“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)
Billy was an idiot. I’m sorry he died the way he did, but the young man went asking for trouble and had no difficulty finding it. I’ll spare you the details of how he came to die from a gunshot wound and just say that his young life was taken too soon. I was asked to do his funeral—what is it now?—some twenty years ago..? But of the hundreds of memorials I’ve done in twenty-five years as pastor in Northeast Philadelphia, his was one which I always remember. It wasn’t just the fact that his death was a homicide. What sticks in my mind is the reaction his posse of young mourners had to his killing.
You might think these
kids would be grief-stricken, and you’d be right. They were. But they also
appeared to be zombies, their faces frozen in masks of uncomprehending shock as
if it had never occurred to them that a contemporary of theirs could die. With
no faith tradition on which to rely, they had no clue as to how to frame their
grief.
I thought about Billy and
his bewildered friends when reading the gospel appointed for Pentecost 24, Year
A in the Revised Common Lectionary (Matthew 25:1-13). As a pastor called upon
to lead so many memorial services and as a hospital chaplain I can testify to
the glaring contrast I’ve witnessed between people equipped with faith and
those who are not so equipped when their loved one dies. Our spiritual
disciplines are like the extra flask of oil carried by the wise bridesmaids in
the parable. Praise, prayer, fellowship, generosity, and constant learning and
questioning and seeking and doing are
our companions on the long wait that is our lifetime. These are the ways a
Christian prepares for events over which we have no control and of which we
know neither the day nor the hour.
I’m certain when Matthew
wrote his gospel his audience was eagerly expecting the imminent return of
Jesus. We think Matthew wrote some four decades after the time of Jesus, so we
can well imagine his community was getting anxious about Christ’s return.
Certainly some of the community had died while waiting. Jesus’ parable says the
Bridegroom is delayed, but wise watchers don’t fall asleep or become
complacent. Like Matthew’s community so long ago, we also know that our life is
made up largely of waiting—we waited for the end of COVID, we’ll wait for the
end of the Israel-Hamas war, we wait for our kids to get married, grandchildren
to be born, our turn to retire and, sometimes if we live long enough, for the
day when we are called home by our Lord. Our life is a constant state of
longing for something or something else.
But we long with Christ,
and our relationship with him needs to be active and growing.
The compilers of the
Revised Common Lectionary yoked this parable with a passage in the book of the
prophet Amos. Amos was a farmer from the southern nation of Judah who felt
called by the Lord to go north of the border into Israel and cry out against
the religious and political leaders’ hypocrisy and complacence. The prophet accuses
the Israelites of smugly believing their proper sacrificial rites and holy day
observances are all that is required of them. They view themselves as observant
of God’s law even while letting the poor starve.
I wonder what Amos would
be saying to us today if God brought him back to confront the American church.
I like to imagine he’d rail against the Christian right for their obsession
with pro-life causes and their intolerance of LGBTQ+ individuals while ignoring
issues of injustice and poverty. Yet what would be the message to the ELCA?
Possibly we’d be called out for the same things for which Amos derided the
Israelites. Yes, we are conscientious about our sacraments. We have our
children baptized, see that they make their First Holy Communion, and we encourage
them to study their lessons for Confirmation. But there we stop. We neglect to
teach them that they’ll need an ongoing relationship with Christ and the Church
to see them through the long wait of their lives and to be the extra flask of
oil they carry when their world gets shaken by events of which they know
neither the day nor the hour.
There are three things
which stand out for me in the lessons appointed for Pentecost 24. First, our
faith is a life-long journey. Our need to pray, grow, and participate in the
things of God never ends. We wait in uncertain times, and we don’t know what’s
ahead, but we carry our faith in the goodness of the Lord.
Second, we are called to
an active faith. A recent country music hit by the artist Cody Johnson is
called “’Til You Can’t.[i]” The message of the song
is a warning that we don’t have forever to do the things we need to do. The
singer tells us to say our “Sorrys” and “I love yous” while there is still time.
At some point the door will swing closed.
Thirdly, we may have only
so much oil for our lamps. If the well-prepared bridesmaids split their supply
with the foolish bridesmaids, there would be the chance that all ten lamps
might go out before the Bridegroom arrived. We need to be intentional in our
spiritual lives, and that may mean saying “no” at some point. We cannot give
what we don’t have ourselves.
There’s a phrase I often
share at funeral services, and, perhaps, I might’ve shared it with those
stunned and confused young people at Billy’s funeral. Your spiritual life can
never be about what happens to you because you have no control over that. It
can only be about how you embrace it. Pray that you have enough oil in your
lamp to last you through the night.
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