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Sunday Homily
Sunday 12 November 2017
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Preaching Text Matthew 25:1-13
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Last Sunday we celebrated All Saints, proclaiming again the Easter hope of life eternal for us and all who are followers of the risen Christ. Today we hear Jesus refer to a wedding feast. It's an image that Jesus used often to speak of the Kingdom of God. In this Gospel, Jesus is once more speaking of the Kingdom.
Advent is still three weeks away. But in a sense, this and the following two Sundays are somewhat like those pre-Lenten Sundays we knew in the old Prayer Book. Advent isn't here yet, and yet there are hints at it's coming. That is especially true when we remember that Advent is not about the birth of Christ. Advent anticipates the coming of Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Bridegroom of the Church, whose coming will bring resurrection to all who have longed for appearing. Therefore, for us to look towards Advent is to stand with the bridesmaids in this Gospel in joyful expectation.
This moment of waiting sounds rather odd to our modern ears. We know when the bridegroom and the bride will appear. The thought that one of them might be late would make us incredibly anxious. This just doesn't happen in our day. But the incredible thing is that in the generation to whom Jesus spoke this parable it was expected that the bridegroom would come when he was good and ready and that those who waited upon his arrival would be waiting for an unknown length of time.
But there is a part of this waiting that would have sounded odd to the ears of that generation. Jesus speaks of these ten bridesmaids who stand at the gate with oil lamps in hand expecting the arrival of the bridegroom. Five of them are shown as wise, for they brought with them a reserve of oil in preparation for a lengthy wait. Five of them are revealed as foolish, for eitber they had no reserves or their reserves that they once had were fully used. And so when the bridegroom finally arrived, five had oil and light, and five had none. But this is not the shocking part of this parable. The shock for the generation that first heard this parable is found in the refusal of those with oil to share with those who had none. Culturally it would have been expected that the five who had extra oil would share what they had. And the irony of this is that most of us are probably inclined these days in our generation and culture to think that those who refused to share were justified in their refusal.
They are justified in their refusal, but not for the reason you might think. Remember that this is a parable. This is a story that points to something greater. In this life, on this side of the first Easter, the day on which Christ came forth from the grave victorious over death, we stand waiting for Christ to come to us as a bridegroom coming to take his bride to himself. As we draw near to the end of the Church Year, we are considering the last things, the last great day of Resurrection. But, mindful of our own mortality, we are also aware that Christ may come for us individually before that day to bring us from life to life through the death of the body. And when we ponder that fact that we are those who wait in expectation in this Gospel story, it is then and only then that we can see that the oil is something greater than mere lamp oil. And when we see this, it is then that we see why that oil cannot be shared.
You see, this is all about preparation driven by anticipation. The bridesmaids who prepared knew that the bridegroom would come. It is important to remember, however, that they did not know when he would arrive. As Christians, we need to prepare for Christ to appear to us both on the day of our bodily death as well as on the last great day. We do not know when Christ will appear; when our last day or the last day will come. What we do know is simply that this day will come; that Christ will appear to bring us to the feast.
Are we ready? Have we prepared to greet Christ at his coming? No one else can do this for us. We must prepare ourselves. And how do we prepare ourselves to greet Christ at his coming? Chiefly we live this life in such a way that on one hand we know that at any moment Christ may appear before us to usher us into the feast, while on the other hand knowing that we might have many more days and years of waiting and living the life of faith in this world. This preparation is somewhat like the preparation that we should be doing before coming to Mass, knowing that we receive Christ in the Mass in what Luke refers to in the second chapter of Acts as:
"...the apostles' teaching and the
fellowship, to the breaking of bread
and the prayers."
Acts 2:42
Only this preparation, this oil that keeps us shinning as lamps in the world that point to Jesus in expectation of his Advent has a greater urgency than our need to prepare to come to Mass. It may sound rather odd to hear such a statement. Here is why I say this. I tend to begin my preparations for standing in your midst as your priest at the Sunday Mass on Monday; sometimes even late Sunday evening. When I begin, I know that there are at least five days in which to prepare. But if we take seriously that none of us knows when Christ will come, we know that we have no guarantee of one more day, or one more hour, or even one more minute. Maybe I'm more aware of this than most simply because day after day I sit with people who always thought there would be more time, and suddenly no more time is left, for the day and the hour have arrived.
Are we ready? We have no guarantee that we shall even finish this Mass. Do we have oil in our lamps and reserves to sustain the light of Christ in us for as long as we need to wait for his appearing? Christ will come. Let us be attentive, ready for him to appear, no matter how long we await with joyful anticipation and expectation for the lover of our souls who has given us his own life and claimed us as his own by name and forever.
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Father Timothy Alleman
Rector --- Church of the Holy Cross
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