Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
What are we to make of it?
What are we to make of these lessons the church gives us here at the end of the church year? Only two Sundays now stand between us and a new year beginning with the First Sunday of Advent on 30 November.
It is increasingly clear that there is no stopping it now! With each of our lessons this morning we are careening not just to the end of the year but actually to the end of it all—to that very moment when the jig’s finally up, the dance is over, and Elvis has left the building!
Each of the lessons this morning yields a little different flavor of that decisive moment.
Take Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. He gives us a very hopeful picture of that end, doesn’t he? When the Lord comes with the archangel’s call and the sound of the trumpet, the dead in Christ will rise first followed by any of us who may still be alive. So then we may grieve for those who have died, but we do so not without hope, for eventually we will all be with the Lord, together again, forever! And “forever” is a very long time indeed.
But before we get too attached to these warm fuzzy feelings that may be bubbling up inside as we consider this “forever” with Jesus and those we love, Jesus shares a haunting story about ten bridesmaids, five foolish and five wise.
While the groom is delayed, the lamps of the foolish go out because they don’t have enough oil. And guess what? The wise ones, with reserves enough for themselves, aren’t willing (or possibly able) to share their oil with the ones who don’t have enough.
You see, maybe this “oil” is something deeply personal, the fruit of a renewed heart and a faithful life, a life that has to be lived day by day and can’t be “given away” however much we might wish it could.
So when the bridegroom finally does arrive late into the night, the foolish bridesmaids find that they are unable to enter the party and beat on the door, “let us in, let us in,” only to hear the voice of the bridegroom, “Really? I don’t think we’ve met. I don’t know who you are.”
Take heed! Get real!
For those who hear God’s word proclaimed time and again, who have opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to act upon that word but haven’t quite gotten around to it, haven’t ever gotten serious enough to do what they “ought” and “need” to do—in order that they may have enough oil for their lamp—well these find that when the end does come it is as dark as it is cold.
That disconcerting image, stuck in the darkness, might actually be preferable to what the prophet Amos has to say, or actually, what he declares that “the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord” has to say:
to those who put their trust in being “chosen” by God and somehow just a little more blessed than others.
to those who can’t really be much bothered by a lack of justice and may themselves be the very agents of that injustice to their brother, their neighbor, the stranger among us because, to quote Amos, they’d rather “lie around on beds of ivory” without concern for the welfare of others. . . .
to those who are very religious, observing the form (traditions) of worship but lacking its heart and soul. . . .
God forbid should we find ourselves among these people, we have a surprise coming our way . . . and maybe soon.
For the Day of the Lord will come but will not be the day of victory we thought, but rather it will be like escaping from a lion only to meet a bear, seeking rest only to be bitten by a snake.
For those who don’t have a heart for God and for others, all the pounding and the pleas of “let us in, let us in, let us in” will be but empty noise in the darkness.
And if we are too busy to be bothered with doing what God calls us to do and tells us to do, well then God is just going to have to come and do it himself . . . to let justice roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
For God has a heart, a heart for those in any kind of bondage (the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, yes, even the fabulously rich but who have come to know that all the things in the world have no power whatsoever to give them that salvation for which they hunger and thirst).
God has a heart for those who know that their only real hope is in “the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord.”
So what are we to make of it? What are we to make of these lessons the church gives us here at the end of the church year?
It may be not-so-good news for any of us who don’t actually care what God wants. And, should this be the case for us, it is worth noting again that Amos makes it perfectly clear that the more “religious” we are, the worse it will be for us . . . for we have lost sight of what “true religion” is all about—a renewed heart, a transformed life.
But these end-of-the-year, end-of-time lessons will be good news, very good news indeed, for anyone who is able to hear in them an invitation, perhaps at this very moment to turn, to turn again to the Lord, to seek God’s will, to act on God’s word, that we may obtain all the oil we need for a light that is always ready for the bridegroom at his coming, so that with a renewed heart and with a transformed life, we may at last hear those precious words,
“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I know you. You are mine.”
Amen.