26 Pentecost - 9 November 2008

26 Pentecost - 9 November 2008 - Proper 27 A
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-25; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13
James V. Stockton

The presidential election is over. And whatever comes next, we all must watch and wait together. As we do, it’s important for us all to remember that the election of any president leaves some of us very happy and some of us very disappointed. It’s all the more important, then, that we all remember that all of us are praying for God’s blessing upon our country. We can be rightly proud of our nation that Barack Obama’s election is a crossing of a racial divide that has been a constant affliction to our history. And it’s up to all of us to work and pray to ensure that all such divisions continue to recede from the front page until they reside only on the pages of our ancient history.

With some people hailing him as the new messiah of the world, I hope we can all pray that the world, this country, and the president-elect himself, will allow Barack Obama to be simply a human being; a good servant of the people, yes, but not a messiah. Christ is coming, of this we can be sure. But it’s unkind and unrealistic to require any new president to meet the expectations of the coming of the messiah.


So, the election is over. And as it must be, the election means that new policies are coming our way. As it must be, some are delighted about this, and some are deeply afraid. As it must be, all people together are watching and waiting for whatever it is that is about to come. “Keep awake,” says Jesus. “Be prepared. For you do not know the day or even the hour.” “But you can know this: I am coming.”

In Jesus’ day, people did weddings differently from the way we do them today. Today, the bride and groom chose a date, (or at least the bride does, and then she tells the groom). And then they find out, does the date and time work for the church? Does it work for the priest? Perhaps most important question: does it work for the in-laws? Times, places, meals, gifts, flowers, music, all the details are arranged, because no one wants any surprises.

And who can blame them? I’ve officiated at enough weddings to appreciate the desire to avoid being caught by a last-minute surprise. I will note, though, that the story Jesus tells in the gospel reading for today suggests that a truly biblical wedding should, perhaps, involve the unexpected! But we have a people here who are planning their wedding and I don’t want to disturb them with the possibilities; so I won’t stay with that point. The point that I will stay with is the point that the story Jesus tells is the story of his own coming to be among the people of God.

“Keep awake,” says Jesus. “Be prepared. You do not know when. But you do know this: I am coming.” Think about what this means. Whenever people are being watchful for something, they are pre-occupied. Whenever people are being watchful for something in particular, they are paying less attention to other things. Think about what this means to the watching and waiting community of the people of God. Are there things with which the community of God’s people are distracting themselves instead of watching for Christ to come among them? Are the people of God in some way drifting off to a spiritual unconsciousness? Are God’s people today leaving anything behind as they pass the time? Are they growing more insensitive to, and less prepared for, Jesus Christ to show up somehow in their midst? Whenever God’s people cease to watch for Jesus, what then do they tend to look for instead, but those exact same divisions as continue to make it to the front page today?

Put away you foreign gods,’ Joshua tells the people. Here at the threshold of the land that God has promised them, Joshua knows that the people are carrying with them idols. They are figures from their Egyptian captors or from the peoples and cultures around them. More important, he knows that, even while the profess their faith in God and their faithfulness toward God, the people are carrying with them their superstitious trust in these idols, good luck charms, and talismans. And so Joshua tells the people that if they continue with their false gods then whatever good God has done them will be matched by the harm that God will do.

I suppose that makes sense that God would grant favor to the people who worship God, and would harm those who turn away from God. But I think God is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a bigger person than this. Yes, as Joshua says it, God is a jealous god. God is possessive of humanity, possessive of you and me. God has given us the many blessings, big and small, known and unknown, that comprise the gift of our being. And so, just as a tree is bent or broken by the wind or a rock is worn down or displaced by the current of a river, anything that would come between our ability to receive God’s gift and God’s giving of it will experience the over-powering force of God’s Love, even though that experience may be unpleasant, like a punishment.

We might look at it, then, less as God punishing people because they failed to stroke the divine ego, and more as people punishing themselves because they made themselves to be false gods, pretenders after divinity. Idols, good-luck charms, all that, are ultimately signs of people’s effort to usurp that place in the universe that belongs to God, and more particularly, to replace God in their lives. Joshua knows that as long as the people choose a kind of buffet of gods they will never trust in anything more than they will trust their own sense of being able to manufacture whatever divine guidance they prefer.

Either trust God, or trust idols; it’s one of the few areas in life where this is no middle ground. ‘Choose,’ Joshua tells them. People don’t much worship stone carvings anymore. So the real challenge for people is to figure out what they may still be putting up between themselves and God?

Is it their own intuition; their own superstition; their own cleverness; their own politics; their own experiences of the world; their own understanding of the human heart? And remember that God created all of these as distinctive qualities that make humanity able to be what we are and who we are when we are at our best. So, God has faith in us to choose wisely and well; to choose not to deny, but to embrace our relationship with God. God is God, we are not. And this is not a shame, it is a gift. God says to us, ‘Embrace the gift, and use it to be prepared.’

And so does God find us ready? This presidential election is a great reminder today, and will be for weeks to come, that we cannot know for certain what is coming next. For some of us, this is scary; for some of us this is exciting. Maybe for most of us it’s a bit of both. I think that, as we go through these next weeks and months, God would like to remind us, and would like us to help remind the people around us, that there are some important truths of which we can be sure.

God responds to our prayers in the mystery that is Christ Jesus, and of this we can be sure. And Christ is that mystery that never fails to surprise; of this, too, we can be sure. So we can be sure that as we hear together the stories of Jesus and listen together to the words of scripture, God’s intention is to call us to seek the meaning and principle to which they allude. So that whatever we find, we will value it truly and make it a part of us as, together, we wait and watch and listen.

And though maybe not sure, yet maybe we can guess, that Jesus is coming to us more often than we know. Maybe we can guess that Christ is arriving all around us, today, tomorrow, trying to startle us awake. And maybe we can guess and even know that he is welcoming us to that celebration that fills our hearts when we welcome in Christ Jesus in whomever he arrives.

And now may Almighty God who grants to us grace in the midst of uncertainty, open our spirits to the goodness of God in one another and in ourselves, that we may not stumble, but may be guided to do all that God has given us to do; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton