“Waiting Together” • Matthew 25:1-13 • November 9, 2014

Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

Let’s take a quick poll. How many like to wait? Waiting in line. Waiting in traffic. Waiting for your friend or spouse or co-worker or children. Waiting.

I get a lot of top 10 type of lists from folks in my email inbox or through my Facebook and Twitter news-feeds. You know the lists, 5 ways to become a better parent today or 10 ways to be a more effective leader or 10 things that every person should do before they die. This week I got one that I thought fit our gospel reading from Saint Matthew. The 10 best things to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk.

Here are a few of them –

“They told me at the blood bank this morning that something like this might happen after donating blood.”

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm that will result in greater profits for the company.”

“I was doing a highly specific yoga exercise to relieve work-related stress. Are you discriminating against my practice of yoga?”

Or my favorite “pause briefly after you realize you’ve been caught, and then say with conviction ‘… in Jesus’ name. Amen.’”

Waiting. Even for those of us who are gifted with a lot of patience, I think waiting is one of the hardest things we do. So let’s face up to the fact that waiting is part of our everyday life together in this world.

Waiting is a major part of today’s gospel reading too. 10 virgins or “bridesmaids” as our translation refers to them are waiting for the groom to arrive. This parable is the second in a series of four parables in this section of Matthew’s gospel that focus on Jesus’ return and a final judgment that seems to include some kind of sorting between who is in and who is out.

Texts like these are used in many Christian traditions as a way of scaring believers into making sure that you are “right” with Jesus before you die. Whatever “right” with Jesus means. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand that tradition of theological thought. Is the purpose of our life in Christ, the purpose of being a child of God at this time and in this place only about what happens to us after we die? If that’s all there is to being a Christian, if faith is only about what happens after I’m dead, then I don’t think I’m all that interested in a relationship with a God like that.

There are six occasions in the gospel of Matthew with final judgment scenes where separating is happening between things like sheep and goats or wise and foolish bridesmaids. Some are in. Others are out. Final judgment themes like this stand out in Matthew above the other three gospels. So, if we want to look at this text with a theological lens that puts us in control of life after our death, are you a sheep or a goat? Are you a wise or a foolish bridesmaid? When the bridegroom does finally arrive and you finally return with oil in your lamp, yes, all of us will need to go get more oil. I’ve never met another human being, and never will meet one, that brought enough oil in the first place. When the bridegroom arrives are you going to be in or are you locked out?

Please don’t hear me trying to make fun of this parable or discounting the theological thinking of our brothers and sisters in Christ in different Christian traditions than our Lutheran one or trying to cast this parable off as not being important to who we are as children of God.

I’ll be honest with you and admit, that, this is a difficult parable for me in a difficult section of Matthews’s gospel. But just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean we should fall asleep at our desk and ignore it or form God’s message in a parable like this into something that is only about what may or may not happen to us when we die.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you are loved by God unconditionally. In the sacrament of Holy Baptism, you are claimed and named as God’s own child. As a child of God, you are freed and forgiven in all that you say and do – right now and for eternity! Never forget that. BUT – just because you are loved, claimed, forgiven, and freed unconditionally by God doesn’t mean that you and I should be passive or complacent. The great theologian William Barclay once said that, “The best way to prepare for the coming of Christ is never to forget the presence of Christ.”

Yes, you and I believe, we hope, we pray. We wait for that day to come when Jesus returns. Until that day comes, I worry that you and I sometimes forget that Jesus is already here? How do we experience the presence of Christ in our work and in our play, now…today? Today, in times of joy and celebration? Today, in times of pain and suffering?

Pastor Kathryn Matthews Huey sees great irony in a text like our gospel reading today. She writes, “We can be so busy reading novels and looking for signs that we miss the ways God is still speaking to us today, in this meantime. We might miss opportunities to do God’s will, working for the healing of the world, caring for the good earth we were given, offering our own gifts in the transformation of an unjust society, reaching out in compassion to a world that is physically and spiritually hungry. However much we may be anxious about a dramatic end time, our faith reminds us of how often the Bible says, ‘Do not fear,’ and then challenges us to work here, on earth, for the bright day of God’s reign in its fullness, which is glimpsed in every act, every moment of compassion, sharing, and justice.” Pastor Kathryn concludes her thought by saying, “Even as we trust that we will be with God one day, in glory, we taste the sweet goodness of generosity and love right here, right now, through ministries of sharing the abundance with which we are blessed.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, together we wait. And as you and I wait may God’s light shine in this world through us. And may God’s light shining through us bless others in our congregation and our sister congregations, in our community and nation, and in every corner of this beautiful world that is one small piece of God’s good creation. Amen.

Matthew 21:33-46 • October 5, 2014

Click here to view a video of this sermon.

Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

About a month ago, the ushers handed out a yellow postcard that looked like this. It says, “This week, I am being called to serve the Lord by…” It was an effort to help you and I connect the reality of our everyday lives to the charge that we receive at the end of every worship service to “Go in peace. Serve the Lord.” The question that I lifted up in that sermon was why don’t we check in with one another more often to see how we are doing with this charge from God to go in peace. To serve the Lord.

I was pleased with the response to the yellow cards that weekend, about 15% of the cards that were distributed were in fact used. In the world of church work, we’ll take 15% participation and effort any day. The cards that were returned were prayerful offerings about challenges and struggles and celebrations and longing for hope that you and I experience each day in our walk of faith. It has been humbling and a great honor to hold these hopes and dreams, fears and failures in prayer over the past month.

There are many times in scripture when it is possible for us to put ourselves inside a text. To look at it and hear the text allegorically. In today’s gospel reading for example…the landowner with God, the vineyard with God’s reign and Israel, the landowner’s slaves with prophets, and the son with Jesus. But, who are the tenants? In this parable, the tenants are the religious elite, the leaders of the Temple, the people who are starting to get a little irritated with this guy named Jesus.
So, are you ever the landowner – maybe the boss at work or a parent or friend who has authority over others?

Or, are you ever one of the slaves – you’ve been killed by someone else at one time or another? Remember the fifth commandment – You shall not murder. Our Lutheran Small Catechism explains this commandment by saying “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.” Brothers and sisters, you and I kill our neighbors on a daily basis in ways that have nothing to do with ending their physical existence in this world.

And then we come to the tenants – the farmhands of the landowner. I don’t like these characters! But as I’ve prayed through this gospel reading, maybe the reason I don’t like the tenants is because they speak most directly to who I actually am or how I often catch myself behaving.

Bishop Andy Doyle believes that placing ourselves as characters in scripture is challenging. He makes this claim because so many times we like to put ourselves in the place of Jesus or the prophets. When we do that we end up creating the gospel and forming God’s mission for the world into our own image instead of God’s image. And by doing that, Pastor Doyle argues, we close the doors to Jesus and the prophets and essentially close the doors to what God is calling us to be as God’s children. Just what is God calling us to be?

CS Lewis once wrote that “you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death to you.” So, brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow tenants of God’s vineyard at this time and in this place – I ask you, do you believe that the mission God is calling you to live out is a matter of life or death?

Another leader in the church today might be of help here. She says that “our call is to be fruitful while we are here, not struggle for ownership or control. We don’t run the show; we aren’t in charge. All authority belongs to God, indeed every atom and molecule of creation.”

Your call and mine is to be fruitful while we are here. I ask you, is being fruitful a matter of life or death for you?

Let me share a couple of ways that this can happen as we live out our faith together in this little part of God’s good creation called North Dakota, in a community of faith that we know and love simply as Good Shepherd.

It might mean that you and I can be fruitful by raising money for Camp of the Cross so that our Bible camp can build a Long overdue fellowship center that will bless fellow brothers and sisters in Christ for generations to come.

It might mean that you and I can be fruitful as we gather at the Shepherd’s Table events this fall. Through Bible study and prayer we will wrestle with big questions about God’s Call and mission for our congregation. The first event is next weekend where we will ask the question – “Why for God’s sake does Good Shepherd exist?”

It might mean that you and I can be fruitful by supporting one another as we journey through each week trying to go in peace, to serve the Lord, knowing full well that we will fail from time to time. And when we fail, we will be fruitful in picking each other up and encouraging each other to give it another try.

Or it might mean that you and I will be fruitful and succeed in going in peace and serving the Lord from time to time. And when we do in fact succeed, we need to celebrate together the goodness of God working though our hands!

So, brothers and sisters in Christ, I look forward to seeing more yellow cards from you. I’ll keep holding them in prayer. Because together, you and I have been given the opportunity to discover the goodness of the work that God is calling us to live out. And let’s not forget, let’s never forget, who the true cornerstone of our life together in faith is, the savior of the world – Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.