Bring Light into the World

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday November 9, 2008, the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78:1-7
1Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matt 25:1-18

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Last weekend, Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels was the guest on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News TV show. They were discussing political humor during a campaign year. One of the things they agreed on is that all satire, particularly political satire, isn’t funny unless there is some truth inside the joke.

Every year I say that stewardship is about more than money. This is a very biblical interpretation of stewardship. I very strongly believe as the psalmist teaches, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”[1] Yes, there is a focus on cash. Cash can be measured easily. Cash has to be reported to the Presbytery annually. Cash is one of the many ways humans, and particularly Americans, keep score. I have even spoken and written about that quite a bit lately. But in a turn away from the cash call, I have said that more than anything we can take to the bank, proper tithing must start with a change of attitude.

Still if your first responses to these thoughts on stewardship are “Circle the wagons! Grab your wallets! Hide the women and children!” I couldn’t blame you. I could even see this as a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live, the pastor drones on about stewardship as voiceovers of the congregation’s thoughts take center stage over the words of the preacher.

Well, as is so often the case, fools go where angels fear to tread and this year I am going to preach not one, but two stewardship sermons. This week we will explore stewardship through the parable of the twelve bridesmaids, or virgins depending on your translation, and next week it’s onto the parable of the talents.

As with all of the parables Jesus shares with his disciples, there are two things happening, the first is an artistic aspect. We read “the kingdom of heaven will be like this.” This means that the kingdom will be comparable to this description; it does not mean that the kingdom of heaven will be identical to this. We are not supposed to take this description literally.

There is a mythical quality to the artistic element of the parable. The tale Jesus shares with his disciples allows them to think, ponder, and dream beyond the limits they impose upon themselves. It shows us not just the vision of the words, it gives us something to consider beyond the words.

The second thing is that the parable’s situation is one that the people who originally heard this story would know. The disciples themselves would never have been bridesmaids, but they would have all been members of wedding parties at one time or another.

Several were married; Peter we know was married because Jesus healed his mother-in-law. I am reasonably sure all of them had been to a wedding banquet. John’s gospel even has Jesus’ first public miracle at a wedding in Cana. The disciples would have known the lay of the land of the wedding banquet.

Now there was one thing they would have had no problem with that I did. What exactly did Jesus mean when he said that they trimmed their lamps? If you are my age, “trimming the lamp” is as complicated as hoping the proper light bulb is in the cupboard. It’s as easy as making sure the flashlight has batteries.

It seems easy enough to all of us, trim the lamps means trim the lamps; it means to cut the wicks so that the burned stuff is gone and the wick is even. Marie Bolerjack told me that if the lamp is not trimmed properly, it will smoke when it burns and soot builds on the globe. If not trimmed properly, not only will the amount of light the lamp emits be dimmed, the lamp will probably burn more oil and could be dangerous.

Oddly though, the Greek word translated “trimmed” means more than just preparing a wick for burning.[2] Everywhere else in the New Testament, this word means to adorn or to put in order. Since I don’t think any of the bridesmaids were using the bedazzler on their lamps, I don’t think adorn is a proper translation. A more appropriate translation choice could have been to put their lamps in order before the bridegroom arrives. Trimming the wicks as we understand it would be a part of putting the lamps in order, but there is more than that. Another part of trimming the lamps would be filling them with oil.

This is where we separate the wise bridesmaids from the foolish. Nobody wise would have traveled with their lamps filled with oil. The lamp of the day was open at the top. The oil would not be in a closed oil well like globe or hurricane style lanterns. Sloshing and spilling would have emptied the lamp long before they reached the door where they waited. A wise bridesmaid would have carried her oil in a separate sealed container and added it when the time was right. This would have been wise.

Perhaps this is the foolish bridesmaids’ foolishness. Maybe they carried their oil in their lamps, spilling along the way to guarantee that there would be nothing left in their lamps by the time they reached their destination.

Only the wise five that remained, the five that carried the light, were invited to enter the wedding banquet. The other foolish five were waking shopkeepers; maybe one at a time, maybe five at a time; seeking oil for their lamps.

Only the five that had put their lamps in order before reaching the bridegroom’s door were invited to enter the banquet. When the other five arrived with their lamps burning they were denied entrance to the banquet. The master saying, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” To me, this describes the element of stewardship we must acknowledge today, what does it mean to put our lamps in order?

The obvious place to look at this is in the last verse of our gospel reading where Jesus gave his disciples this warning: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” Some ancient authorities go as far as to say “you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.” This translation bugs me though. Whether the bridesmaids entered the banquet or not had nothing to do with them being awake or asleep. All of them slept, all of them were awake when the bridegroom arrived. The difference was not whether one was awake or not, it was whether they were prepared or not. So simply being awake doesn’t seem to describe the difference well enough.

But another way this can be translated is that Jesus warned his disciples not just to be awake, but to be alive, to be fully alive.[3] Jesus wants more than warm bodies. He wants the church to be filled with people who are more than just awake. Awake is a threshold; alive, truly alive is what he wants the church to be.

Our Lord calls us to aspire to and to work toward the life He gives us and calls us to live; to be good stewards of the life, the world, and the gifts we have been given. Our goal, our call, our vocation is be the light of God in the world and to bring light into the world.

The most common way we bring the light is by doing good works. Praise God this part of the body of Christ does many good works in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the last year, we delivered 360 backpacks filled with school supplies to the Loaves and Fishes Food Bank for needy children in Carroll County. Some members also contribute their time and their vehicle to the Food Bank.

We have opened our doors for community worship services and for civic organizations. We contribute time and money to Presbyterian seminaries and Hispanic ministry in northwest Arkansas.

We work to fight hunger and do the work of the greater church, including Presbyterian Disaster Relief, through contributions to the Presbytery. We give time and energy to many good causes for the glory of our Father who is in heaven. But there is more, oh so much more we can do and need to do.

One thing we all need to do more of is to share worship. Here’s an uncomfortable question, “When was the last time you invited someone to come and worship with this part of the body of Christ?” Mike Nelson tells this story about this:

When I was interning at a Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis, I had the privilege of sharing an office with Bob Evans, a retired pastor who served our congregation as voluntary “evangelism consultant.”

One week he had an insert run off for the Sunday worship bulletin that simply stated, “Surveys show that the average Lutheran invites someone to church once every 14 years.”

At the bottom he asked the tongue-in-cheek question: “How many of you are past due?”[4]

This is just one way we can trim the lamps of our lives. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that inviting someone to worship may cost more than we will ever find in our bank accounts. Inviting others puts us individually and corporately on display. It puts us on the line to show that we worship and work for the glory of God in the world. What could cost us more than that?

This parable is loaded with many symbols. When this gospel was written these elements would have been important to all of its listeners. Jesus is known far and wide as the bridegroom. While not mentioned by name in this parable, the church is called the Bride of Christ. The wedding banquet refers to the anticipated Messianic Banquet; a great feast for the faithful in the age to come that was a feature in Jewish and Christian speculation about the end time.[5] Oil is often used in scripture and in worship to represent the Holy Spirit. But frankly, there isn’t a scriptural parabolic use of bridesmaids. Interpreters instead liken them to the members of the church who will be sorted like the sheep and the goats in the end times.[6]

The symbols are glorious and illuminating, but there is still that same old problem of reading parables like watching “The Da Vinci Code” filling in scriptural allusions like watching Tom Hanks fill in the blanks of Dan Brown’s prose.

What we can say is that the kingdom of heaven will be like a great banquet. A banquet the Lord our God hosts when all of creation is put into order. When through the Holy Spirit we work to do God’s will to put creation into order.

Another interesting thing about the word English bibles translate as trimmed is that it comes from the same root word as the words for world, earth, and ultimately creation; the sum of everything here and now, all of the cosmos. In the common use of the word, it pointed to an orderly creation, a universe where all is beautiful.[7] So as the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, all of what is good and ordered and created is from and for the Lord. As we trim the lamps of our lives, we participate in making the orderly creation which God envisions. As we trim the lamps of our lives, we work to bring back toward Eden the creation our Lord began.

So this is our goal, this is our endeavor; this is how we serve as good stewards over God’s creation. We let our light shine before others, that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.[8]

[1] Psalm 24:1, NRSV
[2] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel, editor. Vol. III. Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 1965, page 867.
[3] gragorew, “A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature.” Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker, Editor, based on Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English editions by W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, electronic edition 2000
[4] HomileticsOnline.com, Timothy F. Merrill, Executive Editor, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords=invite , retrieved November 8, 2008.
[5] Messianic Banquet, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
[6] New Interpreter’s Bible, v. viii, Leander Keck, General Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, page 450 and HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93000101, retrieved November 5, 2008.
[7] Kittel, page 868-880
[8] From The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter XVI - Of Faith and Good Works, and of Their Reward, and of Man's Merit, paragraph 6..

Exceedingly Ordinary

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Chruch in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday November 2, 2008, the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and redeemer. Amen

The pressure to be exceptional is a cause of many illnesses. When we put too much pressure on ourselves, we cause the stress in our lives to become amplified far beyond what is healthy. We make a swift move from the stress that we need in life to distress which can kill us.

What’s more, our attempts to be exceptional can actually lead to unhappiness. Lyndon Duke,[1] who studies suicide, has found that when people try to be extraordinary, nearly everyone fails. They end up feeling like losers for not being good enough, special enough, rich enough or happy enough. The result of trying to be exceptional is very often a life of unhappiness.

There has to be a better way. And fortunately there is; one that involves humility. Mr. Duke’s own story shows us the way.

Duke was moping around feeling unhappy one day, when all of a sudden he began to hear a neighbor singing while he was mowing his lawn. In a moment of clarity, he realized what was missing from his life: the simple pleasures of an average day. He realized that he needed to stop trying to exalt himself; simply accepting the ordinary life that he and his family had been given.

The very next weekend, he went to visit his son, who was struggling to excel in his first semester at college. Duke spoke very clearly to him, saying, “I expect you to be a straight C student, young man. I want you to complete your unremarkable academic career, meet an ordinary young woman, and, if you choose, get married and live a completely average life!”

His son, of course, thought he had flipped. But Duke was advising him to enjoy the height of humility; to be an average student, and enjoy an ordinary life.

The result of this advice was quite surprising. No longer feeling any pressure to be exceptional, Duke’s son did an average amount of studying for his final exams. His grades were outstanding: straight A’s.

He then called his dad and apologized.

This story points to the paradox of an average-life philosophy: If you focus on living an ordinary life, the cumulative effect of many average days becomes extraordinary. Little steps add up. Serving others produces great results. Those who humble themselves will be exalted, says Jesus. An extraordinary life usually begins with being exceedingly ordinary.

Notice this doesn’t say that we should be doormats for others. Jesus isn’t suggesting that we subject ourselves to abuse. No, he is saying that we should turn away from arrogance, and turn toward humility. Be a student he says; be a disciple of the Messiah, a humble servant. It’s through a life of ordinary service that we accomplish extraordinary things.

True story: Paul Farmer[2] grew up in a trailer park in Florida, went to Duke and Harvard Medical School, and earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. He could’ve decided to practice medicine in an elite and lucrative practice anywhere in the country, but in his mid-30s he was working in Boston for a third of the year, living in a church rectory in a slum, and the rest of the year he was working without pay in Haiti, providing medical care to peasants who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. In 1987, he helped to create a nonprofit organization called “Partners in Health,” with both medical and moral missions. By 2003, this group was treating 1,000 patients per day in the Haitian countryside, free of charge, and was also working to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Peru.

The height of humility is a life of service that has created a world of good. And people have noticed this quiet work. Although not one to exalt himself, Dr. Farmer has received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, and a $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.

Of course, not all of us have degrees from Harvard and the resources of a genius grant. Regardless of who we are and how we make our livings, we can choose to live a truly humble life that is anything but average. Wherever we are on the socioeconomic spectrum, the words of Jesus ring true: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This certainly sounds simple enough. Of course, sounds like this are deceptive. The phrase “easier said than done” comes to mind. There is a lot of pressure, some of it comes from family, colleagues, peers, and neighbors; and the rest is the pressure we put on ourselves. It’s a deceptive thing to say that “we’re just trying to be the best people we can be; it’s not like we’re trying to be God.” And that’s the big trap; the one we may not even know has a hold of us.

We testify that Jesus is now and has always been fully human and fully divine. We testify that he is without sin; until he takes our sin upon himself at Calvary that is. Then he feels the all too human pain of rejection crying, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?”[3] Even knowing all of this, this is going to sound a little strange: Not only is Jesus more divine than we will ever be, he is also more human than we will ever be.

One more time, not only is Jesus more divine than we will ever be, he is more human than we will ever be.

Because of sin, we can never be fully human. There is eternally a separation between the humanity we experience and the experience of humanity our Lord created for us. This perfect humanity is the life Jesus lived. This isn’t another invitation for us to make ourselves into doormats. No body can be all things to all people; it isn’t in our make up. It isn’t an invitation to beat ourselves up because we aren’t perfect either. After all, we can’t be perfect. This is instead the time to know that we all have limitations, not one of us does not.

Here’s the invitation, we are to be all that we can be in Christ, because in Him we can do all things. It is when we try to be extraordinary in ourselves that we will be humbled. The call Jesus lays upon our lives is to live where ordinary faithfulness leads to extraordinary things.

To live a humble life, it’s important to avoid the three mistakes that the scribes and the Pharisees make.[4] First, they do not practice what they teach. They are hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. If we are to be humble servants of Christ and have a positive impact on the world, we need to make sure that our deeds are in line with our words. This is true because in this world people are always going to be watching to see if we are people of integrity, showing consistency between our words and our actions.

Second, the scribes and Pharisees lay burdens on the shoulders of others, burdens they are unwilling to bear themselves. These religious leaders apply the ancient purity laws of the Israelites to the people as a whole. Jesus clearly considers this an unfair burden. When people are in need, it is critical for us to go beyond giving advice; we also need to lend a hand.

Finally, they do all their deeds to be seen by others; being more interested in appearances than in having a relationship with God. Seats in the synagogue, fringes on prayer shawls and broad phylacteries, or in my case a robe and stole, can all play a role in good and faithful worship, but they lose their value when they are designed to exalt the person who is doing the praying.

Earlier in Matthew, Jesus condemns those who “love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.” Instead, he recommends to his followers, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”[5] Worship is about connecting with God, not impressing other people.

Avoiding these traps helps us to live a humble life, one in which the exceedingly ordinary becomes truly extraordinary. Practice what you teach. Offer a helping hand. Focus on God. These three tips are deceptively simple but deeply significant. They lie at the heart of a Christian life which makes a positive difference in the world.

In the end, we don’t get anywhere by exalting ourselves. The only real lift comes from exploring our humanity and the heights of humility. Instead of following the example set by the religious teachers, Jesus urges the crowds and disciples to understand that the kingdom is marked by humility. Those who would enter cannot rely on their own righteousness or piety.

Those who follow Jesus must answer to one Father, and not revel in any honor due on earth. Those who follow the Son must recognize only one Master, the Christ. It is not possible to be both self-serving and to practice God’s commandments. Those who follow the Lord must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, and not on personal authority or status. This kingdom, as Matthew reminds his readers again and again, is one of reversal: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”[6]

[1] HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040416, retrieved October 20, 2008.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Matthew 27:45
[4] HomileticsOnline.com, Ibid.
[5] Matthew 6:5-6.
[6] HomileticsOnline.com, Ibid.