Rev Hugh Perry
Readings
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
This passage moves to the end of the story of Joshua and in particular his second farewell speech. Joshua gathers all the people together and challenges them to choose their God—Yahweh or the other gods they have worshiped in the past. The people choose Yahweh and Joshua reminds them of the implications of that choice, it is a choice of total commitment without any extra gods for good measure or even extra gods to keep up past family or tribal traditions.
Historian Judith Binney writes
In the nineteenth century, faced with loss of land and an inexplicably high mortality among their people, many Maori leaders had turned to the story of the Israelites, desolate, and lost in their land. The essence of their identification with them was the pain they shared: ‘O God. If our hearts arise from the land in which we now dwell as slaves…Do not cause us to be wholly destroyed’.[1]
Maurice Andrew suggests that if Israel could face a challenge for the future through earlier times, it may be possible for New Zealanders to do the same by looking back.[2]
Matthew 25: 1-13
Warren Carter writes that this parable contains allegory that ‘variously scares and bullies the disciples into obedience, persuades them to live for this desired future, or provides models of faithfulness which they imitate so as to participate in God’s future.[3]
Robert Funk sees the message hammered home unsubtly, like a commercial—there are no surprises, the wise who take extra oil are rewarded and the foolish are punished and we know that will happen right from the start.[4]
Robert Capon takes a different tack and analyses the parable from a contemporary perspective commenting on this and the following parables, under the heading ‘the talents’ and ‘the great judgement’.
He says ‘they base the judgement solely on faith or unfaith in the mystery of the age-long presence in absence—the abiding parousia, or second coming.’[5]. Of the parable of the bridesmaids, he says ‘But the point of the story—the point that ultimately makes wisdom of the apparent folly—is that, in this world, something always does go wrong.[6], It is a parable of the world where the unexpected does happen, the bridegroom comes late.
This is the Gospel of Christ.
Sermon
The Gospels continually stand, as Joshua stood, and asks us if we will choose the gods of our world or the God we image in Christ.
Of course, Joshua didn’t know about Jesus. He was comparing Yahweh, who brought them out of slavery, with the idols worshiped by various peoples they had interacted with on their wilderness journey. It might well be reassuring to have a crafted image for people to centre their identity on. But if they choose to base their community ethos on the creative force that led them from slavery to the point of nationhood then they had better behave accordingly.
The Gospels tell us the same story. But in imaging the creative force in the Risen Christ of the Gospels we have our behaviour mapped out for us in the deeds, saying and parables of Jesus.
In his book Honest to God John A. T. Robinson , notes ‘In the pagan world it was–and still is–a matter in the main of metal images’,
That is what Joshua is talking about. Robinson goes on to say, ‘For us it is a question much more of mental images—as one after another serves its purpose and has to go.[7]
Robinson was explaining how the mental image of God changes as society and knowledge changes. But there is also a warning in that statement that he may or may not have meant. After all Honest to God was published in 1949, when I was about to start my introduction to Christian Education at an Anglican primary school, and I didn’t buy a copy and read it till I left high school.
By that time many other scholars had written about Robinson and the theological stream I fitted into was looking for even more controversial scholars.
What I have read into Robinson’s wise statement is that, without an image of the divine in the Gospel image of the risen Christ, we very easily start to imagine some very unhelpful mental images. We certainly don’t need to be weighed down by metal images when social media can disperse misinformation and conspiracy at the speed of light.
Some of the mental images of our world are the self-regulating market forces, the trickledown effect and meritocracy. Just a few of the idols or more precisely ideologies that people worship in our world, but there are others. In the recent election campaign I came across conspiracy theories, democracy deniers and total self-centeredness.
None of those mental images fit with the Christ of the Gospels who calls us to love our God by loving and caring for our neighbours.
Furthermore, the parable of the foolish bridesmaids reminds us that Jesus’ ‘Kingdom of God’ is a now and future event. Matthew’s readers were expecting the divine realm to be a miraculous event. A time when superhero Jesus returned to earth and sorted the world out. Various doomsday cults and branches of the church have focused on that concept. In his novel Their Faces Were Shining Tim Wilson describes a girl’s frantic phone call to her mother to tell her about the kids floating up through the roof during a calculous class. ‘Mom, it’s the Rapture’[8]
I don’t know if it was growing up in a manse or his time as TVNZ’s correspondent in the United States that gave Wilson such mental images. At least his novel was deservedly a finalist in the New Zealand book awards.
But I don’t believe that is how the Kingdom of God comes into existence. The parable of the bridesmaids doesn’t just tell us to wait patiently. We also have to be prepared, have spare oil for the ‘Christ Light’ that we keep burning for the moment we meet a stranger along the way.
Christ is risen indeed but Christ is risen in our lives and God’s realm happens through individual caring moments in people’s lives. We need to have our Christ lamps burning so that we recognise the Christ we meet in the stranger along the way, and others recognise Christ in us.
But there is also a practical aspect to our parable, it is also an anti-procrastination parable that suggests the good old boy scout moto, ‘be prepared.’
Don’t be caught out by unexpected changes and lack of extra preparation even for the events you don’t expect to happen.
There are still people who don’t want to limit their life by preparing for climate change because they feel they are unlikely to live long enough to experience the worst effects.
But long-term planning is fundamental to a successful human community and keeping the rate increases low might bring votes but when old pipes finally burst the whole city can be in the poo.
Joshua and the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness preparing themselves for new beginnings and new beginnings are fundamental to our Christian faith.
Helping people change for the better also involves being prepared for the unexpected and transforming lives can take a very long time indeed.
One of the things I learned in the pastoral theology paper I studied was that, in giving pastoral care to someone who needed to make major change in their lifestyle was a long patient process. But I have also witnessed amazing transformation.
I have also waited ages to start a wedding because the bridegroom’s parents got lost on the way to the church. Another delay was because the bridegroom’s braces wouldn’t fasten. In both those cases the papers were eventually signed and sent off to Internal Affairs.
Certainly, Matthew’s community, and other early communities of followers of Jesus, appeared to have been expecting the Resurrected Christ to return in their lifetime. Regardless of the cynicism of Tim Wilson’s novel they also expected that to be an apocalyptical event that upstaged any supreme natural event they had ever experienced.
In today’s parable Matthew is not denying the possibly of a dramatic return of Christ but he is telling his people that the main thing is not to try and predict such an event. They should be prepared because the fact that Jesus has not returned does not mean it will not happen. It will most likely happen in small events along our own wilderness journey. Therefore, we must be prepared to be tolerant. Tolerant of our own mistakes and tolerant of the mistakes and backsliding of those we walk along side. But when it comes to our own transformation the time for change is always now. Often it is us that closes the door.
Two pieces of wisdom have stayed with me from my early adulthood. The first was a contemporary wisdom statement about the young man who hated his job and wished he could study to be an accountant. He didn’t take up the study required because by the time he was qualified he would be forty. Of course, if he didn’t study he would still be forty. He just wouldn’t be an accountant. That piece of wisdom spoke loud and clear to me when I began to study for ministry in my fifties. The other idea came from an American motivational speaker, Denis Waitley who had a mythical metaphor of a tropical paradise called ‘Someday Isle’. That procrastination paradise is also expressed in the words, ‘when I win lotto.’ A phrase often expressed by people who never even buy a ticket.
Procrastination can mean we are shut out of the wedding feast of life and we allow other people or unforeseen circumstances to close the door on opportunity.
According to my mother I came close to never existing. Apparently, my Mum and Dad had been seeing each other for some time when Mum suggested she was getting bored with her job in Wellington and might go to Australia. My Dad immediately mumbled a number of reasons why that was a bad idea. He muttered that he might never see her again. Mum said she responded by saying, ‘If you are trying to say that if you had two pennies to rub together, you’d marry me, here’s tuppence’. They then went out and got married in the lunch hour.
Abandoning addictions and bad lifestyles are obvious issues that should not be deferred and contain a high potential to revert back to the point that despair and ill health may make transformation impossible. Often overlooked however is procrastination that prevents us doing good which firmly fits into the Someday Isle syndrome.
Not all of us have magical mystic mountain top experiences but I am absolutely convinced the Spirit continually puts opportunity in front of us and our promised land comes through responding to those opportunities. The risk is always that our oil will run out before we respond.
Nevertheless, I believe that, unlike the bridegroom in the parable, our God is a God who never closes a door without opening a window.
The oil we need to get through into the land of promise must be continually refreshed with the image of the Risen Christ we find in the Gospels. That is what church attendance, bible study and prayer is all about. Replenishing the Spirit oil that allows us to keep the Christ light burning.
‘The kingdom of God’ or ‘God’s Realm’ is always at hand. To keep the Christ light burning and fulfilling that promise means being continually confronted by the Jesus tradition.
To make God’s realm real means replenishing the gospel oil of our faith and putting aside the flawed wisdom or false gods of our world and choosing Christ’s wisdom.
[1] J. Binney et al.,Mihaia, p.17. The quotation is from a prayer of Te Kooti. As quoted in Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: DEFT 1999) p.190
[2] Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: DEFT 1999) p.190
[3] Warren Carter Mathew and the Margins: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading, (London/New York: T&T Clark International 2004) p.484-485.
[4] Robert Funk, Funk on Parables: Collected Essays (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2006), p.133
[5] Robert Farrar Capon Kingdom Grace Judgement: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002) p.491.
[6] ibid.,p497.
[7] John A. T. Robinson , Honest to God (London: SCM Press 1949) pp.125,126.
[8] Tim Wilson, Their Faces Were Shining (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2010) p.60