get ready!

a sermon, based on Matthew 25.1-13, preached with the people of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, on the 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost, November 12, 2017

“Keep awake…for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Jesus, identifying his ministry, identifying himself with the coming of the kingdom of heaven, symbolized by a wedding banquet, tells a parable about bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom. Him! Some are ready and invited to the feast. Others are not and are left out.

Reflecting on this story, I, as one who came of age in the 1960s, recall the words of a song of the late, great Curtis Mayfield:

People get ready! There’s a train a-coming.

Don’t need no baggage. You just get on board.

All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming.

Don’t need no ticket. You just thank the Lord.[1]

A train’s a-coming. Mayfield’s metaphor for passage to eternity, for which the required readiness is neither the earthly “baggage” of material attainment nor the “ticket” of personal attributes and achievements, but simply, only faith.

This past week, I had a conversation with a dear friend; though I did more listening than talking. Though young (I consider her as a daughter), she’s made what she considers a lifetime of mistakes. In her view, her prospects are unclear and her horizons, what she can see of them, veiled in shadow.

This morning, I step back from the threshold of eternity to focus on this world. This sermon, the fruit of my listening to my friend, is what I want to say, what I will say to her.

This business of readiness is a resonant theme throughout our daily living. We want to be ready. On top of our game. At the peak of our powers. Physically rested. Emotionally stable. Mentally alert. Financially solvent. Conversant with the tasks at hand and confident of having the necessary skills in hand.

I often wish that when we succeed at being ready, accomplishing what we set out to do, proving again our ability, polishing our life’s record of excellence that would be the end of it. But no! Life continues to challenge our readiness, presenting us with ongoing opportunities “to do it again” and, thereby, reminding us of moments when we weren’t ready. Moments that will come again. When confidence falters. When anxiety overwhelms. When we fail.

Whenever that happens, then we know how the foolish bridesmaids felt. Whenever we, as they, showing up with oil in their lamps, offer our well-intentioned best. Whenever we, as they, bringing not enough oil for as long as they had to wait, discover our best is not enough. Whenever we, as they, hear that word of rejection, most painfully spoken when looking in the mirror that reflects our guilt in letting others down and perhaps our shame in seeing again the face of less than our best: “I do not know you!”

Now, I do not know whether any of this registers for or resonates within you. Speaking for myself, manifold have been my experiences of this. Thus, I know and again I declare that life continues to challenge our readiness.

But that can be good news. For as long as life lasts, there are second chances. Therefore, the judgment “I do not know you” on our failures, on us is not final.

To behold in life the possibility, the reality of second chances, whether understood as bestowed by the hand of an ever-loving, ever-forgiving God or offered in each new opportunity or both and more, can give us hope and courage to be in the moment, making the best decisions we can, and living with the consequences without that oft self-imposed burden of having to prove how good and right we and our choices are.

A train always is a-coming. It’s called “second chance.” Readiness is having faith, believing that is so and climbing on board when it comes. So,

People get ready! There’s a train a-coming.

Don’t need no baggage. You just get on board.

All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming.

Don’t need no ticket. You just thank the Lord.

 

Illustration: The Parable of the Bridesmaids, James Tissot (1836-1902). Note: Tissot’s painting portrays the five wise bridesmaids who, awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom “became drowsy and slept” (Mathew 25.5), nevertheless, having brought more than sufficient oil, have their lamps lit. I assume that Tissot, in not depicting the five foolish bridesmaids, therefore not following the flow of the parable, wished to infer that they had departed to buy oil for their lamps.

Footnote:

[1] From the song, People Get Ready (1965); words and music by Curtis Lee Mayfield (1942-1999)

“My God, why?”

a sermon, based on Matthew 26.14-27.66, preached with the people of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, on the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017

“Ēli, Ēli, lema sabachthani?”[1]

Of all the words of Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ring in undeniable harmony with the human cry of sorrow and shame provoked by the experience of betrayal and abandonment.

Jesus was betrayed by Judas with a kiss.[2]

I wonder. What kind of kiss was it? An apologetic, ambivalent brush against the cheek; Judas, for the sake of his own survival, with the opposition against Jesus growing fiercer by the day, turned him in, but now had second thoughts? Or a bruising, resentful crush of lips on lips; Judas, disappointed, angry that Jesus wasn’t as he had hoped, a mighty militant Messiah who would run the Romans out of Palestine? Or a mercenary, eyes-wide-open peck on the forehead; Judas, for purely material gain, selling Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver?

Whatever. It really doesn’t matter. Judas betrayed Jesus with an act of familiarity, even fealty.

Anything like this ever happen to us? Anything like this ever been done by us? Severing a relationship with a loving gesture; a kiss or a seemingly tender word, for example, the now-proverbial, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Jesus was abandoned by Peter, the chief disciple.

Peter declared his loyalty to Jesus. “I’ll never desert you!”[3] Then, under the pressure of self-preservation, his confidence overcome by cowardice, he blurted out his betrayal, “I do not know the man!”[4]

Anything like this ever happen to us or been done by us? Standing apart from another, even a former dear friend. Ignoring phone calls and email. Averting the eyes to evade a needy look. Avoiding past meeting places and potentially awkward encounters. Perhaps, in fairness to ourselves, under the pressure of changing circumstance, not knowing what to say or do, nevertheless, acting as if the other didn’t exist.

Jesus was betrayed by Pilate, the Roman governor.

Pilate believed Jesus was innocent. Yet, bowing to mob-rule, he symbolically washed his hands;[5] for the sake of political expediency, abdicating his responsibility to do the admittedly risky, but right thing and free Jesus.

Anything like this ever happen to us or been done by us? Having the authority, the ability to act to benefit another, yet, in response to our preference or prejudice or fear, choosing not; thus, leaving the other to face loss or to lose face.

My point? Jesus’ experience reflects, is our experience. People fail us. We fail people. We know the experience of Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, and Pilate’s dismissal in receiving and giving. It never feels good, never is good when it happens, whether to us or by us.

Yet more…most devastating, Jesus was abandoned by God.

“My God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the prayer of one who believed he was following, fulfilling his life’s calling, yet found himself plunged into a bottomless pit of lonely Godforsaken suffering. “My God” (I do not question your existence, but) “why have you forsaken me?” (I do question your silence!).

Anything like this ever happen to us? Believing, trusting in God, then, at a time of crisis, at a critical, crucial, crucifying moment our calls, our cries for help answered by silence; feeling abandoned and the absolute absence of any sense or solution. We pray it doesn’t happen often, for it’s the sort of thing from which we don’t, can’t recover soon or at all.

Jesus cried, “My God, why?” I wonder. What did Jesus think, feel when the divine response was a deafening silence. Matthew doesn’t speculate, telling us only that “Jesus cried again…and breathed his last.”[6]

Perhaps this is the lesson of the cry of Jesus, the lesson of the cross, the lesson of any crucifixion. To yield to the experience. To surrender in the fight to find sense amid nonsense. Metaphorically, but no less truly, to breathe one’s last. For only then, if there is to be a resurrection, can it come.

 

Illustrations:

Kiss of Judas (1304–06), Giotto (1266-1337), Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy

The Denial of Saint Peter (1610), Caravaggio (1571-1610)

Pilate Washing His Hands (c. 1655-1660), Luca Giordano (1634-1705)

Crucifixion (c. 1618-1620), Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Footnotes:

[1] Matthew 27.46

[2] Matthew 26.49-50

[3] Matthew 26.33

[4] Matthew 26.72, 74

[5] Matthew 27.24

[6] Matthew 27.50

a-Lenten-prayer-a-day, day 3, Friday, March 3, 2017

 Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, I write a prayer for each of the forty days of Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, truly, relating to a care or concern weighing on my mind and heart, at times, vexing my soul and spirit…

On self-knowledge, self-loathing, & self-love, again (with “alway”): O my Lord, I awakened this morning with this (deeper?) insight into what, for me, is a paradox of Your Being: The unconditionality of Your Love for me alway allows me, in my free will, to seek my own way and ways to love me. Yet alway I fail. That, too, you allow. Through this shattered mirror of my constant inability to love my self, truly an inherent, life-long debility, may I see You more clearly; and, alway confident of Your Love, which alway is greater than the fault and guilt of my failure, may I, day by day, more and more, until alway, surrender to You. Amen.

are we ready? part 3

Jesus tells a parable about bridesmaids, five of whom, without sufficient oil for their lamps, missing the bridegroom’s arrival, are locked out of the wedding banquet, unwelcome and unacknowledged.

But this story begins: “The kingdom of heaven will be like this.” When Jesus of Matthew’s gospel speaks of the kingdom of heaven the general reference is to the earthly messianic community, that first century Christian society to whom Matthew was writing, which is related to and distinct from the eternal, heavenly kingdom of God. As the plane on which the parable is fixed or the axis around which it revolves is less eternal and more temporal, its focus is not so much the end of the world, but this age and time.

This story, left to a solely eschatological dimension, with its everlasting judgment of failing, is entirely too final for great comfort or, I think, for good sense. This story, then, even in its judgment, is more fluid, implying a possibility of something beyond that seemingly irrevocably ultimate word of rebuke and rejection: “I do not know you.”

Good thing! I’m not sure that any of us is at all interested in being invited to a wedding banquet or, for that matter, a kingdom (even of heaven!), the door to which we, in the face of our failing, would find closed forever. For fail, at times, we do. Failure always is the risk of risk, the inherent hazard of trying. Even more, no one of us is perfectly competent, even in our exercises of gifts and skills that we possess, for we are not always at our best with our best. We fail. Still more, no one of us is omni-competent. There are many things we don’t and can’t do well. We, at most, are unevenly competent (although a friend once averred that that’s far better than being evenly incompetent!). Hence, we fail.

But this life, in our earnest living of it, seems to hold out to us a prospect of a second chance. To grasp hold of that possibility – whether understood as bestowed by the hand of a gracious God or offered in the occasion of each new moment of opportunity or granted and received within the working of one’s own heart or all of the above – offers hope in the facing of our inevitable failings.

A possibility of a second chance, even when we make a mess of things and fail to get it right in a moment’s time and, despairing, recognize that the moment once passed cannot be reclaimed, may help us hear that the eternal rejection or our internal self-renunciation, “I do not know you”, is not the last word.

A possibility of a second chance may grant us the grace to confess our failing in anticipation of living into the promise of growth, the door to which such painstaking honesty can open.

A possibility of a second chance may help us relinquish our right to be right, hence empower us to live in the moment, making the best decisions we can, living with the consequences, without the burden of having to prove how right the decisions and we are.

Are we ready? In a real way, I suppose, it really doesn’t matter.

are we ready? part 2

We like to be ready. Prepared. And life keeps presenting us with challenges to our sense of readiness, preparedness.

Jesus tells a story about bridesmaids who knew something about readiness and unreadiness. They, according to the high standards of Near Eastern hospitality, particularly that of ancient wedding custom, await the arrival of the groom so to escort the couple to their new home. Not knowing the precise hour of his arrival, their lamps burn. At last, he arrives. The bridesmaids, aroused from slumber, prepare to greet him. It is midnight, requiring lamplight. Five have sufficient oil. Their lamps burn brightly. Five lack oil. Their lamps burning barely. They turn to the first. They speak. I wonder, in what voice. Plaintive, pleading in implicit, honest acknowledgement of their failing: “Give us some of your oil”? Or with entitled demand, being a desperate cover, a denial, really, of their personal responsibility: “Give us some of your oil”? The first reply. I wonder, with what tone. Haughtily, with schadenfreude-esque glee, callously disregarding the need: “No! There will not be enough for you and for us”? Or with sympathetic, but no less firm awareness that one’s prudent preparation cannot compensate for another’s negligence in the moment of immediate need: “No. There will not be enough for you and for us”? No matter really. The result is the same. The five without must look elsewhere for oil. By the time they return, the wedding banquet has begun. They are late. Left out. Locked out.

Tough story! About readiness and unreadiness. The blessing of preparedness. The fallout of failure. Given that this story comes near the end of Matthew’s account, immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, when, in his last days of teaching, he makes pronouncements about the end of the age, it has an uncomfortable air of finality. The locked out bridesmaids are left out forever.

If this is what comes of a cathartic confession of one’s lack, then it is no wonder amid failure that so many often enough choose the dishonesty of self-delusion and denial. Be it God or you or me that I must face, if the judgment is one of condemnatory casting out, then I say, “No, thank you!” I’d rather lie, confessing no error, attempting to carry on, living with an illusion of control and the pretense of success.

Get ready. Still more to come…