"Br Prepared" given November 12

"It's like this," says Jesus, "the Coming Kingdom is like 10 young women, five of whom acted prudently, and five who acted imprudently. Some ended up on the inside at the feast. The others were excluded. Keep watch. Keep awake."

It must have been difficult for those who first heard these words in Matthew's Gospel to stay enthused--awake. Despite Jesus’ promise to return soon—it had been at least two generations since his time of earthly ministry. One can almost feel their energy and expectations sagging as Matthew's church settled in for the long haul. Jesus' promised return would not happen soon, it appeared. The Kingdom would be delayed.

You and I have never known a time other than that of a Kingdom delayed. In Jesus, we have experienced the in-breaking of God's Kingdom, but not in its fullness, not in completeness. And so we wait as well.

And one of the skills one gains as one waits is the skill of not getting too excited about the prospects of time fulfilled. Don't drop everything and run when someone shouts, "He's back!" That will only lead to disappointment when things don't work out as expected. False alarms produce people who no longer move when they hear the alarm sound. We all remember the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Half of the young women in the parable prepared themselves, procured oil for their lamps, and were ready for the beginning of the wedding festivities. Half were caught unawares, off guard when doors shut and the music began. Their cries of, "Lord, Lord, open to us," went unheeded.

Life is like that, Jesus seems to say. We say we want God in our lives, that we pray God's will to be done at last on earth as it is in heaven. Yet, when the alarm sounds, when the cry goes out, we are not ready. To be fair, it is hard to wait, particularly when the wait lasts for two thousand years plus seventeen—give or take a decade or two.

Life may be more urgent than we know. Our lives do not go on forever. The parade passes by. Will we be ready? Will we be prepared to commit?

Jesus' use of parables in his teaching is meant to surprise—to shake us up, to disrupt the accustomed flow of our lives, to make us sit up and take notice. The placid surface of our lives is disturbed by the form of the parable.

Most of us know what it's like to be unprepared. I say "most of us" because I know there is a disgusting minority of people who always do things on time—or worse early. They never rush their income tax form to the Post Office at 11:59 on the 15th of April. They've never needed an extension on the deadline for their term paper. They've even got their Christmas shopping done for this year.

You and I all know people like that. These are the same people whose lawns are always immaculate and whose cars never have a McDonald's cup protruding from under the front seat. They make the rest of us look slothful and uncaring. Yes, many of us can relate to the five foolish bridesmaids who neglected to bring extra oil for their lamps when the crisis finally arrived.

Of course, Jesus is talking not just about any crisis, but rather the crisis which occurs when the Kingdom of Heaven breaks into our lives, when there is the Advent of God. So many of Jesus' parables talk about the problem of the absence of the master followed by the master's sudden, unexpected return. But is the return of the master ever truly unexpected? Is that hour when we stand face-to-face with God unexpected?

A young child hears that the circus has come to town and the child jumps for joy, breathless with excitement. The child begs for us to get in the family car and go directly to the city auditorium to buy the tickets. Don't wait. Go now. It's a circus!

Two days before a family's annual vacation, the kids were already packed, ready to travel. They were sleepless the night before, so filled with anticipation.

The parents, on the other hand, were adults. Vacations come and go every year. What's the big deal in a circus? There's no chance of a sellout. We can get tickets next week when it's more convenient. We'll have plenty of time to pack tomorrow. For there will always be a tomorrow, right? Wrong.

On Memorial Day weekend, Donna and I were making a routine trip to our daughter Gwyneth’s home, only to be rear ended on I 94. Although we were shaken up, neither of us were critically injured, though our car was history. It's always a bit frightening to realize how fragile life is. One moment you are moving along fine when, bang, out of nowhere, everything ends.

Many of us have had the experience of friends dying in their 50s. or 40s. A woman in my ordination class died in her late 30s. She died unexpectedly--only six or seven years after ordination. She must have had a heart condition or a tendency toward strokes, or some disease I didn’t know about. Twice a year I receive the Alumni magazine from my college—whether I want it or not. I was shocked. She was the first of my contemporaries to pass on.

Twice a year I get the alumni magazine from my college—whether I want it or not.

And for more than a issues when I turn to the section on the doings of the class of 1969, somebody—a friend, or someone I barely knew--has passed on—unexpectedly—at least to me. When will we learn to stop using that curious expression, "died unexpectedly"? We are creatures. We are terminal, our lives are short-lived as grass in the field, as the Psalm reminds us. Our bodies are not destined to go on forever.

Yet something about us wants to conceive of our lives as a river, a river that goes on and on. Like Little Orphan Annie in the Broadway play—we believe—without thinking about it, “The Sun’ll come up tomorrow”. But whether or not it does, the truth is we won’t necessarily see it. Our lives have a beginning and an end. That means that opportunities come our way that do not come again. There are moments that occur that do not reoccur.

God intrudes, but often only in a momentary, fleeting way. You and I must be ready. Isn’t that the message we take from Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids?

We are toward the end of Matthew's gospel, toward the end of the church's year, and here is a story about endings. Time is up. The ones who were locked out perhaps intended to prepare themselves, had good intentions to get oil for their lamps. You know where the proverbial road of good intentions leads.

Somehow, we continually reassure ourselves with, "There will always be a tomorrow. The sun comes up every morning. Don't rush to judgment."

But life cannot be endlessly deferred. There are opportunities that come to us that don't come again. Jesus urges us to be alert, to watch, to be prepared, for the time in which we live at this moment may be the time for decision, for commitment, and a verdict.

A psychiatrist was commenting on the millions of Americans who require regular doses of sleeping pills and sleep aids in order to sleep. He was asked, why do we need these narcotics in order to get a good night's rest?

"Regret," was the doctor's reply. "The longer a person lives, the more there is to regret. Late at night when things are quiet and our lives pass before us, we need some help suppressing, forgetting the regret."

That insight ought to make us more decisive, more willing to risk, to venture forth, more expectant. I expect that it has just the obverse effect. We have missed so many opportunities by the time we are 50 or 60 or more, why expect more?

"People are always ascribing their situation to good or bad luck," says a management consultant, a man who helps business do better. "But from what I can see," he observed, "good luck, lucky breaks, good opportunities come everyone's way from time to time. The future belongs to those who expect to get a good break and are ready to cash in on that break when it comes their way."

I wonder if this is a parable for our relationship to God. We say that we want God close to us, that we would like God in our lives. But are we ready when God comes?

Novelist Reynolds Price, in his book A Whole New Life, tells of a stunning vision of meeting Jesus, Jesus baptizing in the Jordan, a vision that Reynolds was given one night during the depth of his illness with cancer.

He reports the vision in the book with calm certitude and many people, after having read the book, have written to Price telling him of similar experiences when they vividly knew the real presence of Christ. He has received thousands of these letters.

When he was being interviewed about the book, the most frequently asked question was about the vision. Did it really happen? Did it happen just the way he described it? Was he sure that it was really a vision of Christ or just something in his imagination?

When one interviewer on a New York television program pressed him at length on this, Price finally said, "Look, I'm from North Carolina. Maybe that explains it. When you grow up in that part of the world, you just naturally get the impression that Jesus cares about you and that one day he will get to you. So, when the vision happened, I just thought to myself, "Well, here it is. I was ready for it, being from North Carolina."

Jesus ends today's parable with the admonition to watch. To be ready for the time that is the right time, time fulfilled, our moment when God arrives on tiptoes, or comes rushing in, or surprises us with light, or flirts, or speaks.

St. Augustine, in his Confessions spoke of his life as a journey back to God. He searched for God, only to discover that, throughout his life, God had been searching for him:

Ask the beauty of the earth, the beauty of the sky. Question the order of the stars, the sun whose brightness lights the day, the moon whose splendour softens the gloom of night. Ask of the living creatures that move in the waves, that roam the earth, that fly in the heavens.

Question all these and they will answer, "Yes, we are beautiful." Their very loveliness is their confession of God: for who made these lovely mutable things, but he who is himself unchangeable beauty?

Too late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new, too late have I loved you.

I sought for you abroad, but you were within me though I was far from you. Then you touched me, and I longed for your peace, and now all my hope is only in your great mercy.

Give what you command and then command what you will.

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it rests in you. Who will grant me to rest content in you? To whom shall I turn for the gift of your coming into my heart so that I may forget all the wrong I have done, and embrace you alone, my only good? (Augustine, Confessions, Book 8.)

Question: Have we stopped journeying, ceased searching? Are we so content with present arrangements in our lives that we, unlike Augustine, have no expectation of conversion, of meeting, of being swept up in the great purposes of God? Perhaps those five maidens who neglected to acquire oil for their lamps simply stopped imaging that the promised party would ever begin.