Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · November 9, 2008

Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Dear Lord, bless us now as we come to worship. Visit us with your Holy Spirit and help us to remember the stories of our faith. Help us to be focused on being prepared to live the abundant life you have given us. Amen.

Scripture

Matthew 25:1-13

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came along also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Message

Keep the Light Burning

Larry Gallamore

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could be prepared for anything?  Just in the past few months you’ve experienced a sub-prime mortgage crisis, rising unemployment, the rising cost of foreign oil, a downturn in economic growth, stock market decline, and the government bailout of Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, AIG, and others.  We live in an era where we must be prepared for anything.

Our biblical text for today is about being prepared.  Is it possible for you to be prepared for anything?  You don’t want to be “up a creek without a paddle.”

Let’s examine this model story.  It revolves around two groups of people: those who are prepared and those who are unprepared.  The prepared people take advantage of a great opportunity.  They made their own opportunity by being prepared.  You can have anything in life you want if you are prepared.  Isn’t it our duty to run our lives along an intelligent line?  Life demands preparation.  Failure to prepare results in dire consequences.  If we could talk to the unprepared in our story, they would tell you that they were too involved with external, unimportant details.  They were too busy with all the other demands made on them to be prepared for a bridegroom.

We’re looking at a huge wedding where lots of little details go into the planning.  Since we don’t know the exact procedure for weddings in the first century, we’ll go with what we know.  The preparation usually took about a year.  On the day of the wedding, the groom would gather his friends and they would travel to the bride’s home.  The bride is waiting all dressed up for her “knight in shining armor.”  The groom’s arrival was often at night.  It took him most of the day to round up his friends. 

The bridesmaids were to have well-lit lamps to light the way.  The lamps were long poles with oil-drenched rags fastened at the top.  They burned quickly so you had to add oil about every ten minutes.  Running out of oil was not an option.  The groom would be totally in the dark.  “Being in the dark” is still a phrase that denotes unpreparedness.  A little warning here – if you have no time for preparation, you’ll spend a lot of time in the dark.  

How could these bridesmaids be so foolish?  We all know things like this happen.  The biggest fools in life are those who are so bothered with unimportant things they fail to prepare themselves for what’s really important.  

Almost all of the sermons I’ve heard using this text severely criticized the foolish bridesmaids.  One preacher years ago said all five probably fell out of a tree and hit their head on every stupid branch on the way down.  Another said, “What on earth were they thinking?  How did they get themselves in such a mess?”

We really can’t criticize.  We all know how it feels to be unprepared.  They could ask us, “How did you get yourselves in such an economic mess?  Look how dependent you are on foreign oil.”  

To save face, let’s say they were just like all the rest of us.  In fact, they were like the five wise bridesmaids.  They were all stressed out with the wedding.  They were all waiting for the bridegroom.  They were all looking forward to the festivities.  They all fell asleep when it got late.  There was only one difference. The wise thought ahead.  They knew life demands preparedness, and failure to prepare brings dire consequences.  If you want to be prepared for anything, this is the first thing you have to keep in mind.  

The second thing is you can’t always rely on others.  Notice what the foolish ones did.  They went straight to the wise ones to bail them out.  They soon learned that a big part of life is accepting personal responsibility for our own actions.

When I was in sixth grade, we had lots of homework.  A friend of mine named Gary would always find me the morning our homework assignment was due and ask to copy my homework.  He had not done his.  Several times I told him, “No, do your own homework.”  Gary got the message after receiving several failing grades.  He went on to become a good student.  Natural and logical consequences work.

I want to suggest that what happened to the five foolish bridesmaids is very similar to what has happened to us recently.  We simply were not prepared for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, rising unemployment, stock market decline, the high price of oil, or any of the tragedies we have faced.  We were caught up in the moment.  Life was good, we were in the fast lane, we lived by the light of our professions, and our hearts were rooted in having more.  We were under the influence of the external world, and we found ourselves unprepared.  We discovered how it is to put our trust in external things.  What can we learn from our present situation?  We have some answers to that question in our scriptural text for today.

First, your best preparation for life is an investment in your spiritual life.  Without some degree of spiritual understanding, there is no real security.  Security isn’t found in external things.  When we pull ourselves together in the middle of this critical hour, God offers us light to live by – light enough to keep going.  The center of your life is not your mortgage. It is not your 401(k). It is not the stock market. It is not even your vocation.  It is Jesus. He is the only one who will never fail you.

Many have been quite literally pounded to pieces.  They are left with what the New Testament calls “A spirit of fear.”  There is an appalling sense of inadequacy for life. Some are saying their minds are just numb.  

Others are boasting and acting like nothing has happened.  They are covering up their hurt, repressing it.  Others are blaming the president, Congress, or someone else.  Some are becoming paranoid thinking that surely someone is out to get them.  Some are daydreaming, running away mentally from what’s happening.  Some have become ill.

Now, here is the good news.  There is a way out.  You must tap into the spiritual resources that will give you personal power.  Like the Apostle Paul said, “You can do all things through God who strengthens you.”  Did you know Paul said that while he was in prison?  A religion that doesn’t give you personal power to counter life’s fears isn’t functioning.  Your relationship to God is of critical importance when you face life’s greatest fears.

Secondly, the story of your life is the story of the relationship between yourself and God.  God is stronger than anything awful.  Have you ever played the “Suppose something awful should happen” game?  Here’s how it goes.  Suppose something awful should happen.  What then?  If it did, God is stronger than anything “awful” and could put things right again as a result of your prayers.  Suppose you lost everything.  What then?  Think about what a wonderful demonstration you could make when you begin to recover and you achieve more than you ever had before.  Suppose you lost your heart’s delight.  What then?  You cannot really lose what really belongs to you, so God would bring it back more wonderful than ever.  Suppose the whole universe blew up.  What then? When the dust settles, God would still be in business and you’d be alive somewhere ready to carry on through prayer and understanding.

I was standing in line at a supermarket a few weeks ago, and a woman in front of me was reading one of those magazines at the checkout.  She turned to me and said, “This says the world’s coming to an end.”  I responded to her, “That’s OK; we can get along just fine without it.”  You should have seen her face!  I was waiting for someone to come over the intercom and say, “There’s a guy in checkout lane #3 that says he can get along just fine without the world.”  By the way, I can’t take credit for that quote.  It came from Mark Twain.

We are channels for God’s power.  The Bible is clear, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”  God is prepared to deal with anything.  You are more than equal to anything that may arise if you have faith and courage.  As Christians, it is not our custom to grovel before difficulties but to conquer them.  Our relationship with God provides the power to get us through anything.  In the midst of these crises, God calls us to “wake up.”

There is a chain of coffee shops in the Atlanta, Georgia area called “Caribou Cafe.”  Their motto is: “Life is short.  Stay awake.”  That is what God calls us to do.  We stay awake, we remain prepared not through some meritorious works, not through some great acts which convince God and others we are the guests who’ll be invited into the wedding.  Rather we keep watch; we maintain jars of oil for our torches which God gives us for the task.  We return again and again to Jesus’ promises that he knows his own sheep.  We avail ourselves of the wonderful oil of God’s promises as we apply all the means of God’s grace to our lives.  Our preparation, our watchfulness is a life of trust and of faith in his provision for us.

Life is short.  Stay awake.  Move forward with God.  Look forward with God.  You have life in front of you.  Don’t be afraid of the future.  Don’t look back and grieve over your losses.  Even if you are quaking, go right ahead and quake as you go.  Jesus said the man who puts his hand to the plow and then turns back is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven.  He also said, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

The story of Lot’s wife is one of the most telling parables in the Bible.  Lot and his family were fleeing from a city that was just about to be destroyed.  They were told by an angel that they would get away safely provided they did not look back.  The others obeyed the injunction and escaped, but Lot’s wife looked back and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt.  In the Old Testament, salt is a symbol for death, and this means that those who look back are dead spiritually and that usually their material affairs become stagnant, too.

Never look back.  No matter how unattractive or how dangerous the road ahead may be, it is better than the road back.  The road ahead may mean difficulty, but the road back means failure.  The road ahead may be veiled from sight, but you must teach yourself to regard the unknown as friendly.

Remember that God is always at the end of the road ahead, but at the end of the road back you will only find yourself.

So be it. Amen.

Benediction

Light of the World, as November winds rush in around us, let us not be swept up in the whirlwind that is beginning. Help us to take inventory of what we have and what we need. Prepare us to be ready for your purposes and for your full presence in this banquet of life. Amen.