Keep awake. We only have three
Sundays left in our church lectionary year that will restart with the coming
first Sunday of Advent. For these three final Sundays, our gospel readings will
all be read from my favorite chapter of Matthew, chapter 25. Here we find Jesus
has left the Temple, where he confronted the scribes and Pharisees, and is now
sitting up on the Mount of Olives speaking to the disciples. The Mount of
Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, has prophetic significance that is important
to Matthew’s specifically Jewish audience. The Mount of Olives is mentioned in
Zechariah 14 as the place where The Lord will return, signaling the Messianic
Age. Jesus and his disciples would have been sitting on the mountain, across
the Kidron Valley, looking down on the city and the Temple’s courts as Jesus
compared the coming Kingdom of God to ten bridesmaids waiting for the arrival
of a groom.
Those in the early church had to
come to terms with the reality that Jesus did not return to them as soon and as
fully as they expected. When they began to accept this and adjust, their
objective changed. It was around the time of this realization that the people
decided to write down what they knew of Jesus to preserve the stories of the
Gospel for generations to come.
They continued waiting expectantly while living faithfully,
courageously, and hopefully.
Jesus tells this story of the ten
young women in order to clarify for his audience the kind of time in which they
live. For Matthew, the bridegroom’s delay is more of an opportunity than a
problem. Greek has two different words for time. “Chronos” is what is used to
describe physical time and what we consider to be minutes, hours, days, weeks,
and years. “Kairos,” on the other hand, is the time transcendent of physics.
Kairos is God’s time, the time of the Kingdom of Heaven to come.
Christians live in a perpetual
state of watchfulness, waiting on the coming Kingdom of God to interrupt our
lives here on earth. Even if and when the faithfully people of God fall asleep
waiting on the bridegroom, their preparations displayed in how they have shown
mercy and forgiveness to one another while restoring fractured relationships,
leave them prepared and ready for the sudden arrival. Keep awake
therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Keep awake because God
exists in kairos and not chronos time.
And Jesus says there will be two
kinds of people at that time. There will be wise and faithful servants, and
there will be less wise, or foolish servants. The wise and faithful ones are
those that God will find living as good stewards of what The Lord has provided
to them to use as best they are able to spread the love of God in and to the
world. The less wise are those who have taken advantage of what God has
provided. The wicked are those who have abused the people in their lives. The
less wise have spent too much of their lives surrounded by those whose
lifestyles are centered around self-pleasure and fulfillment. These are they
who miss out on knowing the fullness of what a life with God can bring. These
are they who the groom will not know when he finally comes.
The foolish women were so similar
to the wise. They too desired just as much to meet the bridegroom. They too spent
their life waiting and living for this moment. They had gone out with the
others. But when the groom did not come as soon as they expected, they found
themselves distracted and distraught. When the time came, they recognized their
mistake of neglecting the oil. They were suffering from a real oil crisis. The
only difference between the wise and foolish women is the wise women brought
extra oil with them and came prepared to wait.
At this time last year I was
serving the historic Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee,
which is a block away from the Ryman Auditorium. Our sanctuary was used as a
venue for the Americana Music Awards where this year the show opened with a
song, Going Down to the River, by Doug
Seegers. Doug wrote his first song
at 16, and, after finishing high school, joined a country band and moved to
Austin, performing under the stage name Duke the Drifter. It was hard and one
day, Duke the Drifter just split."I didn't even say goodbye to
anybody," Seegers says. "For Pete's sake. I just, like, hitchhiked
down the road." He headed back to New York, learned a trade and started a
family — but the music bug never left him. Some 20 years later, Seegers said
goodbye to his now-grown children and former wife, and headed for Nashville, to
play music. But again, his music career stalled. Another 17 years passed — and
after many years of unsteady work, Seegers ended up homeless, living under a
bridge and busking for coins.
Then, last fall, something incredible happened. Jill
Johnson, a Swedish singer with her own TV show, came through Nashville. She was
shooting footage for a segment about down-and-out musicians and visited a food
pantry where Seegers hung out. When Doug began to play Going Down to the
River, she was overwhelmed. Before he knew
what was happening, Seegers was whisked off to a studio to record the song for
the show. Days after it aired, the song went to No. 1 on Swedish iTunes.
"I was slapping myself in the face,"
Seegers says. "I kept saying, 'Am I dreaming? When am I going to wake up
and go back to living under the bridge?' " People started sending money to
help Seegers. A Swedish label offered him a record deal. A prominent record
producer back in Nashville signed on to make the record, and they finished it
in three days.
For one track, someone called in a favor with one of
Seegers' longtime heroes, Emmylou Harris.
Harris recorded her tracks separately — but she was so moved by Seegers' voice
that she called him to let him know.
"I
pick up the phone and she says, 'Doug, this is Emmylou Harris,' " Seegers
says. "And I immediately start crying. I couldn't even talk, I was crying
so hard. It was a dream come true for me."[1]
Keeping awake and waiting on God is
a part of faith. Faith is our oil that sustains our lamp and keeps it burning.
Faith is the oil for our existence, it is our connection to God. Our
empowerment found in God’s Spirit and our relationships both with God and with
one another.
Jesus wants us to know: this life,
as we are living it, is not as good as it gets. The bridegroom’s delay does not
mean he will not come. Keep awake. The wise bridesmaids ask us to live in hope
for what has been promised, for what will be but is not complete yet. We
each need in order to best do our part to keep our own lamps lit. This oil crisis is about putting things in the
right order. While one lesson in this text is that there are some preparations
you have to make for yourself, another lesson is this: you
can help other people after you’ve filled your own lamp. It is as simple as
putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting someone else with theirs. What will it take for you to refill your lamp with
oil? What are the reserves you need to shore up so that you will be able to
light a path for someone else?
Jesus comes when Christians live in hope and never give up.
Jesus comes when faithful disciples express love and compassion for others
while working for justice and peace. The challenge for us is to keep enough oil
on hand for the lamps when the bridegroom appears, and in the meantime to roll
up our sleeves and work for the kingdom that is already and always coming and
breaking into history. Keep awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
May it be so?
[1] Pearson, Vince (2014) Homeless In
Nashville, Huge in Sweden. National Public Radio Morning Edition broadcast
October 9. Retrieved online http://www.npr.org/2014/10/09/354642327/homeless-in-nashville-huge-in-sweden
