the wise bridesmaids wasn’t going to be enough to compensate for that. Their failure to be prepared in the long run meant that they were left out of the party to which they’d been invited to be a part of. The message in these two reading is loud and clear. We must be prepared to be held accountable for our lives. But our preparations must be a way of life, not a fearful reaction to some perceived threat or a last minute attempt to catch up. And our preparation must be on-going because as Jesus vividly reminds us, we do not know the day or the hour of his coming. So what would this preparation look like? There are many ways we could answer that question—living each day fully and completely, loving without reservation, grounding ourselves in prayer and gratitude, centering ourselves on God, living as good stewards of all that God has entrusted to us. But there is one particular part of preparation that I’d like to focus on, one that is present in the cries of Amos and one that runs through all of Jesus’ teaching: we are called to be prepared by working for justice. Amos reminds us that when the day of the Lord comes, God will let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. And Jesus calls us to work for that justice in the here and now, in the kingdom that is “already but not yet”—the kingdom of God, and in our baptismal covenant we are called to strive for justice. Martin Luther King once said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It bends towards justice because that is what God intends for the world, and it is up to us to bend our own wills so that they, too, move towards justice. What will it take for us to bend our wills as the arc of the universe bends, towards justice? It will require us to let go of our fears, and to truly will for others what we desire for ourselves, what God desires for all of us. It will require us to respect the dignity of every human being; it will require us to center ourselves fully and completely on God’s love for us and God’s love for all of humanity and all of creation. God calls us to be prepared, for we know neither the day nor the hour, and we are called to let that preparation shape the arc of our own lives. Perhaps one of the best summaries of what it means to be prepared can be found in the blessing we often use at the close of our liturgy: Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make this earthly pilgrimage with us. AMEN
|