What We Have Left Undone
Preaching
Preaching the Parables
Series IV, Cycle A
There is a mistake in my Bible. Actually, I found two mistakes in the gospel reading this week. One in the text of my study Bible. The other in the action, or inaction of the foolish bridesmaids in Jesus' story.
The mistake I found in my study Bible was in that same story. In my leather-bound, New Oxford Annotated Bible -- the one I use for study, Matthew 25:11-13 reads this way:
Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, "Lord, lord, open to us." But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know you." Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.1
You don't have to be a Bible scholar to know that someone wasn't awake when they proofread that page. Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish maidens is a wake-up call for you and me to proofread our lives.
When I was a child we used to follow Ann Landers' advice column. Some of you are old enough to remember her. Sometimes she would tell a reader to "Wake up and smell the coffee!" -- to pay attention to some reality right in front of them. Jesus, in this little story, is saying the same to you and me. He is saying that reality is "no one lives forever" -- so wake up and look at the way you live.
One way to look at it is that this is "the first day of the rest of your life." That sells well on card shop cards -- and that's true. Another way, though, is that this could be "the last day of the rest of your life." Either way, how's your life? In the living of it, be honest now, are you wise, or are you foolish in the way you spend your days? Are you like the five wise bridesmaids who made provision, or like the five foolish bridesmaids who made a mistake?
You don't have to be an expert on Palestinian wedding customs to get the intent of the story. But it may help to put it in more modern terms. Suppose you've been asked to be a bridesmaid or a groomsman in a big fancy wedding. Appointments have been scheduled months in advance with the fitters for your dress or your tuxedo. You know when the wedding is. You know how long it takes to get your outfit ready. The bride has given you a schedule. If you're wise you don't wait 'til the last minute and you get properly dressed for the occasion. If you are foolish, you wait 'til the day before, and show up at the wedding in blue jeans. Imagine how the bride and groom will respond. That's the gist of Jesus' story. He's saying, life doesn't wait for you. As the television insurance commercial once put it: "Life comes at you fast." You have to be ready for it. Life isn't a (dress) rehearsal. It's the real thing.2
How's life? How are you spending your life? How's your stewardship of what God has given you?
Kristen Groetsch writes:
Say "stewardship" in front of a church full of worshipers and they will hear, 'money!' Christian stewardship encompasses how we manage every detail of our lives and the earth itself, acknowledging all as God's gift. But the word always seems to evoke visions of pledge cards dancing in our heads.3
That's from an article aptly titled, "What Helps People Let Go?" I know. You just finished that sentence, "What helps people let go ... of their money."
And there's no denying it. Life costs money. Lamp oil costs money. Church costs money. But cash isn't the only issue, nor is it even the most important issue when it comes to our stewardship both in church and out. Our money is really only a measure of what matters to us, and how we are spending our lives.
If you want one thing to take away to think about today, take this. Words of wisdom about the "economics" of life. Our word "economics," by the way, comes from the Greek oikonomia which means the management of a household. Whenever Jesus talked about a "steward" he was talking about an oikonomos, an "economist." Not someone who worked for the World Bank or the Federal Reserve, but someone who managed the life of a large and probably affluent household.
I have an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA in finance. But no economist, in our sense of the word, I ever heard or read ever made more sense than the philosopher cum economist, Henry David Thoreau. This is what I want you to take home. Thoreau said, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." Thoreau also put it another way: "If you give money, you spend yourself with it."4
That's what this little wedding story is really about. How you spend yourself, and whether, in the end, when midnight comes, you can say you got what you paid for. It's a stewardship story. It's not just, ala the Boy Scouts, "be prepared" lest you miss something. It's be wise in the way you spend your life, lest you lose something. Lest you lose your self.
Jesus said a lot about money because money says a lot about you and me. Jesus would agree with Thoreau. When you spend your money you spend your life. How well are you spending it?
In Jesus' story, five of the bridesmaids spent wisely; five did not. Churches do that, too. Church researcher, Michael Meier, says,
If your church's vision for ministry is to open the doors for worship, offer Sunday School, pay a pastor's salary and keep the lights on, then it's fine to ask the question, 'How little can we get by with?' But if your vision is to teach people the love of God and reach out to those people, then that's the wrong question.5
All of us can be guilty of that -- of asking the wrong question. The mistake the bridesmaids in Jesus' story made was not dozing off, but not doing what they could have done, and should have done, to get ready for the wedding because they asked the wrong question. That led to doing the wrong thing -- or, actually, to not doing the right thing.
Each week, we pray together
Merciful God,
We confess that we have sinned against you
In thought, word and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
Sins of omission (not doing the right thing) can be just as serious as sins of commission. Jesus was saying that in this little story, if nothing else. If you want to argue that first go read the parable of the talents and the parable of the great judgment, which immediately follow the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, in the same chapter of Matthew's gospel. In each of the three parables in this section of Matthew, it's what people didn't do that incurred God's judgment as sin.
The mistake the foolish bridesmaids made -- the sin they committed -- was not doing what they should have done and what they could have done. Instead of asking the right question: "What do I need to do to get ready for this wedding?" They asked the wrong question: "What can I do to cut my costs for lamp oil?" Instead of, "How important will it be to have a good flashlight tonight?" They asked, "How can I save on batteries today?" A big mistake, as they would soon find out. It was a mistake, not because there's anything wrong with saving money; so long as "saving" money doesn't really mean "serving" money -- something Jesus said often.
Serving money doesn't mean putting it on the mantle and singing hymns to it. Serving money means making making money and keeping money more important than using money to make things happen.
Someone sent me a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. It shows a dejected man at the gates of heaven. Saint Peter is sitting at a desk and checking out the books on his life -- his personal "bottom line." Saint Peter is saying to him: "You had more money than God. That's a big no-no." The note that came with the cartoon suggested it would make a good stewardship theme at church some year. You have more money than God. That's a big no-no! Let the stewardship committee tell you what to do about it.
That is not a bad idea, but I decided it wouldn't work. God doesn't have any money. Which means we all have more money than God has. I checked. There is no line in our church's income budget for God's giving. Only yours and mine. That's all the money God has.
Martin Luther wrote, "If God has given you wealth, give thanks to God, and see that you make the right use of it."6 Ask the right questions. Do the right things. Spend it -- spend yourself -- wisely.
Why don't we? In church and out, we don't. Like the bridesmaids we all know what needs doing. Why don't all of us do it? Why don't we spend our days and our dollars more wisely than we do? And if we did, what would that look like? You'll have to answer that one for yourself.
The Reverend Joan Gray, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, is going around saying we need to answer that one. In a speech at Massanetta Springs, Virginia, Reverend Gray said,
Among our leaders, [in our church] there is too much "money in the bank" thinking. If the early church had thought that way, we wouldn't be here today. As long as we stand on our "money in the bank," we'll never know what God can do.7
I would add, and we'll never know what we could have done or what could have been.
The moderator is not calling for financial irresponsibility -- either personally or in the church. She is asking the richest Christians the world has ever known to look ahead like wise bridesmaids and invest ourselves, days and dollars, in the coming kingdom of God. To realize what we could do and do it.
I found another story about that. Jesus liked stories. He could have told this one. It's titled, "Just What Could We Do?"
The treasurer of a congregation resigned. [I can't imagine why?] The church asked another person to take his position, a man who managed the local grain elevator. The man agreed, under two conditions: 1) That no reports from the treasurer be given for one full year; and 2) That no one ask him any questions during this one-year period.
The church board members gulped, but finally agreed. He was a trusted man in the community and well known since most of them did business with him as manager of the local grain elevator. He was a wealthy man who clearly understood how to handle money. He handled their money every day. He could handle God's money, too.
A year passed. At the meeting of the congregation to review the previous year the treasurer had this report to make. The $250,000 the church owed the bank had been paid off. The minister's salary had been increased substantially. Mission giving was up dramatically. Long deferred maintenance on the church building had been completed. There were no outstanding bills. And the balance in the checking account was more than next year's budget.
A shocked congregation asked "How come?" How could that be possible -- suspecting that perhaps their wealthy treasurer had done it for them himself. "No, you did it!" he said quietly. "Most of you bring your grain to my elevator. As you did business with me, for the past year, I simply withheld ten percent on your behalf and gave it to the church in your name. You never missed it. Do you see what we could do if we would do what we could?"
You know what strikes me as most sad about those foolish bridesmaids? That money wasn't the problem. They weren't short on cash. It says so. When they finally realized what was happening, they rushed off to a first-century CVS, an all-night drugstore, to buy oil for their lamps -- batteries for their lights. They had the money! But by the time they got back it was too late. Too late for what? In the story, the wedding. But Jesus said it has something to do with the kingdom of God.
I don't read this as some do, as a threat that you'd better get your act together in this life, lest it be too late and you miss the good stuff in the next. I read it differently. This is the life you have. Don't miss this one! Spend it wisely. God will take care of the next.
So what did you confess this morning? Those things you've "left undone"? There's still time to do them!
____________
1. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 38NT.
2. Attributed to Australian businessman, Kerry Packer.
3. Kristen Groetsch, "What Helps People Let Go?" The Lutheran, September 1996.
4. Source unknown.
5. Op cit, Groetsch.
6. Ibid.
7. http://www.rocktownweekly.com/news_details.hp?AID=5618&CHID=2.
The mistake I found in my study Bible was in that same story. In my leather-bound, New Oxford Annotated Bible -- the one I use for study, Matthew 25:11-13 reads this way:
Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, "Lord, lord, open to us." But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know you." Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.1
You don't have to be a Bible scholar to know that someone wasn't awake when they proofread that page. Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish maidens is a wake-up call for you and me to proofread our lives.
When I was a child we used to follow Ann Landers' advice column. Some of you are old enough to remember her. Sometimes she would tell a reader to "Wake up and smell the coffee!" -- to pay attention to some reality right in front of them. Jesus, in this little story, is saying the same to you and me. He is saying that reality is "no one lives forever" -- so wake up and look at the way you live.
One way to look at it is that this is "the first day of the rest of your life." That sells well on card shop cards -- and that's true. Another way, though, is that this could be "the last day of the rest of your life." Either way, how's your life? In the living of it, be honest now, are you wise, or are you foolish in the way you spend your days? Are you like the five wise bridesmaids who made provision, or like the five foolish bridesmaids who made a mistake?
You don't have to be an expert on Palestinian wedding customs to get the intent of the story. But it may help to put it in more modern terms. Suppose you've been asked to be a bridesmaid or a groomsman in a big fancy wedding. Appointments have been scheduled months in advance with the fitters for your dress or your tuxedo. You know when the wedding is. You know how long it takes to get your outfit ready. The bride has given you a schedule. If you're wise you don't wait 'til the last minute and you get properly dressed for the occasion. If you are foolish, you wait 'til the day before, and show up at the wedding in blue jeans. Imagine how the bride and groom will respond. That's the gist of Jesus' story. He's saying, life doesn't wait for you. As the television insurance commercial once put it: "Life comes at you fast." You have to be ready for it. Life isn't a (dress) rehearsal. It's the real thing.2
How's life? How are you spending your life? How's your stewardship of what God has given you?
Kristen Groetsch writes:
Say "stewardship" in front of a church full of worshipers and they will hear, 'money!' Christian stewardship encompasses how we manage every detail of our lives and the earth itself, acknowledging all as God's gift. But the word always seems to evoke visions of pledge cards dancing in our heads.3
That's from an article aptly titled, "What Helps People Let Go?" I know. You just finished that sentence, "What helps people let go ... of their money."
And there's no denying it. Life costs money. Lamp oil costs money. Church costs money. But cash isn't the only issue, nor is it even the most important issue when it comes to our stewardship both in church and out. Our money is really only a measure of what matters to us, and how we are spending our lives.
If you want one thing to take away to think about today, take this. Words of wisdom about the "economics" of life. Our word "economics," by the way, comes from the Greek oikonomia which means the management of a household. Whenever Jesus talked about a "steward" he was talking about an oikonomos, an "economist." Not someone who worked for the World Bank or the Federal Reserve, but someone who managed the life of a large and probably affluent household.
I have an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA in finance. But no economist, in our sense of the word, I ever heard or read ever made more sense than the philosopher cum economist, Henry David Thoreau. This is what I want you to take home. Thoreau said, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." Thoreau also put it another way: "If you give money, you spend yourself with it."4
That's what this little wedding story is really about. How you spend yourself, and whether, in the end, when midnight comes, you can say you got what you paid for. It's a stewardship story. It's not just, ala the Boy Scouts, "be prepared" lest you miss something. It's be wise in the way you spend your life, lest you lose something. Lest you lose your self.
Jesus said a lot about money because money says a lot about you and me. Jesus would agree with Thoreau. When you spend your money you spend your life. How well are you spending it?
In Jesus' story, five of the bridesmaids spent wisely; five did not. Churches do that, too. Church researcher, Michael Meier, says,
If your church's vision for ministry is to open the doors for worship, offer Sunday School, pay a pastor's salary and keep the lights on, then it's fine to ask the question, 'How little can we get by with?' But if your vision is to teach people the love of God and reach out to those people, then that's the wrong question.5
All of us can be guilty of that -- of asking the wrong question. The mistake the bridesmaids in Jesus' story made was not dozing off, but not doing what they could have done, and should have done, to get ready for the wedding because they asked the wrong question. That led to doing the wrong thing -- or, actually, to not doing the right thing.
Each week, we pray together
Merciful God,
We confess that we have sinned against you
In thought, word and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
Sins of omission (not doing the right thing) can be just as serious as sins of commission. Jesus was saying that in this little story, if nothing else. If you want to argue that first go read the parable of the talents and the parable of the great judgment, which immediately follow the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, in the same chapter of Matthew's gospel. In each of the three parables in this section of Matthew, it's what people didn't do that incurred God's judgment as sin.
The mistake the foolish bridesmaids made -- the sin they committed -- was not doing what they should have done and what they could have done. Instead of asking the right question: "What do I need to do to get ready for this wedding?" They asked the wrong question: "What can I do to cut my costs for lamp oil?" Instead of, "How important will it be to have a good flashlight tonight?" They asked, "How can I save on batteries today?" A big mistake, as they would soon find out. It was a mistake, not because there's anything wrong with saving money; so long as "saving" money doesn't really mean "serving" money -- something Jesus said often.
Serving money doesn't mean putting it on the mantle and singing hymns to it. Serving money means making making money and keeping money more important than using money to make things happen.
Someone sent me a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. It shows a dejected man at the gates of heaven. Saint Peter is sitting at a desk and checking out the books on his life -- his personal "bottom line." Saint Peter is saying to him: "You had more money than God. That's a big no-no." The note that came with the cartoon suggested it would make a good stewardship theme at church some year. You have more money than God. That's a big no-no! Let the stewardship committee tell you what to do about it.
That is not a bad idea, but I decided it wouldn't work. God doesn't have any money. Which means we all have more money than God has. I checked. There is no line in our church's income budget for God's giving. Only yours and mine. That's all the money God has.
Martin Luther wrote, "If God has given you wealth, give thanks to God, and see that you make the right use of it."6 Ask the right questions. Do the right things. Spend it -- spend yourself -- wisely.
Why don't we? In church and out, we don't. Like the bridesmaids we all know what needs doing. Why don't all of us do it? Why don't we spend our days and our dollars more wisely than we do? And if we did, what would that look like? You'll have to answer that one for yourself.
The Reverend Joan Gray, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, is going around saying we need to answer that one. In a speech at Massanetta Springs, Virginia, Reverend Gray said,
Among our leaders, [in our church] there is too much "money in the bank" thinking. If the early church had thought that way, we wouldn't be here today. As long as we stand on our "money in the bank," we'll never know what God can do.7
I would add, and we'll never know what we could have done or what could have been.
The moderator is not calling for financial irresponsibility -- either personally or in the church. She is asking the richest Christians the world has ever known to look ahead like wise bridesmaids and invest ourselves, days and dollars, in the coming kingdom of God. To realize what we could do and do it.
I found another story about that. Jesus liked stories. He could have told this one. It's titled, "Just What Could We Do?"
The treasurer of a congregation resigned. [I can't imagine why?] The church asked another person to take his position, a man who managed the local grain elevator. The man agreed, under two conditions: 1) That no reports from the treasurer be given for one full year; and 2) That no one ask him any questions during this one-year period.
The church board members gulped, but finally agreed. He was a trusted man in the community and well known since most of them did business with him as manager of the local grain elevator. He was a wealthy man who clearly understood how to handle money. He handled their money every day. He could handle God's money, too.
A year passed. At the meeting of the congregation to review the previous year the treasurer had this report to make. The $250,000 the church owed the bank had been paid off. The minister's salary had been increased substantially. Mission giving was up dramatically. Long deferred maintenance on the church building had been completed. There were no outstanding bills. And the balance in the checking account was more than next year's budget.
A shocked congregation asked "How come?" How could that be possible -- suspecting that perhaps their wealthy treasurer had done it for them himself. "No, you did it!" he said quietly. "Most of you bring your grain to my elevator. As you did business with me, for the past year, I simply withheld ten percent on your behalf and gave it to the church in your name. You never missed it. Do you see what we could do if we would do what we could?"
You know what strikes me as most sad about those foolish bridesmaids? That money wasn't the problem. They weren't short on cash. It says so. When they finally realized what was happening, they rushed off to a first-century CVS, an all-night drugstore, to buy oil for their lamps -- batteries for their lights. They had the money! But by the time they got back it was too late. Too late for what? In the story, the wedding. But Jesus said it has something to do with the kingdom of God.
I don't read this as some do, as a threat that you'd better get your act together in this life, lest it be too late and you miss the good stuff in the next. I read it differently. This is the life you have. Don't miss this one! Spend it wisely. God will take care of the next.
So what did you confess this morning? Those things you've "left undone"? There's still time to do them!
____________
1. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 38NT.
2. Attributed to Australian businessman, Kerry Packer.
3. Kristen Groetsch, "What Helps People Let Go?" The Lutheran, September 1996.
4. Source unknown.
5. Op cit, Groetsch.
6. Ibid.
7. http://www.rocktownweekly.com/news_details.hp?AID=5618&CHID=2.
