Amos 5:18-24 | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 | Matthew 25:1-13
Jeremy Richards
This past Tuesday (and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday), we, as a nation, learned something about waiting in vain. We tasted the disappointment of waiting for election results that didn’t arrive. Of course this isn’t the first time we’ve had to wait for something. Waiting is part of life. We’ve all waited for something that never materialized before. We’ve waited for friends who forgot about our lunch date and never showed up. We’ve waited for buses that never came around the corner. We’ve waited for visitors to arrive at our homes only to get the message that they had car trouble or the roads were bad and they had to get a hotel for the night, but they’ll be there in the morning.
I remember a few years back, our good friends Casey and Jess, who now live in Spokane, came to Portland to run the Portland marathon. They called us after they had just finished the race and asked if we wanted to join them at Red Robin, they were starving. We told them that we’d love to grab lunch with them, but being the snobby Portlanders we are, we couldn’t abide going to Red Robin, especially with friends from out of town. With all the wonderful places to eat in Portland, we had to go to a local spot. So we went to one of our favorite restaurants in SE. We got our seats fairly quickly, if I remember correctly, but our waiter took a long time to get to us, and when he did, he seemed pretty disheveled and overwhelmed. We ordered quickly, including some drinks. Then we didn’t see our waiter again for quite awhile. Eventually, our drinks came, but the food didn’t. We waited...and waited...and waited. After over an hour, we finally told our waiter we were leaving and weren’t paying for our drinks. He completely agreed and apologized profusely. We ended up at Red Robin (with its bottomless fries).
Sometimes waiting is merely inconvenient. Like when I have to wait 2 weeks for the Trampled by Turtles record I ordered to arrive (I’m still waiting, Walmart). Other times, as in the instance with Casey and Jess, waiting is excruciating. And still other times, the anxiety that results from waiting is nearly debilitating, as it was for many of us this week as we waited for the election results to roll in.
But all this pales in comparison to the scope of the waiting which has always characterized the Jewish people and the Christians who emerged out of that Jewish tradition. To be part of the Judeo-Christian tradition is to make your home in waiting. Ever since Genesis 3, when God tells the serpent who deceived Eve, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel,” there has been an expectation of a savior, a messiah, who would right what went wrong in the garden, who would crush the head of the serpent, death. Over time, this idea developed, including not only the salvation of God’s people, the Israelites, but also the judgment of all the other nations, especially those who had oppressed them. This future day of both salvation and judgment became known as “the day of the Lord.” In our reading this morning from Amos, Amos cautions the Israelites from getting too excited about the day of the Lord. It won’t just mean judgment for the nations, it will mean their judgement as well.
According to the gospels, when Jesus arrived on the scene, people quickly began to wonder if he was God’s long awaited Messiah, if the advent of Jesus was the advent of “the day of the Lord.” In John 10:24, Jesus is walking in the temple when a group surrounds him and asks, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” What they’re asking is: is the waiting finally over?
The Christian confession, of course, is that Jesus is, indeed, the Messiah. But this is where the whole “day of the Lord” part gets a bit tricky. Prior to Jesus, everyone assumed that the day of the Lord would be a once-and-for-all event. It was, after all, called the day of the Lord, not the week, month, or, in Jesus’ case, 3 years of the Lord. In the eyes of his disciples, Jesus was taking a long time to bring this day of the Lord about, which is almost laughable to us as we continue to wait 2,000 years later. At the beginning of Acts, after Jesus has been raised and just before he ascends to the Parent, the disciples ask, and you can hear the mix of anxiety and hope, expectation and exhaustion in their voices, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” We’ve been through a lot. Can we finally stop waiting? they ask.
But waiting continues to be the name of the game, as we know all too well. Jesus seemed to know this all along, so in our reading from Matthew today, even as he stands right there among the people, he continues to speak of waiting, letting his listeners know that yes, the Messiah is here, but this isn’t the end. There’s more waiting ahead. This must have been so confusing to his listeners, who probably wondered why he ended this parable, “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” They probably thought, “Well, I mean, we kinda do. Because you're here now, today.”
They never would have guessed that Jesus would leave them, and leave the world in many respects, at least on the surface, the same way it had been before he came. They never would have guessed that we would be here, a group made up primarily of gentiles on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, still waiting.
The second coming of Jesus is often referred to as the Parousia, which is Greek for coming or arrival, and it’s a common theme throughout the New Testament. It seems that early on in the life of the church, everyone expected Jesus to return within their lifetime, but then, as time went on, the church began to settle into the reality that maybe that wasn’t the case. It’s basically universally accepted that 1 Thessalonians is the earliest writing in the New Testament. It was written before any of the other letters, before the gospels and Acts, and before Revelation. So this topic of waiting, and how long the Church should expect to have to wait for Jesus’ return was very much on the mind of the church at Thessalonica. There was still an expectation that Jesus could return at any moment.
One of the most common held theories about what was going on in the community at Thessalonica when Paul wrote this letter, or at least one of the things that was going on, was that people in the church were starting to die, and the community hadn’t expected this. They thought Jesus would come back before anyone died. This threw them into an existential crisis: what would happen to those who had died? Would they be separated from Christ by death? Would those who are still alive be eternally separated from those who had died? In our passage this morning, Paul assures the Thessalonians that because Christ was raised from the dead, those who had died would also be raised from the dead, and would share in the same redemption as those who are alive. With that context in mind, let’s hear Paul’s words again:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.
Different churches emphasize the second coming of Christ, or the Parousia, to different degrees. For some churches, it’s central. Every day there is an expectation that today might be the day. Jesus could come back any minute. I grew up in this kind of culture, and all of you who also did will be able to relate to the panic you got as a child, at least once, when you couldn’t find anyone in your family and you assumed the rapture had taken place and you’d been “left behind.”
On the other side of the spectrum, other churches treat this idea of the second coming as, at best, peripheral, or, at worst, embarrassing. It seems difficult to take the idea of Jesus coming out of the sky on clouds “with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet” and drawing all the faithful to himself seriously.
What’s interesting, and as we’ll see very misguided, is that those churches that emphasize the second-coming are often the churches that seem most removed from society, while those churches that deemphasize the second-coming are often much more civically minded. At face value, this does make some sense. If you think God could come back at any moment, you’re probably not all that concerned with enacting long-term improvements. But if you think it’s up to humans to make God’s kingdom a reality, you’d be more inclined to get to work. So, I kinda get it.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it has no basis in scripture. As both Amos and Jesus make clear, the day of the Lord, the second coming, the Parousia, whatever you want to call it, should invoke in us a desire to do good works, to prepare for the day of the Lord by engaging with the world, not by disengaging. There isn’t a single parable or teaching in scripture, at least not to my knowledge, that encourages us to circle the wagons in preparation for God’s coming reign. If you want to prepare for the day of the Lord, Amos says, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Scripture tells us that the expectation of God’s redemption should motivate us to get to work. Like cleaning your house before your friends from out of town show up.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, some of us may be uncomfortable with this idea of the day of the Lord, or the Parousia, or the second coming; this idea that Jesus will come back on the clouds. And I’ll admit, I’m pretty skeptical that it’s going to look exactly like what Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians. How could he know? Also, he’s clearly using language and images that were popular in his contemporary society. Other extra-biblical sources from the same time speak of the day of the Lord in very similar ways.
But, while we don’t know the details, I believe the Christian message can’t be separated from it’s hope in a future in which, in one way or another, God makes everything right; a day of resurrection and restoration. A future in which God will be all in all.
The baptist theologian James McClendon argues that to try to figure out when or how Jesus will come back, or to wonder why it hasn’t happened yet, and then to question if it ever will happen, is to miss the point completely. He says the significance of this emphasis on Jesus’ return, which permeates the New Testament, is that it creates a unique mindset for Christians, which shapes the way we see and interact with the world.
If and when Jesus returns isn’t important. What is important is that we live as if Jesus could return at any moment. If we were to live like this, we’d be inclined to focus on the things that really matter. It would give us a different perspective. In the words of Colossians, we might be more inclined to focus on “the things above” and not the things below, to focus less on the things the world says are important, and to focus more on the things that God says are important. As I hope I’ve made clear, this doesn’t mean retreating from the world, but more actively and intentionally engaging with it.
There’s an interesting theme running through both our gospel reading, and our reading from 1 Thessalonians, and this is the theme that while we wait for Christ, while our hope is ultimately in God and God’s divine action, we do not wait statically. We go out to meet Christ. We move toward him. We move in the direction from which we expect him to arrive.
The bridesmaids didn’t wait in the house. They took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Similarly, in 1 Thessalonians, the faithful will be caught up with the dead who have been raised and will “meet the Lord in the air.” Now, to us it sounds like Paul expects us to meet Christ in the air and then we’ll be taken to heaven or something like that, like Christ came to take us away from the earth, but that’s actually not true! The Greek word used for “meet” is apantesis, which refers to a group from within a city going out to meet a dignitary before he or she arrives, and then escorting him or her back to the city with them. It’s a form of welcome, of honor and hospitality. It’s actually the same word used in our gospel reading when the bridesmaids hear a shout “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!”
The Church, then, as we wait for Christ’s return -- again, whatever that looks like -- is to move in the direction from which we expect him to come, to be prepared for his coming, and then to welcome him into the world we have been preparing for him. In the parable of the bridesmaids, the difference between the wise bridesmaids and the foolish ones is that the wise ones are prepared. The question of us is: how can we be prepared?
I would like to argue that the “lamps” which the bridesmaids hold are good works, they are the righteousness and justice Amos speaks of. This is supported by the another verse in Matthew (5:16), when Jesus says, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” In this verse Jesus equates good works to a light that shines.
And this shouldn’t surprise you, because this is a theme that’s made it into almost every sermon I’ve preached recently, but I interpret the oil to be our spiritual lives. Our spiritual lives feed our active lives. Our love of God fuels our love of people. To prepare for Christ’s coming (in some distant and all-encompassing future, or in the everyday, ordinary moments of our lives) is to deepen our spiritual life, to grow it’s capacity, and then to let that spirit animate the flame of our action as we move toward, in the words of Amos, justice and righteousness.
We don’t have enough oil on our own. If we lose touch with the Divine, the source of life, the source of love, we will burn out. Our lamp will go out, the darkness will crowd in, and apathy and exhaustion will overwhelm us. We’ll fall asleep waiting for Christ to show up.
But if the flame of our good works is fed by the source of all Goodness, all Life, all Love, then we will never run out of oil. Our lamps will “shine before others” but more importantly, they’ll light the way for Christ, the One in whom we ultimately hope.
So, as Paul tells the Thessalonians, let us encourage each other with these words as we wait for the day when we will be with the Lord forever.
Amen.