Keep awake, you wise bridesmaids . . .

      I suppose this is one of those weeks I mis-discerned where we needed to be as a community.  I knew Monday I wanted to be in Joshua, but God had other ideas.  Rick & Morty replayed the dinosaur return episode a couple times this week, and then Forbes pointed out how our exports had reached highs not seen since the Obama Administration.  Then came the discussions and observations with or of colleagues who were really struggling with the Gospel passage this week.  A number of colleagues outside the diocese were expressing how Matthew’s parable could not really be a part of Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus is radically welcoming and the idea that he would lock virgins out of a feast clearly false teaching.  A few even went the route of “Hey, I think the real lesson is that the wise virgins are the evil ones in the story.  What do y’all think?”  A few even tried to tie the wisdom and foolishness to the sleeping.  To be fair, Jesus is exhorting His disciples to be alert or awake in this section of the Gospel, and He does fuss at the Apostles for their weak flesh in the Garden of Gethsemane; I think most of us, however, realize that both the wise and the foolish virgins are treated the same for their sleeping.”  All of that raises the question, though, of what is going on and why Matthew would relate the passage.  And don’t worry if, now that you have re-read it, you are a bit confused or worried.  If the professionals are struggling that badly, or teaching it that poorly, God knows.

     As an aside, though, before we begin, I do want to point out to us all that, were the proposal of the Advent Project to be accepted by the wider church, today would be the First Sunday or Advent.  Yes, that means Christmas is only 43 days away.  Whoa, that is a lot of murmuring.  It also means, though, that we are nearing the end of the Season after Pentecost and that our readings will be taking us on a quick sojourn through the eschaton, or then end of the age as we like to call it in Christian circles.  As Adventers, we should not be surprised nor worried.  Part of our spiritual DNA is that we have an eye on Christ’s first Advent and expectant eye on His next Advent.  We look to the past as a source of encouragement and to the future as to an impetus to do the work He has given us to do.  The rest of the Church, well the parts that use the lectionary, will be intentional in the looking forward and looking back for the next few weeks.  I’ll let you all discern whether you think our readings are influenced by the colors on the altar or of our stoles.

     Back to our lesson.  The first issue we have in the reading is simply one of context.  I know we are Christians and have been taught, whether we have internally digested it or not, that marriage is the image which our Lord uses to describe His relationship with His people.  In the NT, this is mostly expressed as “Jesus is the Groom; the Church is the Bride,” right?  Good.  I see nods.  The image of marriage, though, is well used in the OT.  God often describes Himself as a faithful Groom and Israel, His chosen people, as adulterers.  Hmm.  Not nearly as many nods.

     Part of our challenge is understanding the importance of a marriage in the culture.  Today, in our culture, it is far more performative.  Brides are encouraged to be a princesses for a day.  Experts and influencers tell them what that means.  Mostly, it comes down to dollars and cents.  One of the first discussions I have in pre-marital counseling is how stupid that really is.  Today, according to the experts, the average wedding costs $26,000.  The average wedding cost $26,000.  Think of that number for just a second.  I see the nods and a few elbows.  There’s a wedding party to clothe, a cake to have baked, a dress.  And let’s face it, money does not go as far as it once did.  Those of you who have recently walked granddaughters through a wedding know all about the other expenses, such as venue, reception, and who knows what else.  It adds up quickly.

     I suppose, all things being equal, it would be easier for us to stomach if we knew that the money spent was in direct proportion to the expected length of the marriage.  Who among us would not spend extra money if we knew it would help our sons’ and daughters’ marriages last?  Heck, I’d be happy if the church venue would increase the likelihood that the marriage will last.  Unfortunately, venue does not seem to matter.  If God declares it so important, you’d expect Christians to do a better job in marriage.  The truth is, though, we are no better at marriage than the heathens around us.  Almost half of all Christian marriages will end in divorce, and God describes it as representative of His relationship with His people and as indissoluble.  Can you imagine what our marriages would be like, absent His teaching? 

     One of the challenges we have, though, is understanding how important a wedding was in Ancient Israel.  I have tried and tried to teach you how to understand Israel’s emphasis on the Promised Land.  For Israel, marriage was not just a social construct or economic relationship, as the world around us tries to describe marriage today.  Ownership of the Promised Land had an eschatological hope.  Simply put, if one could not be alive when God’s chosen one, the Messiah or Christ to use our language, ascended the throne, one could only make sure his or her family would participate in the joyful blessing of that time.  Marriages were how the eschatological promise could be experienced by any family.  With families often comes the hope of children.  Children means another generation will be there, if Messiah comes.  I have explained that our best way to understand this would be to pretend if I excommunicated you, you really believed you were cut off from God’s promises.  We are Americans and Episcopalians, so we have a difficult relationship with excommunication.  I can do it, and the bishop can ratify it, but how many Episcopalians or Americans will not just “look for another church” were I to do it. 

     We are well read enough and imaginative enough to understand the threat intellectually.  Priests and bishops do have the authority, but do we really understand the authority as significant to us or our relationship to God?  For their part, those of Ancient Israel understood that ownership of their land was the guarantee that they would participate in Messiah’s reign.  That’s why children, or barrenness, was so important in Ancient Israel.  Owning the family plot, so to speak, was proof that they were part of God’s chosen people.  As a result, the whole community treasured weddings.  In villages where everybody knew everybody, everybody celebrated marriages because of their significance in the community.  With me so far?  Good!

     Not to oversimplify, but imagine who took control of these events in the days before wedding and event planners.  That’s right, the mom’s.  In general, the mother of the bride oversaw what you and I would call the nuptials, and the mother of the groom oversaw the wedding feast or reception.  Once everything was ready for the feast, the groom would be told to go and get his bride.  The groom and others would process to the house of the bride.  The bride would be waiting for the groom to show up so that they could be married.  Then, everyone at the nuptials would process back to the groom’s house for the great celebration, the wedding feast.

     You and I live in an age where venues and people are overscheduled.  We would be scandalized would either party not show up early for a wedding, right?  We would assume there was a problem were one or the other significantly late for their wedding.  Heck, I have to remind everyone in the wedding party not to show up drunk or high or late at rehearsals or for the event itself!  Good, I see nods.  And we have all seen shows and headlines that talk about the moms of brides and grooms who do their very best to make sure the event is about them rather than the couple, right?  Imagine, though, if the wedding and the reception were held at your house.  Imagine our favorite matriarch hosting the reception for her son or daughter and celebrating God’s promises alive in her family as a result!  What would that celebration look like?  Now you get the idea.  The food has to be ready.  The wine has to be good, and the toasting wine great.  The servants and slaves have to be ready to do their jobs and wash feet.  The lights have to be lit and the tables set.  You get the idea.  Grooms could not get their brides until everything was just so.  And as an aside, maybe you understand a bit better by God’s declaration that the eschaton will begin with THE Wedding Feast.

     Back to the procession and especially the job of the virgins, or bridesmaids as our translation calls them today.  When the groom went to get his bride and the rest of the bridal party, it was all done on foot.  It will be hard for us to understand this part because we live in motorized Nashville, but imagine yourself in the country, so street lights every tenth of a mile, having to walk from one location to the next.  What will you need to keep you from stumbling?  What will you need to keep the predators at bay?  What will you need to help protect you against bandits?  That’s right, lights.  It’s almost like you listened to Funmi’s Gospel reading.

     Now, in the Gospel reading, what do you think was the job of the bridesmaids, based on what you just heard?  That’s right, they provided the light for the procession.  And I am sure that many mom’s intended for marriages and feasts to start earlier in the evening, but remember this is an honor culture.  This is an enormous thanksgiving event.  This is a Covenant Reminder event.  Oh, yeah, and lest we forget, it is a bit of a social competition.  Everyone wants to have arranged the most memorable celebration, right?  I mean, human beings are human beings, and mothers like to outdo one another every bit as much as fathers, right?

     And to be clear, as Joshua and I had a discussion in Greek this week, the lamp of this verse is a different lamp from Jesus’ description of hiding it under a bushel.  This one is a traveling lamp, a lampas; that one is table lamp, a lychnos, for those who want to do extra research this week.  They serve different functions.  A table lamp might well have a larger reservoir for the oil because it is not going anywhere.  It could be heavier because no one had to carry it.  There was a limit for most people as to how big a lamp and reservoir they could carry, so that was often, though not necessary, difference.  And in this story, we are talking about younger girls rather than weightlifters.

     If your job is to light the way, what are your responsibilities?  Oil.  Trimming the wick.  Maybe flint, in case the light goes out.  A covering, in case it is windy or rainy.  You could probably name more responsibilities if I gave you time.  Now, if you know what is necessary sitting in Nashville 2000 years later, do you think people understood what was necessary 2000 years ago in Ancient Israel?  Great.  That is where Jesus’ judgment comes into play.

     Jesus calls one set of bridesmaids wise and the other set foolish.  I am guessing everyone here now knows why the one set is foolish and the other wise.  One group took its job or responsibilities seriously, and the other did not.  There will be folks who hear sermons trying to justify Jesus’ harsh words, in their minds, saying that His issue was their sleepiness.  Do not both the wise and the foolish fall asleep?  That cannot be the divider between wise and foolish behavior.  There will be folks who hear sermons trying to explain that Matthew was caught up in judgment, but not Jesus, as if Matthew did not travel and study under Jesus for three years.  And if there is anything Matthew insists upon, it is how Israel, and especially the Temple leadership, is judged by Jesus.  But is the parable that hard, once we understand the background?

     Let’s push it just a bit.  Does the denial by the wise bridesmaids seem harsh to our ears?  It’s ok, be honest.  It does.  Why?  That’s right, we know Jesus calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to serve others in God’s Name, trusting He will give us what is necessary to glorify God in our lives.  Remember, though, we are well before Jesus’ enthronement.  We know Jesus’ instructions are all true, because He has been raised from the dead.  As crazy as some sound in our ears, and how poorly many of us try to keep them, how do you think they sounded in the ears of His disciples before His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension?  This illustration would not be one of those hard teachings, though.

     Let’s say the wise bridesmaids feel sorry for the foolish bridesmaids and give them oil.  How much oil have the wise bridesmaids secured beforehand?  That’s right, enough to get them to groom’s house.  What happens if they divide their oil?  Imagine, you are in a wedding party proceeding to the great reception, and the lamps burn out plunging you in darkness.  You have failed in your one responsibility.  You have embarrassed your family.  You have put everyone at risk.  Keep in mind, it is not like us forgetting to turn our headlights on while traveling Franklin Pike at night.  This is long before most ambient lighting.  It’s not that the wise bridesmaids were being mean.  They knew that that their light would be necessary to get the bridal party to its destination safely and without stumbles.  Ten lights would be better for this group; but five is much better than none.

     What about the Lord’s response when they return with oil?  Doesn’t He seem harsh.  With all due respect to Owen Wilson and Vince Vaugh, wedding crashers have probably been around since weddings were first celebrated.  Let’s face it, all the angst surrounding weddings have probably been around since the very first wedding.  Some of us may have experienced wedding crashers at our own weddings or that of our children or grandchildren.  Maybe they were strangers; maybe they were just uninvited extended family or acquaintances.  The bigger and better the wedding and reception, and the more important the families involved, the more everyone wants to be at the event.  Also, there were nefarious motives for attendance.  Maybe if everyone gets drunk, I can pick their pockets.  Maybe I can find some goodies in the house that fits in my pockets.  It was an inconvenient and sometimes dangerous thing to open your doors after dark in antiquity.  It would be more common sense not to open one’s door after the wedding party has arrived.  Everyone should have been inside once the bride and groom entered the house.  The southern 15 minutes late was not a virtue in those cultures!  And, given the size of this party, remember it takes 10 bridesmaids to conduct everyone to the groom’s house, it is very possible that the groom, or the father of the groom, truly did not recognize the voices of the late arriving bridesmaids.

     One of the admitted challenges posed to modern readers of the Gospel of Matthew is its focus on the eschaton, on the judgement.  The eschaton seems to consume far more of Matthew’s attention than any other NT writer other than maybe John.  Much of Matthew’s focus is on who is in and who is out of God’s kingdom, to be sure.  But Matthew spends a great deal of energy pointing out to his audience, us, that it is incredibly difficult for us to discern who is in and who is out.  The wheat and the tares grow together.  Sometimes the Gentiles respond better to the Gospel than Israel, God’s son.  Often, those who should know the mercy of God the best are the ones most determined to weigh down others with their own rules.  The only One fit to judge is the Lord.  He alone knows the heart; He alone knows who belongs to Him and who rejects Him.

     Matthew’s Gospel today is made a bit more challenging because we can identify with the wise and the foolish bridesmaids during the course of our lives.  Were the story not a parable, we might fall rightly into the belief that we earn salvation, that we are responsible for being adopted into God’s family.  But it is a parable, and so we try to figure out why Jesus would have shared it, why Matthew would have remembered and recorded it, and what application it has for us today.  We are further challenged by Matthew’s teaching that Christ is paradoxically the narrowest door but the most wide-open invitation possible.  It is hard for us to accept that others, whoever the others are in our lives, will receive the same blessing, the same salvation as us.

     There is that famous line in Spider Man that was well-used especially in Britain, with great power comes great responsibility.  I see a few nods.  Evangelical Anglicans used it to remind our brothers and sisters that we have a responsibility to God and our neighbors because of what He has done for us in Christ Jesus.  To translate it into James’ words, faith without works is dead or useless.  Because of our adoption into God’s holy family, we have a responsibility.  We give thanks that we have been adopted, but we are reminded that it falls to us to invite all others into that saving embrace.  How we do that, of course, differs in our contexts, our charisms, and our internal digestion of how blessed we truly are.  Dale’s gifts are different than Jane’s gifts whose gifts are different than Jean’s whose gifts are different than my own.  Look around.  We all have different gifts and passions and experiences that make us perfect ambassadors in one sub-culture but make us a bit less perfect for another sub-culture.  To use the language of the day, we all have work to do given us by God.  How we do that, though, is very personal.

     To use the image of Scripture and the Church, we try to let the light of Christ shine forth in our lives.  How do we do that most effectively?  Through attuning ourselves to God.  We go to worship, we pray, we study the Scriptures, we fast, we serve—there are lots of ways in which we can attune ourselves to God.  We might say, to use the image of this day, that we are gathering oil for the flame that is supposed to be within us.  All of us sitting here know there are times when we have acted wisely and have acted foolishly when attuning ourselves.  All of us likely have periods in our lives when we feel like we would be counted wise by the Lord when he arrived, but all of us likely have periods in our lives when we worry that He might judge us fools and leave us outside the feast.

     We have to be careful when we read parables.  Sometimes, the examples used by Jesus need to be contextualized for us to understand them better.  My colleagues who struggle with the groom’s judgment in this parable simply do not understand the importance of light bearers in a dark world.  It makes sense, as our world, for the most part, is full of street lights and other lights, especially in our urban settings.  But another problem with parables comes when we ignore what has been handed down from those who heard the parables—what we Episcopalians and other like-minded Christians call tradition.  We receive these parables in a tradition, and Christ’s disciples and Apostles shared their meanings with later audiences, who later shared them with others, and so on.  As in any game of telephone, we have to be careful that the message we hears corresponds to the tradition.  Can we read works righteousness in this parable?  Sure.  Can we assume that the groom was a jerk, based on our context?  Yes.  Can we even be focused on the wrong part of the story and miss the forest for the trees?  You bet.  But, do those interpretations or misfocuses align with what has been handed down or with the Gospel?  There’s the rub.

     Jesus tells the story, in part, to remind us of our need to keep alert.  Perhaps we would do well to read the passage on Advent 1 when we focus on keeping alert and staying awake.  But we Christians are warned, admonished, encouraged, whatever language you want to use, by our Lord that we must pay attention.  Like the bridesmaids of our story, we do not know when the Groom is coming to retrieve His Bride.  Any inattention on are part can have disastrous consequences, and not just for others, but even for ourselves.  And just like the bridemaids needed to have oil, trimmed wicks, coverings, and who knows what else for their job, you and I are called by God to be prepared for the work that He has given us to do.  We are nourished by the Sacrament, instructed by His word, attuned to Him through prayers and other disciplines—all for the purpose of doing the work that He has given us to do as we head back outside these walls.  Best of all, when we discover ourselves to be foolish, when we discover ourselves to be inattentive to His call on our lives, we repent and endeavor to attune ourselves to Him better, that we might glorify Him in our lives.  And in the end, those who live seeking to glorify Him in their lives, which includes that repentance for inattention or foolish behavior, are the ones who will be judged wise when He comes again, as they were the ones who lighted the paths of others to His saving embrace.

     My friends, you and I are those to whom it falls to live and to speak as if His words are true and worthy to be believed.  The Church, the Bride of Christ, is called to live as if She believes His return can happen any moment.  His instruction to be alert, to pay attention, should motivate us to live each day as if He might come and that we desire to be found by Him like the wise bridesmaids of our reading today, prepared for His appearing no matter the hour or the day, knowing that, when that Day finally happens, we will find ourselves at the Wedding Feast, celebrating the work of salvation He has accomplished in our own lives and those around us who claim His as Lord and Savior!

 

In His Peace,

Brian†

Instruction for God's people . . .

      Our Exodus reading should sound familiar in our ears, though for reasons known only to committee minds, our reading is not quite what the lectionary editors intended when they put together the reading for today.  Sometimes, one can tell what the thoughts were of the committee by what was omitted.  This was not one of those times.  I say that because we should all be familiar with the Ten Commandments or Ten Words, as I will more likely call them today.  Many Episcopalians use the Penitential Orders during the season of Lent, and so we spend some intentional time reminding ourselves of God’s Instruction, torah, to His people.  Just to make sure we are paying attention in Lent, we read this passage during Sunday worship during the B and C seasons.  I forgot to look in season A, so if somebody gets bored, feel free to look for me and let me know afterwards.  But we are intentional in our reminder of God’s instruction during the course of our worship in the season of Lent.

     Today, of course, we are still in the Green Season of after Pentecost.  Our focus is not on sin in the same way that it is during Lent, so I think the editors did well in picking this reading again.  I just wish they did the whole pericope rather than cutting parts out.  Quit looking for the cut parts.  I used the rector’s discretion and had us read and hear the whole section.  Y’all should know by now I am not a fan of cutting up readings.  I tend to print the whole reading, though I admit that sometimes space causes me to go with the editors’ decisions every now again.

     Before we jump into what I think will be the meat of my sermon today, I need to do a bit of vocabulary work.  I was reminded during the feast of Francis that some among us are relatively new and have not heard stories and foundation work.  For some of you, this will be a review.  But for others, it is important.  I have for my time here tried to get Adventers to Anglicize some Hebrew and Greek words.  It is ironic that we get Paul’s use of skubala in his letter to the Church at Philippi today.  Our translators render it “rubbish,” but a lot of Adventers remember that it is a far more earthy word than rubbish.  See, some among you are giggling and elbowing.  How fallen are we?  We Anglicize and remember the dirty words, but not the other more important words.  For those newer to the parish, think of a word much closer to the s-word in English, and that is closer to what Paul is writing about his “fleshy” goods and why your pew neighbors are giggling like middle schoolers.

     Our real word today I wish we would Anglicize is torah.  Torah is the word that our Hebrew brothers and sister use when describing what many Americans call law or commandments.  Though torah can have the understanding of law or commandment, there is way more nuance there than many of us like.  It means instruction and direction.  A great way to describe it according to one scholar I read a couple decades ago, was to think of healthy parenting.  We teach our children do’s and don’t’s, not to be capricious, but to keep them safe from harm and to help them grow up to be healthy adults.  Are they laws?  In some sense, right?  There usually a punishment for disobedience.  But they are not just laws, which we tend to think of as limiting our freedom.  By the way, those of you who want to test how much we like our freedom and hate any limitations, go for a drive on I-65 after church.  Just don’t stay on it long if you are driving the legal speed limit, please.  We have had more than enough funerals recently.

     This understanding of torah is important because it reminds us that God is the loving Father in heaven who directs us for our own benefit.  All 613 of the instructions in the torah of the Pentateuch are meant for our good, are meant to help us live like a people who intend to honor Yahweh in our lives.  We may not understand the purpose of one of the instructions of the torah, but that is our problem.  That is evidence of our child-like immaturity before our Lord God rather than a problem with the torah.  When we argue with God’s torah, when we complain He is not fair, or when we doubt whether He has our best interest at His heart, we are like little children who do not understand there is a reason one does not grab at boiling pots on the stove or stick things in outlets or whatever.  Everybody understand now?  Good.  I intend to call it torah for the rest of this, but if I slip, you understand it is the culture in which we live that trips me up.

     Back to our reading in Exodus.  As I warned us, our culture views laws and commandments as limiting, an infringement on our personal rights, to use the language of our Libertarian friends.  We are too far down the Hobbes/Locke discourse to climb out of this on our own, much like Ancient Israel.  The first thing of which we need to remind ourselves is that Israel asked God what it meant to live in communion with a holy God.  Think back several weeks ago.  God instructed Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people come to the holy mountain that they might worship Him.  What followed was a result of Pharaoh’s rejection of God’s words spoken through Moses.  Part of the reason for the Ten Plagues is to teach Israel, Egypt, and anyone who heard about the plagues, including us, is that God is truly God.  No other god or power or principality can thwart His will.  The cosmological “battle” that the ANE world thought was happening was wrong.  Yahweh was the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen.  All powers and nature bow to Yahweh’s will.  Human beings are called by God into relationship with Him.

     Now, after the plagues and after Pharaoh’s decree that Israel leave Egypt, after the crossing of the sea with a wall of water on their right and on their left, after the utter destruction of the Egypt’s chariots, after the provision of manna, of quail, and of water, Israel has come to the mountain to worship God.  There they ask God what it means to be His chosen people, what it means to be in full communion with Him.  The resulting answer is the torah.  Want to be holy like God?  Here’s how.  Want to live a sinless life in full accordance with God’s approval?  Here you go.  Notice, though, the words are given to a people already redeemed by a God who knows they we be unable to keep it.  Heck, we will read next week how they cannot even keep these instructions while Moses is speaking to God on the mountain.  The words are not given as a way to earn salvation or redemption or escape from oppression.  God has already delivered them!

     As a result of their deliverance, the Exodus experience, they know God’s power and will and love.  When they grumbled about food, He gave them food.  When they grumbled about meat, He gave them quail meat until they were sick of it.  When they worried about thirst, He gave them water from a rock.  And don’t forget how He freed them from any retribution from Egypt.  Israel has no need to worry about Egypt because their best and most overpowering weapon, their chariots, have been destroyed.  Not one Israelite had to risk their life in battle, so complete was God’s deliverance.  Not a sandal or piece of clothing has been worn out.  Heck, even their flocks have made it through all this.  Whatever part of this experience was most impressive to them, they have seen with their own eyes.  And now they ask God what it means to be His people.

     The First Word, as our Hebrew brothers and sisters, speak to what should be Covenant loyalty to His awesome power and merciful grace.  When they doubted and complained, God still provided.  Whatever they needed, He made sure they had.  What should their response be?  Absolute recognition of the fact that God is faithful and worthy of worship and praise.  They should trust He has their best interest at heart as He has demonstrated that fact time and time again.

     The result of that experience and understanding ought to cause His people to be loyal to Him, despite the instruction of the First Word.  But God, knowing the human heart, instructs His people, reminds His people of how they should behave toward Him, given His covenant faithfulness to them.

     Notice, though, we are speaking in terms of relationship.  Specifically, we are speaking in terms of covenant relationship.  Why highlight this?  Again, God has delivered His people and they have asked what living in relationship with a holy God is like.  God has not thundered from Sinai that the world HAS to live like this.  He has thundered from Sinai that this is what living in relationship with Him.  Oh, I understand that all of God’s torah is for our benefit.  If all humanity lived under His instruction and guidance, this world would truly be like the next. 

     Back to our concerns in the world.  Some of our brothers and sisters in Christ get really upset when the world chooses to remove monuments to or list of the Ten Commandments from courthouses and public squares.  They loudly proclaim this is a Christian nation and such removal is a sign of our acceptance of Satan or other nonsense.  Good.  I see the nods.  Why would the world ever want these instructions, this torah?  If they have no experience of God’s deliverance, if they have no relationship with God, no understanding of His faithfulness?  If they do not have that relationship, or they do not yet understand that relationship is possible, how can they ever respond?  How can they want to live as a people already delivered?

     As a priest in Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, I am both unsurprised and not disappointed when the Ten Commandments are removed from the public sphere.  America is NOT God’s covenant nation.  Whatever town we name is not God’s covenant town.  Those who claim Jesus as Lord, those who have been baptized into Christ’s death and raised into His Resurrection are those who should be asking God the same question asked at the foot of Sinai.  The members of the Body of Christ are those who should be seeking how to live in communion with God, not people who do not know Him.

     If you are shocked or ready to argue, think of the plan of salvation.  God chose Abraham and his descendants.  There was nothing special about them other than the fact that God chose them.  But God chose them for His purpose, right?  They were to be a blessing to the world.  How did that play out?  As a redeemed people instructed about God and who experienced God’s deliverance, they were to live as He taught them at the foot of Sinai.  As they were dispersed into the world, they were to live like redeemed people serving God.  The expectation was that the Gentile nations would see what they had, their hope or peace or however we want to describe it, and ask how they could get it, too.  The result was that Gentiles would join God’s people.  Sound familiar?

     It should.  What is the job of the Church?  We give thanks and praise to God for the redeeming work He has done for us in Christ Jesus, the fulfilment of His promises to Abraham way back in Genesis, and to love and serve others in His Name.  We expect people to be drawn by our love and service of them into the saving embrace of God, right?  We, like our Lord, honor peoples’ choice or free will.  We want them to commit to Him.  We want them to join us.  But we should never try and make them.  God gives all human beings free will, and we are always reminded of that truth and gift.  Just because they reject Him today does not mean we keep serving.  As we remind ourselves in the parables, God is always wooing those who do not yet choose to accept His offer.  Always.  Loving and serving others is our cross bearing for His glory.  When we try to force others to join us or serve Him, how does it work?  Absent that experience of deliverance from choosing Him, how can one ever expect to understand the torah and its meaning?

     That leads me to a second discussion about the torah.  I promise you I could bore you all to sleep today discussing the so-call uses of the law.  Theologians have long argued whether the torah is meant to remind us of our need for a Savior, for deliverance, or whether the torah is a stick by which we measure our works or sanctification, or whether the law is meant to restrain evil.  As Christians, we would acknowledge that the torah likely does all that and even more.  But, and this is a huge BUT, with what is God truly concerned?  Our hearts.  Can one live the torah and have a hardened heart?  I see the chuckles and elbows.  Of course one can.  Jesus had lots to say about such individuals.  Can one make appropriate sacrifices and still have a hardened heart?  Yes.  God is concerned with our hearts.  Now, understand, in the ANE, the heart was the seat of the will, not emotion.  When God, or the prophets, or Jesus speak about hearts, we need to hear “will.”  God wants people to want to live holy lives.  God wants people to want to be servants of others.  God wants people to want to glorify Him in their lives.

     Can we do it?  Nope.  Only Jesus did.  But in that want, is the means of reconciliation with God.  When we realize we have sinned, when we realize that we have not lived as God instructs, what do we do?  We repent.  We acknowledge our guilt before God and ask Him, as members of His Son’s Body, to forgive us.  Again, though, we ask ourselves the question, are we truly sorry, do we truly repent?  If we do, God offers forgiveness through His Son our Lord.  And then we are sent back out into the world as heralds of His love and grace, having experienced yet again, His deliverance of us, His shattering of those chains that oppress us.

     All of that, of course, is a reminder of just how much we need Jesus.  Most of us learn pretty quickly that we cannot, by force of will, do those things pleasing to God and avoid those things displeasing to God.  Most of us will not make it through the day without sinning, and none of us will make it to next week, right?  But is God surprised by our failure?  Of course not.  Similarly, was He surprised by Israel’s inability to keep the torah?  Of course not.

     Jesus addresses this for us, though, when He instructs His Apostles and disciples and us that everything in Scripture is about Him.  Even the torah points to our need of His saving grace.  We spend so much of our time focusing on the torah during Lent that I think we sometimes view it as limiting or use it to beat down ourselves and remind us of our unlovable selves before God that I am thankful we get to pay attention to it from another angle during the “green” season of after Pentecost.  The torah, just like Christ, is given to a people already redeemed.  So great is God’s work for us in His beloved Son our Lord that all we bring to the relationship is the willingness to commit to Him.  We don’t earn our way in to His saving grace.  There is no score-keeping which makes some of us more redeemable or more sanctified than others.  It is given unconditionally.  But as His grace works on our hearts, as we begin to understand just what God has done for us, we are shaped, molded, formed as heralds of His mercy and His love, redeemed as princesses and princes in His incredible household, and sent back out there to tell others of the saving works He has done in our lives. 

     Put differently or perhaps more uncomfortably, you and I are the little “I” images and little “m” monuments to God’s faithfulness and love of His chosen people.  Living as if we truly believe it, including repentance, we become those who draw people into God’s saving embrace and those who help others understand the salvation that He offers.

 

In His Peace,

Brian†