Ready For God's Reign
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
This parable has to be one of the least liked in the whole Bible. It speaks stern words to those who are not ready for the moment of truth -- and it leaves uncomfortably vague just what "being ready" might entail.
To understand what Matthew interprets Jesus to mean by readiness for the final judgment, we have to read his whole gospel, and in particular the final third of this chapter, that famous scene of the sheep and the goats, which we'll be reading in another two weeks. But already today there is an important clue to how we can be ready for judgment, in the centrality to this parable of the symbol of a supply of oil.
Oil was an essential commodity to the people of Jesus' day. The beautiful silver-grey leaves and gnarled trunks of olive trees were visible everywhere in Palestine, because everyone needed lots of olive oil for daily life. You needed oil to cook, and to make your food filling and tasty. Olive oil was the base for such essential things as medicines, as well as for such luxuries as cosmetics and perfume. Oil and grain were among the mandated sacrifices to be offered in the temple. And oil was used in the most sacred rituals of the nation, the anointing of kings and priests, where it became a rich symbol of God's favor.
And, of course, oil was used as fuel. In those days before electric lights, the usual means of illumination was the humble clay lamp, whose wick drank precious oil to burn brightly so all could see. And so, not surprisingly, the oil that fueled those lamps became a symbol of human obedience to God, a way of talking about the kind of life that God can shine through to brighten the dark places of the world.
Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Micah picked up on this symbolism when he asked, "With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? ... Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" And then he went on to answer his question, to describe what was as delicious, as precious, as useful, as necessary and as holy as oil -- in fact, even more precious and necessary and holy, for he maintained that oil was not enough, not even endless rivers of it. No, what is really a worthy offering to God, he said, is a life that draws its fuel from God's own heart. "[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:6-8). This life of piety outweighs the richest sacrifice; loving justice and humility are better far than oil.
So when we get to Jesus' parable, the mention of oil is a kind of clue to the alert listener that what we need to have in good supply to face the judgment is a life of obedience to the commandments of God. It is a life in which justice and kindness can be seen to flow freely and to fuel all one's actions -- a life that makes you, as Isaiah said, a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3); or, as Jesus said earlier in Matthew, a lamp on a stand, giving light to all in the house -- the light, in fact, of the world (Matthew 5:15, 14). To have oil is to burn bright in this world with the nature of God. That's how we welcome God's kingdom.
When Matthew recorded this parable, he did so for the sake of a church that was getting off-track in its anxiety about the future. The first Christians thought Jesus was returning for them soon; and when he didn't, when years dragged into decades and the end still hadn't come, many began to get caught up in trying to read the "signs of the times" and figure out when Christ would come -- in spite of Jesus' warnings that no one could know, that even Jesus himself did not know, only the Father (Matthew 24:36). That didn't stop people from speculating, and arguing, and creating much more heat than light.
Others, on the other hand, when Jesus did not return, simply gave up hoping in him, and returned to their former, non-Christian, lives and commitments.
Some things never change. The turn of the year 2000, for instance, saw all kinds of bizarre speculation and panic over the possibility that our computer-dependent society would come unglued when the numbers turned over. When that didn't happen, a lot of backyard bunkers began looking pretty silly and a lot of generators got returned as people resumed ordinary life.
But their mistake was not confined to the year 2000. There is, and for about the last century has been, a whole wing of the church -- and for the last thirty years or so, a very lucrative movie and publishing industry as well -- that is forever cranking up anxiety by means of apocalyptic speculation. "The end is near. Don't be left behind!" Meanwhile, we see many other people drifting away from the church as it seems less and less relevant to daily life; and many others for whom religion is not so much a matter of genuine commitment to the reign of God as it is a matter of buying fire insurance. Pay the minimum possible -- say, a theologically correct confession of Jesus as Savior -- and you'll be bailed out when you need it.
In fact, many people who bring their babies to me for baptism are at least a little afraid that if not baptized their babies will go to hell! Don't even get me started on what awful theology that is -- that's another day's sermon. Yet, these same people who fear that God would condemn someone to hell on the basis of a technicality of water seem also to think that God is concerned about nothing more than that technicality of water, since once the ceremony is completed we rarely see them again. Once saved from hell, whether real or imagined, it doesn't seem to occur to them that God might have anything more of importance to say to their lives or to ask of them as God's people.
That is an appalling distortion of the Christian promise of salvation, which we have allowed to become current, and it is one that today's parable speaks to sternly. Just showing up, Matthew warns, is not enough -- even if you hang around the bridegroom's gate for much longer than some of the people we baptize. Being there is not all it takes -- as the saying goes, coming to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in the garage makes you a car (although it's a not bad place to start!).
Jesus never intended to offer himself as fire insurance. The promise he holds out is both infinitely more wonderful and infinitely more demanding than "get out of hell free," or even "pie in the sky when you die." It's about being whole -- "salvation" means "wholeness" or "health" -- and that involves life here and now, not just after we die.
Throughout his ministry Jesus spoke of a new creation, a reality that, if it will be fully realized only at his return, nonetheless begins to take visible shape here and now in the lives of those who follow him: the already-present yet still-to-be-realized kingdom of heaven or reign of God.
It is this that Jesus calls us to be part of, even though the world around us hasn't caught on. "Live tomorrow's life today." Fuel yourselves with all that you know and have experienced of the love and the nature of God and of God's concern for the world; let that oil, drawn into the fibers of your daily existence, flame brightly, bringing God's light to your world. Get some oil in your lamp, keep on burning!
A fire-insurance baptism isn't going to do that -- a hurried dash to the bridegroom's house with your lamp half-full and no thought to bring more for the long hours ahead. Far too many of us, even those who do show up for church and Sunday school, are like the dozing bridesmaids, nodding off when we should be paying attention, drifting off into purely personal priorities and commitments instead of actively living into the coming reign of Christ. Far too many of us are falling asleep and letting our oil run out. We may show up here Sunday after Sunday, or at least often enough that the minister knows us -- we may even be ministers -- but there's little to distinguish us from any other well-behaved North American. Is that all the kingdom of God is about -- being nice people? I don't think so!
When Jesus calls us the light of the world, he's assuming that the world is in darkness. And I don't believe he means just the world outside our national borders, or even only the world outside our church doors. Remember back in the Sermon on the Mount when he spoke of how the eye is the lamp of the body? "If your eye is healthy," he said, "your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23).
The light we take in, the light we live by, is another way of talking about what we're ultimately committed to, often without realizing it. It's the lens we see through. As North Americans, we naturally see things in light of consumerism, in light of individualism, in light of certain political and economic and social realities that just seem to us to be given. To a point, there's nothing wrong with that: we are, after all, called to live life where we are and not where we aren't. But when we start to imagine that these conditions are "The Way It Is" and "The Way It Should Be" -- or, perhaps more accurately, when we fail to imagine that there could be any other way of viewing the world -- then the light in us is darkness, and great is our darkness indeed.
The length and breadth of scripture, and the living Spirit of Jesus, soak us in a whole different light, a rich-as-oil vision that we're invited to draw up into the fibers of our being, and which will then burst into brilliance showing up all the dark corners of our lives and of the world. And that vision, that light, is God's profound love for all of humanity, all of creation, and God's insistence on justice and compassion in all human dealings. An individualistic consumer society certainly isn't going to deliver that! To imagine that it can is deep darkness indeed.
If our eye is going to be healthy, if we're going to live as people with light to share, we need to buy into another vision -- beginning with our imagination, and flowing then into every aspect of our lives. We need to stock up on oil, on dedication to the reign of God in the middle of here-and-now.
If I believe, for instance, that God created the earth, whether directly or through evolution, then I will be concerned with respecting the earth and its ecosystems, and with reducing the size of my ecological footprint: by leaving the car at home when possible, by turning down my thermostat a few degrees, by minimizing my use of harmful chemicals, and so on. My belief in God as creator has some practical implications!
Similarly, if I believe that God demands justice in all human dealings, then I will not be content to seek bargains on my clothes or demand the cheapest possible food, because to do so is to demand that the people who grow my food and make my clothing not be justly compensated for their work. I will instead patronize stores that source their products in socially and environmentally responsible ways, and employers who pay a living wage and who give back to their communities. This is living by the light of God's love. It is what Jesus calls me to do. It's a matter of oil in the lamp. And it is the only way to have a future worth having, here or hereafter. Jesus is quite unequivocal about what happens if we choose not to have oil.
We do not like to think that our actions or inactions can have such dire consequences, but they do. Jesus warns us to brighten our vision with the whole of what we know about God's nature and will, and to take seriously what God says about the world to come. He urges us not to wait passively for it, or to think that there's a cheap ticket into it, but instead to stock up on the oil of anticipation: to live tomorrow's life today, so that when God's future arrives we are ready to welcome it, and to be welcomed into it. Amen.
To understand what Matthew interprets Jesus to mean by readiness for the final judgment, we have to read his whole gospel, and in particular the final third of this chapter, that famous scene of the sheep and the goats, which we'll be reading in another two weeks. But already today there is an important clue to how we can be ready for judgment, in the centrality to this parable of the symbol of a supply of oil.
Oil was an essential commodity to the people of Jesus' day. The beautiful silver-grey leaves and gnarled trunks of olive trees were visible everywhere in Palestine, because everyone needed lots of olive oil for daily life. You needed oil to cook, and to make your food filling and tasty. Olive oil was the base for such essential things as medicines, as well as for such luxuries as cosmetics and perfume. Oil and grain were among the mandated sacrifices to be offered in the temple. And oil was used in the most sacred rituals of the nation, the anointing of kings and priests, where it became a rich symbol of God's favor.
And, of course, oil was used as fuel. In those days before electric lights, the usual means of illumination was the humble clay lamp, whose wick drank precious oil to burn brightly so all could see. And so, not surprisingly, the oil that fueled those lamps became a symbol of human obedience to God, a way of talking about the kind of life that God can shine through to brighten the dark places of the world.
Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Micah picked up on this symbolism when he asked, "With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? ... Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" And then he went on to answer his question, to describe what was as delicious, as precious, as useful, as necessary and as holy as oil -- in fact, even more precious and necessary and holy, for he maintained that oil was not enough, not even endless rivers of it. No, what is really a worthy offering to God, he said, is a life that draws its fuel from God's own heart. "[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:6-8). This life of piety outweighs the richest sacrifice; loving justice and humility are better far than oil.
So when we get to Jesus' parable, the mention of oil is a kind of clue to the alert listener that what we need to have in good supply to face the judgment is a life of obedience to the commandments of God. It is a life in which justice and kindness can be seen to flow freely and to fuel all one's actions -- a life that makes you, as Isaiah said, a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3); or, as Jesus said earlier in Matthew, a lamp on a stand, giving light to all in the house -- the light, in fact, of the world (Matthew 5:15, 14). To have oil is to burn bright in this world with the nature of God. That's how we welcome God's kingdom.
When Matthew recorded this parable, he did so for the sake of a church that was getting off-track in its anxiety about the future. The first Christians thought Jesus was returning for them soon; and when he didn't, when years dragged into decades and the end still hadn't come, many began to get caught up in trying to read the "signs of the times" and figure out when Christ would come -- in spite of Jesus' warnings that no one could know, that even Jesus himself did not know, only the Father (Matthew 24:36). That didn't stop people from speculating, and arguing, and creating much more heat than light.
Others, on the other hand, when Jesus did not return, simply gave up hoping in him, and returned to their former, non-Christian, lives and commitments.
Some things never change. The turn of the year 2000, for instance, saw all kinds of bizarre speculation and panic over the possibility that our computer-dependent society would come unglued when the numbers turned over. When that didn't happen, a lot of backyard bunkers began looking pretty silly and a lot of generators got returned as people resumed ordinary life.
But their mistake was not confined to the year 2000. There is, and for about the last century has been, a whole wing of the church -- and for the last thirty years or so, a very lucrative movie and publishing industry as well -- that is forever cranking up anxiety by means of apocalyptic speculation. "The end is near. Don't be left behind!" Meanwhile, we see many other people drifting away from the church as it seems less and less relevant to daily life; and many others for whom religion is not so much a matter of genuine commitment to the reign of God as it is a matter of buying fire insurance. Pay the minimum possible -- say, a theologically correct confession of Jesus as Savior -- and you'll be bailed out when you need it.
In fact, many people who bring their babies to me for baptism are at least a little afraid that if not baptized their babies will go to hell! Don't even get me started on what awful theology that is -- that's another day's sermon. Yet, these same people who fear that God would condemn someone to hell on the basis of a technicality of water seem also to think that God is concerned about nothing more than that technicality of water, since once the ceremony is completed we rarely see them again. Once saved from hell, whether real or imagined, it doesn't seem to occur to them that God might have anything more of importance to say to their lives or to ask of them as God's people.
That is an appalling distortion of the Christian promise of salvation, which we have allowed to become current, and it is one that today's parable speaks to sternly. Just showing up, Matthew warns, is not enough -- even if you hang around the bridegroom's gate for much longer than some of the people we baptize. Being there is not all it takes -- as the saying goes, coming to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in the garage makes you a car (although it's a not bad place to start!).
Jesus never intended to offer himself as fire insurance. The promise he holds out is both infinitely more wonderful and infinitely more demanding than "get out of hell free," or even "pie in the sky when you die." It's about being whole -- "salvation" means "wholeness" or "health" -- and that involves life here and now, not just after we die.
Throughout his ministry Jesus spoke of a new creation, a reality that, if it will be fully realized only at his return, nonetheless begins to take visible shape here and now in the lives of those who follow him: the already-present yet still-to-be-realized kingdom of heaven or reign of God.
It is this that Jesus calls us to be part of, even though the world around us hasn't caught on. "Live tomorrow's life today." Fuel yourselves with all that you know and have experienced of the love and the nature of God and of God's concern for the world; let that oil, drawn into the fibers of your daily existence, flame brightly, bringing God's light to your world. Get some oil in your lamp, keep on burning!
A fire-insurance baptism isn't going to do that -- a hurried dash to the bridegroom's house with your lamp half-full and no thought to bring more for the long hours ahead. Far too many of us, even those who do show up for church and Sunday school, are like the dozing bridesmaids, nodding off when we should be paying attention, drifting off into purely personal priorities and commitments instead of actively living into the coming reign of Christ. Far too many of us are falling asleep and letting our oil run out. We may show up here Sunday after Sunday, or at least often enough that the minister knows us -- we may even be ministers -- but there's little to distinguish us from any other well-behaved North American. Is that all the kingdom of God is about -- being nice people? I don't think so!
When Jesus calls us the light of the world, he's assuming that the world is in darkness. And I don't believe he means just the world outside our national borders, or even only the world outside our church doors. Remember back in the Sermon on the Mount when he spoke of how the eye is the lamp of the body? "If your eye is healthy," he said, "your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23).
The light we take in, the light we live by, is another way of talking about what we're ultimately committed to, often without realizing it. It's the lens we see through. As North Americans, we naturally see things in light of consumerism, in light of individualism, in light of certain political and economic and social realities that just seem to us to be given. To a point, there's nothing wrong with that: we are, after all, called to live life where we are and not where we aren't. But when we start to imagine that these conditions are "The Way It Is" and "The Way It Should Be" -- or, perhaps more accurately, when we fail to imagine that there could be any other way of viewing the world -- then the light in us is darkness, and great is our darkness indeed.
The length and breadth of scripture, and the living Spirit of Jesus, soak us in a whole different light, a rich-as-oil vision that we're invited to draw up into the fibers of our being, and which will then burst into brilliance showing up all the dark corners of our lives and of the world. And that vision, that light, is God's profound love for all of humanity, all of creation, and God's insistence on justice and compassion in all human dealings. An individualistic consumer society certainly isn't going to deliver that! To imagine that it can is deep darkness indeed.
If our eye is going to be healthy, if we're going to live as people with light to share, we need to buy into another vision -- beginning with our imagination, and flowing then into every aspect of our lives. We need to stock up on oil, on dedication to the reign of God in the middle of here-and-now.
If I believe, for instance, that God created the earth, whether directly or through evolution, then I will be concerned with respecting the earth and its ecosystems, and with reducing the size of my ecological footprint: by leaving the car at home when possible, by turning down my thermostat a few degrees, by minimizing my use of harmful chemicals, and so on. My belief in God as creator has some practical implications!
Similarly, if I believe that God demands justice in all human dealings, then I will not be content to seek bargains on my clothes or demand the cheapest possible food, because to do so is to demand that the people who grow my food and make my clothing not be justly compensated for their work. I will instead patronize stores that source their products in socially and environmentally responsible ways, and employers who pay a living wage and who give back to their communities. This is living by the light of God's love. It is what Jesus calls me to do. It's a matter of oil in the lamp. And it is the only way to have a future worth having, here or hereafter. Jesus is quite unequivocal about what happens if we choose not to have oil.
We do not like to think that our actions or inactions can have such dire consequences, but they do. Jesus warns us to brighten our vision with the whole of what we know about God's nature and will, and to take seriously what God says about the world to come. He urges us not to wait passively for it, or to think that there's a cheap ticket into it, but instead to stock up on the oil of anticipation: to live tomorrow's life today, so that when God's future arrives we are ready to welcome it, and to be welcomed into it. Amen.
