A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent (29/11/20): An Isaiah Advent

An Isaiah Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9

The other day I was watching a webinar by my favourite contemporary theologians: Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon.They were discussing how preachers should approach Advent. In particular, in view of everything that has been happening in this last year, how preachers should approach this Advent. They said that in Advent we are presented with a choice: Either we can have the sharpness of John the Baptist, or we can have the comfort of the prophet Isaiah. The choice, they suggested, is between John’s bitingly clear call to repentance, and Isaiah’s promise of God’s rescue. In view of where we are now, and what has been happening, they concluded, what we need this year is an Isaiah Advent.

Isaiah lived through critical, even catastrophic times in the history of Israel. He saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon. He experience the end of the independence of the people of Israel, and went through the times in which there was a real risk in which they would lose their identity as God’s people. By the time he spoke the words which we have just heard, he was at least back in Jerusalem. The people were struggling to re-establish national life, begin again their witness as God’s people. But even here things didn’t seem to be going right. Isaiah cries out: 

O that you would tear open the heavens.

Is this despair, or is it hope? Isaiah reaches a point where all he can do is cry out: “Oh God!”

In the past year, every time we have put on the television news we have perhaps found reason to gasp, “Oh God!” As if being threatened with environmental collapse were not enough, or that divided and ill tempered politics weren’t sufficient, we are living through a global pandemic. Which not only has destroyed lives but is also destroying livelihoods which sustain lives. And in the midst of all that, once more racial injustice has also been brought back into sharper focus. “Oh God! Is this not enough?”

Perhaps it is desperation. Isaiah calls out to God when there is no one else left to turn to. Isaiah is hardly unusual in this respect. I suspect that more or less everyone, even those who claim not to believe, pray in this way. Even when it looks and sounds like a profanity, I wonder also if it is not a completely sincere prayer. There are some situations which are so desperate, some crises that are so threatening, that God is indeed the only place to turn.

But in Isaiah’s case I think it is more than despair. It is hope. He trusts that God will act. God will break down the barrier that exists between human beings and God. God will intervene to rescue his people, who place their trust in him.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for modern people to accept and to believe is the idea that God acts. We find it hard sometimes to believe that God would or even could intervene. Our understanding of the world leads us to believe that we live in a closed system of cause and effect. There are the laws of nature and they cannot be broken. Yet looking back over our lives many of us, in hindsight, could identify moments of grace. There have been times when all we could do was trust in the goodness of God, and our trust was not disappointed.

Isaiah looked back over his own life and the history of his people and arrived at a similar conclusion: 

From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you who works wonders for those who wait for him.

Looking into the past, and previous experiences of God’s grace and God’s goodness to him and his people, Isaiah is able to conclude that God does indeed act, even within the laws of nature and the closed systems of cause and effect.

Isaiah is the New Testament’s book of the Hebrew Bible. Christians have a particular way of reading Isaiah and the other prophets. We see what Isaiah and the other spoke about God fulfilled in the life of Jesus. The hope which Isaiah expresses become an especially clear reality in Jesus. And especially in the image of the heavens being torn open.

Today is the first Sunday of a new lectionary year which we means that we begin reading a different Gospel today, this year the Gospel is Mark. It is no accident that the ministry of Jesus described in Mark’s Gospel begins and ends with the tearing open of the boundary between humans and God. At his baptism Jesus does see the heavens torn open. And the Holy Spirit descends upon him, marking his ministry as God intervening and active in our world. As Jesus dies on the cross, the curtain in the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom, marking the end of that boundary that separates humans from God. Isaiah looks back and gains confidence for the future when he sees God has done in the past. Christians likewise have hope, even in an Advent like this one, because they can look back to the ministry of Jesus and see what God has already done. 

But it is not that Isaiah is all comfort, without any of the sharpness of John the Baptist! Isaiah recognises that he and his people have responsibility in the circumstances they find themselves in. Perhaps the same could be said of us now. Sometimes it can be very difficult to disentangle the degrees of responsibility we as a the human race and as individuals must bear for the circumstances we find ourselves in. How much of what we have seen in the last year just the accidents of history, have they just happen to have happened? And how much is down to us? And how much of that blame rests on the human race as a whole? How much on certain individuals within our race? And how much do we have to blame ourselves as individuals? 

The ruin of the earth’s environment does look like it’s “our” fault? The human race as a whole is to blame. But how much impact individuals are actually having is difficult to say. It’s too easy to shift the blame onto everyone, when no one has been given much choice about how they are able to live. On the other hand most of the damage to the environment is being done by a relatively small number of corporations. These organisations are run by individuals who make the decisions, and as the environmental movement points out, these individuals have names and they have addresses.

Covid perhaps does look like one of those things that happen to have happened. Except that the destruction of the environment has a role in the transmission of diseases found among animals into human populations. Covid follows on from swine flu and bird flu. And Covid’s spread has been slowed or accelerated by the choices which societies, governments have made.

Our fractious politics and racial justice look like they are beyond our control. Yet whether we like it or not we are part of those systems that we have benefited from or been victim of. We are so tangled up in the mess that the world is in that we cannot be sure that even our best effort to do what is right and what Is good are not some how corrupted. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed of the burden of guilt that it is being held responsible for things we couldn’t have taken responsibility for.

Isaiah feels the same conflicted sense of reproach and guilt. He knows that he and his people have failed. Individually and collectively they are to blame. But at the same time he also recognises that there is much in their situation that was out of their control. Typical of a Psalm – since that is what Isaiah has given us here – typical of a Psalm, Isaiah’s words are not afraid to reproach God. Isaiah voice his sorrow and anger and frustration and directs them towards God:

But you were angry and we sinned, because you hid yourself we transgressed. 

No more than we can, Isaiah cannot disentangle the different layers of responsibility for the crisis he was living through. But he does acknowledge that he and his neighbours do have to carry some of the blame themselves. The sharpness of John cannot be altogether avoided in Advent, with his call to confession and repentance. Isaiah offers God his confession: 

We have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

Advent is a time of looking forward. We take it as a time to look forward to the celebration of Christmas. But in reality it is more profound season of looking forward. It is about looking beyond our current circumstances towards a future which God is promising. We long for the current crises to be brought to end. We want an answer to the crisis in the environment to be found. We long for a vaccine and a reliable cure to Covid be developed, so that our normal live can be restored. And as Christians we must seek reconciliation and demand justice. All of this weighs heavy on us now so that we might cry out:

O that you would tear open the heavens.

Isaiah knows that is a prayer that will be answered. He is confident in God. But he also knows that anyone who prays to God like that must be prepared to wait. Because he knows that God can be relied upon to act when least expected. His confidence grows out not just from what he has already seen God do, but from who those actions show God to be:

Yet O Lord you are our Father.

As followers of Jesus we have greater grounds for confidence than Isaiah that that is true. God is our Father, he has made us all and hates nothing that he has made. God works only good for those who trust him and wait for him. That is the kind of Advent we need this year.

Amen.

An Isaiah Advent by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Last Sunday before Advent (22/11/20): When the Son of Man Comes

 

When the Son of Man Comes

Matthew 25:31-46

This is the end of Jesus’ teaching ministry. Three years of wandering and three years of speaking to everyone who would listen reaches its climax here. This is the completion of everything he has tried to reveal. Jesus pictures “the Son of Man” coming in glory. He takes up the ancient image of the one who will arrive, riding on the clouds to establish the reign of God on earth. But “the Son of Man”, simply “human being” is the one title he has consistently used of himself.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on the throne of his glory.

Jesus promises his own return. This time when he comes, it will not be not as a helpless child who grows with a fragile vulnerable human body. But it will be as one who while they look like a human being, also shares the visible quality of the divine, glory! This time there will be no mistaking who he his. There will be no room for doubt. This time there will be no possibility of denial or rejection. There will be no question that Jesus is Lord. This point will be reinforced because the Son of Man will arrive accompanied by an angel army. 

This is quite unlike anything else that Jesus has shown us. Almost all of his talk about the kingdom has been veiled. The kingdom of heaven has always been very near at hand with Jesus. But it has always remained just out of sight, hinted at, alluded to. Jesus has spoken of God’s rule obliquely. He has hinted at it in other things. He has told stories about servants and masters, about wedding feasts and their guests, about fathers and their obedient and disobedient sons. Indeed he has told stories about all three of these in the moments leading up to this promise of the coming of the Son of Man. His stories up to now have begun in the “this-worldly”, and have used what we already know and already experience as a window for us to peer through. Then suddenly he has always surprised us, in some strange twist of his story telling he shows us for a moment a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven, what God’s reign will be like. But here, nothing is hidden. He speaks with absolute candour and complete directness.

Yet this very exposure hides the reality from us! The strangeness of the picture leaves us struggling to comprehend: the Sone of Man, glory, angels, and one seated on a throne with all the nations gathered before him. This is beyond what we have known or felt. This strangeness leaves our minds and our emotions wanting to reject what we are being shown. Yet this is what Jesus is holding our for us and for the whole world. This is the final decisive promise to be found in everything he has taught us. He will come in glory, and he will finally and fully establish God’s peaceful and just reign among us.

As much as his picture of the end of the future is strange, his portrayal of the world is realistic and familiar. Jesus’ portrayal of the end of history points us to the reality which has existed all along. All along there have been two kingdoms. From the beginning of time it was ever thus. There has been a kingdom where God has reigned. And there has been a negative counter kingdom. The two have always existed confused and interwoven in the ambiguities of history. Though God’s rule is immeasurably stronger than its opposite the two have always existed together. This is so even if at times the two kingdoms have seemed almost equally matched, and that opposite kingdom has been the one which has been much easier to see. God’s final victory and everlasting reign has never been in doubt. Even as we have witnessed evil thrive, and have seen terrible suffering inflicted. We have also seen grace and mercy, love and kindness emerge and survive even in the midst of those things. The arrival of the Son of Man signals the separation of those two kingdoms. His arrival will fulfil the deepest longing of the whole human race. The end of history will be when all the ambiguities are removed. Good and evil will be disentangled from one another. There will be no more confusion between what might be good and what is evil. What is good will be kept forever. What is evil will be destroyed. The last words of Jesus’ teaching hold out this promise for us. He will return. Evil will be removed. God’s reign of peace will be fully established. However it is actually put into words this is in fact the aspiration of every human society, every culture, every ideology, every religion. The whole human race race longs for the end of suffering and the triumph of goodness.

It is a common feature of Jesus’ teaching to make that division into two parts. Most recently as he has taught in the temple he has pointed again and again to two groups: He has spoken of the wise and the foolish. He has spoken of the worth and the worthless. And he has spoken of the obedient and the disobedient. So it is no surprise that in is final image he pictures the Son of Man sitting on the throne of glory and:

He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats

The end of history is a judgement. Perhaps this is the most discomforting part of the picture for us. We have become resistant to the idea of judgement. And our discomfort is not lessened by the images which Jesus leaves us with as the outcome of this great separation:

You that are accursed, depart from me into the fire prepared for the devil and all his angels.

And his final image:

And these – those to his left, the goat, the unrighteous – will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.

Part of us, and it’s not the best part of us, does fantasise destruction, and punishment of the worst sort on evil doers. And to some extent we as as a society act out those fantasies against those whom we judge criminal. But it is precisely this that which makes the better part of us uncomfortable with the everlasting judgement made in this scene. We have been witnesses to too much of the possibility of injustice to ever feel that a truly just judgement could be possible, especially not one as final as the on being offered here. There are those we are convinced deserve that everlasting judgement against them, but where that boundary, between the sheep and the goats, between the righteous and the accursed, where that boundary lies is a concern to us. It is a concern as old as Abraham and his anxiety over God’s proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. As we move away from the clearly and decisively evil we worry about final judgement resting against anyone, and become uncomfortable with the notion of judgement at all. We worry even about finding ourselves on the right side of the great separation when that time comes.

Jesus is conscious of this, which is why his final sequence of parables addressed to his followers - some of which we have listened to over the last couple of weeks – deal with this topic. He has warned his followers to be productive and to be aware. But in the end for us that separation is made on the basis of our relationship with him. Jesus is the key to this final scene. He is decisive in the separation which takes place. He is the one who comes. He is the king of sits on the throne. He is the judge who passes judgement on the righteous and unrighteous. He is the shepherd who separates the sheep from the goats. Which is why we can have confidence in the justice of that last judgement. Jesus is Lord!

What might be easy to miss, is that we are not directly participants in the scene which Jesus is picturing. We are bystanders here. What Jesus pictures for this final moment of history is a gathering together of “all the nations.” There is something lost in translation here. What it says is: πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (panta ta ethne). Which is literally “all the nations”, but also has a more technical meaning. It could equally be translated: All the Gentiles. Those who gather before Jesus are all those who are not already part of God’s people. Everyone’s being and everyone’s ultimate future depends on Jesus, whether they know it or not. Jesus is Lord! This is the decisive claim of Christianity. And it is a universal claim. Jesus is Lord of everyone and everything in every place and every time. This is another aspect of the Christian message which sometimes now discomforts us. 

But the test which Jesus sets is a simple one: Do you feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned. The standard by which Jesus as shepherd and judge separates the people of the world is clear. Do you care for the vulnerable around you? Actually there is noting distinctively Christian about this standard. A wide range of religions, philosophies and moral codes would agree that these actions would form the basis of what we might call righteous behaviour. In the end this is about morality, it is about ethics. Jesus at this point says nothing about faith or belief whatsoever. For the nations and for each person amongst them it really does come down to whether you live a good life or not. Ethics is primary.

But as I said we are bystanders in this scene. This is not the standard which is being applied to us. When it comes to his own Jesus does talk about faith and about trust and about loyalty. It is about our relationship, individually and as a people to him. Except, how is that loyalty expressed? The nations are mystified when judgement is passed against them. Both sides, both the righteous and the accursed cannot understand what has happened to them, and how they missed the test that had been set:

When was it Lord that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison.

Neither the righteous nor the accursed recognised the presence of Jesus in the world. Both acted out of their own characters, for good or evil. In the end they are being judged for the content of their souls. We too will be judged for the content of our souls, a content which is shaped by our loyalty Jesus and the effect that loyalty has on who we are. So the question in all of Jesus teaching for us, in all his promises and warnings about the coming of God’s kingdom, is; where do we find Jesus and how do we express that loyalty? And this is determined by one last thing which Jesus says about himself:

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned. Where human needs exists there Jesus is to be found. Those who know nothing of Jesus can be and will be judged by Jesus because he is always present in the poor and vulnerable. How they are treated is how he is being treated. The answer to the question, how do we express or faith, how do we show our loyalty to Jesus? is the same. By taking care of those in need. In a different place Jesus expresses his final teaching to those who are his followers in different words:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Amen.

When the Son of Man Comes by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (15/11/20): Theology Matters!

 Theology Matters!

Matthew 25:14-30

The Parables of the Talents is an odd parable. It is something of an outlier in Jesus’ story telling. It seems out of place. It is odd because it appears to run counter to most of what Jesus teaches elsewhere. The conclusion seems particularly troublesome:

For to those who have more will be given and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away.

This does seem to be the very opposite of the great turning over which Jesus’ picture of the Kingdom of God proposes. More often we would expect Jesus to say something like:

He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (Lk. 2:53)

Or

Blessed are the poor (in spirit) (Mt. 5:3)

Over all Jesus seems much more a “take from the rich to give to the poor” sort of a guy, rather than the reverse which is what he appears to be proposing here. The parable itself does seem to endorse a kind of what we might call entrepreneurial acquisitiveness. The first two slaves are commended for taking the money and using it to make more money. So that Jesus can be seen to endorse capitalism, which is by definition making money out of money. Or at the very least he appears to be endorsing a king of meritocracy, where those who try hardest get the greatest rewards. Where those who have most deserve what they have because they earned it. Which again seems to run counter to the message of universal grace or unmerited love which we might more normally associate with the Kingdom of God. This does seem to be a much more conventional message, in the world’s terms than we would normally expect from Jesus. The one thing perhaps to note is that Jesus’ parable is realistic on one sense, he doesn’t pretend that the world is a level playing field. Those who succeed in his parable, like those who succeed in the real world are those who head start. The two successful slave are the ones who given most to begin with, five times and twice as much as the unsuccessful slave. So taken alongside all the rest of Jesus’ teaching this is an odd parable it is troublesome.

That it makes us feel odd is probably intentional. Jesus tells his story in a way that provokes our sympathy for the third slave. As he often does Jesus tells a story that repeats an idea or image one and half times. The man going on a journey has three slaves, with who he divides his property.

To one he gave five talents, to another two and to another one.

We love an underdog. We do in part because Jesus and the whole bible have taught us to love the underdog. Time and again in the Bible God sides with the younger son, the unloved wife and always with the poor, the dispossessed and the outcast, with the widow and the orphan. We know we’re supposed to be on the third slave’s side. The first slave takes the money and uses it to gain more money. Jesus repeats the scene once: the second slave takes the money and uses it to gain more money. Jesus begins to repeat the scene a second time, but then veers off in another, unexpected direction:

But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his masters money.

In Jesus’ stories we are normally expected to identify or sympathise with the third character to appear: think of the sequence “priest, Levite, Samaritan.” It’s not an accident that that parable is called “The Good Samaritan.” And here far more attention is paid to the third slave who fails, than to the others who succeed. We are given that detailed picture of what he does with the money. Which itself would have greeted by Jesus’ listeners with a knowing nod. By burying it in the ground the slave had done the prudent thing, it was a widely accepted principle that one couldn’t be held responsible for the loss of money which had been secured by burying it. We hear in detail this slave’s interaction with his Master when the accounts are settled. And his fate is clearly announced. We have been set up to side with the third slave. So that when he is condemned: 

As for this worthless slave throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

We are shocked and outraged. And in fact Jesus has set us up to feel that way! This is an odd parable, which it would seem is meant to trouble us.

But what is the message for us? Why has Jesus set us up like this, to feel dismayed when he condemns someone he has led us to sympathise with? Often when talking about the Parable of the Talents preachers begin be figuring out how much a talent is worth. (I’m pretty sure I’ve done that myself in the past.) A talent is a considerable amount of money. So one thing should be noted from the start, whilst five and two talents are clearly more than one; one talent is still a large sum. The third slave is not poor. He is very far, at least at the outset, from being dispossessed. He is not the usual object of sympathy in the Bible or in Jesus’ story telling. But worrying about the value of a talent somewhat misses the point. Just for once Jesus isn’t talking about real money. One thing we should always remember about Jesus’ stories; they are fiction. They are indeed “parables.” They are metaphorical, figurative. The elements of the story stand for something else. The pattern and the logic of the story show us something of the pattern and the logic of God’s work and God’s reign.

Historically the English language has actually grasped this. Whilst in Greek a “talent” is a certain (considerable) weight of silver. In English, under the influence of interpreting this parable, “talent” has come to mean something else. It means “natural aptitude or skill.” It is perhaps rather revealing also that in this context the word “gift” is more or less synonymous with the word talent. The association with money is perhaps unfortunate and misleading. Jesus actually says that the talents were given to the slave

To each according to his ability.

Jesus does see that different people have different gifts and aptitudes, and is realistic to recognise that often these gifts have a different economic value. St. Paul finds a different way of expressing the same sort of idea. He pictures a body with each of the members, mouth, eye, hands and feet, having a different purpose. He pictures diversity without emphasising so much different values. Jesus' story sets up a test. This is the normal pattern for his story telling But at this late stage of his ministry, within a day or two of his arrest and execution, with things so urgent, he sets up the test to give a warning. The test will be passed or failed by the slaves according to what they had done with what they had been given. The first two succeed but the third fails. The first two had taken what they were entrusted with and made use of it and as a result it a had grown. The third had taken what he was given and hidden it away, kept it to himself, to make sure that there was no loss or change, as a result it had remained as it was sterile and lifeless. When we keep in mind that Jesus isn’t really talking about money, but about who we are and what we do, the story takes on a quite different complexion.

So the story is warning to us not to be like the third slave. Jesus uses the discomfort he causes in us, to shake us from our complacency. Jesus warns us not to live our lives trying to hold onto to what we have and never taking responsibility or any kind of risk. But the question arises why did the slaves act differently? Why did the third slave fail? And what was it about the first two that meant they succeeded? This becomes clear when we examine the opinion of the master about his slaves and the slaves about opinion about him. The master calls the third slave:

You wicked and lazy slave. 

The master’s opinion of the slave is every bit as negative as the slave’s opinion is of him, who says: 

I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter.

This negative opinion had left the third slave paralysed with fear. He was more concerned with the negative possibilities of failure than with the opportunity that his master’s trust in him had given. He failed to take responsibility and he failed to act. Preferring to take a secure but lifeless route he hid what he had been given where it could do no good to anybody. In the end the negative opinions of the slave and the master toward each other are a reflection of each other. The slave negative opinion of his master leads to the master’s negative opinion of him.

But we by no means have to accept the third slave’s opinion of his master as accurate. The master describes the first two slaves, he calls them: 

good and trustworthy.

What we don’t hear directly is the first two slaves’ opinion of their master. But perhaps like the other slave there would some sort of parallel between what he thinks of them and they think of him. Perhaps they would have said: "We knew that you were a generous and forgiving man." Such a view of their master set them free. It enabled them to take responsibility for what they had been given. They actively used their talents which meant that they increased, for the benefit not only of themselves, but no doubt for those around them.

Theology matters! That is, what we think about God makes a difference. What we think God is like, shapes the kind of people we become. If our picture of God is of an angry old man in the sky, then we are likely to be fearful. We will certainly take no generous risks with our lives. We will tend to hang onto to what we have got, try keep it intact and keep it for ourselves. But that picture of God is in no way the true picture of God which Jesus presents to us. Jesus’ portrayal of God from beginning to end is one of kindness and generosity, love and forgiveness. That true picture of God is what sets us free. Jesus’ invitation is to take responsibility for what each of has been given. We recognise its diversity, and sometimes have to accept that the world at least puts a different financial value on our abilities and aptitudes. But we are called to be open and expansive, to use what we have for the good of ourselves, for our neighbours, for the world and for God’s kingdom.

Jesus’ promises always go with a warning But his warnings also always come with a promise. The promise of a life lived in the knowledge that God is generous and forgiving is to hear at its end:

Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.

Amen.

Theology Matters by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost (08/11/20): Keep Awake! You Foolish Bridesmaids

 

Keep awake! You foolish bridesmaids

Matthew 25:1-13

Christianity is a religion of looking forward! Perhaps it is hard for people sometimes to recognise that. Much of our talk is, of course, about event that took place 2000 years and more ago. But all of those events, in fact, have a bearing on the future. Christianity is a religion of looking forward, forward to a point when the world will be made again. It will be remade, by God, without all the negatives that we currently see and sometimes experience. In that world-made-new there will be: no more want; no more sickness; no more suffering; no more oppression; and even, especially, there will be no more death. Our faith is directed towards that unknown certainty.

The way, as Christians, we have usually talked about this future, is to speak in terms of Christ’s return. The Son of Man will come back and will establish once and for all God’s perfect reign on earth. Again and again Jesus himself pictured this future world. He calls it “the kingdom of heaven” or “the kingdom of God.” But he pictures it in a particular way. Over and over he says: The kingdom of heaven will be like this. . . And more often than not the picture he offers is that of a wedding banquet. Rather than simply the removal of negatives, Jesus offers us a picture of great celebration. Jesus pictures that certain future as a wedding banquet, hosted by God, with himself as the bridegroom at the centre of the celebration. Our experience of celebrations might give us a more concrete, a real sense of how that world will be. Our experience of wedding receptions, at their best, and family celebrations more broadly offer to us a small foretaste of what God will create for us. And perhaps our life together as a church should have more of that quality of celebration than it often does, to remind us that that is what we are looking forward to.

Jesus’ followers, the first people he told his parables to the first generation of Christians anticipated that their “looking forward” wouldn’t last long. They expected that Christ would return within their lifetime. The world made new would come about for them and for their own generation. They would all live to see the promises fulfilled. But the bridegroom is delayed. The fulfilment of the kingdom of heaven has happened, yet. That world made new has taken place, yet. Christ is still to return. God’s rule on Earth still hasn’t come about. It still remains in the future. It is still to be looked forward to. It is a certain, but as yet unrealised possibility. Christians of every generation, ours included so far, have experienced a long night of waiting with always the same question: What do we do? How do we sustain ourselves in the meantime? How do we wait?

As Jesus tells his parables of the kingdom, as he pictures for the wedding banquet, the concern of his teaching about the wedding feast is most often: Who is invited? Who actually turns up and gets in? Who gets to stay and participate in the feast?

Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise

On other occasions Jesus is concerned about those who have received invitations but who for various reasons don’t show up. Here though he is interested in those who do show up. Indeed these are bridesmaids. They are members of the wedding party. Perhaps, after the bridegroom, they are ones who have anticipated the banquet most keenly. Just for once it is not all that difficult to figure out who Jesus is referring to. The bridesmaids are the church. They are all the Christians who in every time and place have been looking forward to the return of Christ and to the establishment of God’s rule. They are us. And Jesus imagining of this church like this has been fully realised in Christian history. The bridegroom has been delayed, beyond that first generation who expected to see Christ’s return, on into centuries, and beyond centuries now into millennia. There have been long ages of Christians looking forward. Of course living for so long with unfulfilled expectation is hard to do. Christians have often stopped looking forward and sometimes they have started to look back. And they have started imagining that the better world that God promised us is behind us not in front, Sometimes they have tried to take themselves, and others around them back there. Like the bridesmaids in that long evening of waiting: As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them [wise and foolish alike] all of them became drowsy and slept. For even the most hopeful, the most forward looking of churches and Christians it is hard to keep being a religion of looking forward when what we are looking forward seems no nearer now than ever so that we might suspect it will never come. It is really hard to be a religion of looking forward.

Of course with Jesus a promise is also always a warning:

But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom!”

The great arch of the Christian story is one of those “just when you least expect it” stories. At the very moment when the Church and Christians have abandoned all hope of Christ’s return, then shall he appear! God’s rule, the kingdom of heaven, the great wedding feast, is a certainty. The great challenge is that its timing is unknown. But its time could come at any moment. Its long delay tempts us to think that it is less certain. Whereas in reality it must always mean, as St Paul puts is:

It is nearer to us now than when we first believed

The other picture and the other name for the arrival of the kingdom, the return of Christ is: judgement day. Which is why Jesus’ promises are always also a warning. And why he reminds us that in the party of bridesmaids there are both wise and foolish. Within Jesus’ picture of the wedding banquet and the universal invitation that he makes to be part of it, within that picture there is also the warning. Just being invited, and just turning up, doesn’t mean you get to stay. Shockingly in one of Jesus’ stories a guest is tossed out for not having the right clothes on. Here we find the contrast between the two groups of bridesmaids. One group gets to take part in the banquet and the other gets left outside. Notice where that division cuts. One part of the Church some Christians will participate in God’s kingdom. And others will not. Whilst it was easy to identify ourselves with the bridesmaids. What is harder is figuring out what the difference between them is meant to mean to us.

When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.

One group of bridesmaids, the foolish, failed to anticipated that the bridegroom might be delayed and so made no provision for the delay. The wise, by contrast, made provision by taking extra oil with them for their lamps, so that whenever the bridegroom arrived their lamps could burn brightly

Addressing this to ourselves perhaps we have ask: What will sustain our faith in Christ, and sustain our faith that Christ is coming, the banquet will take place, even when the delay has been so long?What can we do so that we can keep looking forward? The answer to that of course lies in the rest of Jesus’ teaching. Put rather succinctly to Pharisees and the Herodians only a couple of days before he told his story of wise and foolish bridesmaids Jesus had summarised his own teaching and that of the law and the prophets as:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your mind

Which can really only be fulfilled in the second commandment which offers there:

You shall love your neighbour as yourself

Faith in Christ and obedience to Christ are inseparable. Not as a way of buying our way into to wedding feast. But as a way of sustaining the forward looking attitude that allows us to participate in God’s promises, not only in that unknown certainty of the future, but in our lives now

One scene in this story perhaps trouble us. The bridegroom arrives and the foolish bridesmaids discover the mistake they have made. They beg the wise bridesmaids to give them some of their oil so that they all can go into the banquet. They are rebuffed:

No! There will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.

We sense the response is harsh. Where on earth are they going to find an oil shop open in the middle of the night. The foolish bridesmaids depart. When they return they discover that the party has started without them and they have been shut out. Actually I think we identify with the foolish bridesmaids. We can feel their pain. That we do I think is the power of the parable. Subconsciously we suspect that we are the foolish bridesmaids. We worry that we might find ourselves in their shoes. We find ourselves looking for an excuse or some way for them to escape. We condemn the wise bridesmaids lack of generosity and compassion for their less wise sisters. We tell ourselves it would have been the Christian thing to do to share. But there is no escape. And the truth is none of us are as wise, in Jesus’ terms, as we could be. Jesus gently but firmly pushes us into realising that a deeper commitment to him and to his way is what we are called to. As he says:

Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour

Amen.

Keep Awake! You Foolish Bridesmaids by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0