Sermon

The Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year A, Proper 27)
November 9, 2008

The Reverend Kay Johnson

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The parable of the 10 bridesmaids, 5 of them wise and 5 of them foolish, comes towards the end of Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is talking to the disciples about the end of time -- the Day of the Lord -- when “heaven and earth will pass away,” and “the Son of Man will come on the clouds of heaven...”

It’s one of three parables about faithful waiting. The early Christian communities, as you probably know, expected that the Day of the Lord was coming very soon...certainly within their lifetimes...and so when it didn’t happen...when some of the earliest Christians died a natural death, there was distress and confusion.

Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica addresses their concern (“What’s going to happen to our loved ones who died before Christ’s coming?”). He’s saying, in essence, “Things aren’t happening exactly as we expected them to, but God is faithful...truly...don’t worry...our brothers and sisters who have died are going to be all right...just as we are going to be all right...”)

Today’s gospel also addresses the question of the long wait--and what to do about it--and the point of the story of the “silly bridesmaids” (as one translator calls them) is not that you are going to miss the party if you forget to buy flashlight batteries...it’s that, because you don’t know when the party is going to happen...you don’t know when the groom is coming...you don’t know what is going to happen next...you just better be ready all the time.

It is an admonition to steadiness in the face of disappointment and uncertainty -- and also at times of joy and exhuberance -- and a reminder that a faithful life is just that...a life, a way of being, not something you put on and take of, not something you do when you feel like it, or when it feels right, and then stop doing for whatever reason. You keep that midnight oil on hand. You live the life of faith...all the time...whatever it may be...

When Paul e-mailed me last month and asked me to preach and celebrate to day, because he and Susan would be on retreat with the Vestry, I shot back “sure” without thinking much about it. But then it occurred to me, “November 9th...oh my goodness...life will be completely different that day. The world will have changed...one way or another, the world will have changed.”

And I thought, “I can’t even start thinking about a sermon until the day after the election, because it will have to be a completely different sermon, depending on who wins.

And that went on for awhile until I realized, No...the Word for us, as God’s people in Christ, is one Word .. and it is the same Word in all the seasons of our lives and in every landscape of our experience...and there are more beautiful ways to say it, but basically, I think, it’s this:

Hang in there. Carry on. Live the life of faith. Do what you’re called to do.

Now if you supported Barack Obama, those words may sound way too flimsy. This has been, after all, an amazing week for America and for the world. The New York Times said, “the day shimmered with history.” There have been words and images and expressions of joy and gratitude and hope and awe beyond imagining. There has been dancing and shouting and hugging and crying...so many tears...tears of joy but also, someone said, tears that represent the release of the years...the years and years...of hardship and agony for some, and shame and disgrace for the rest of us, that have gone before.

Bob Herbert, the NYT columnist, wrote something powerful yesterday. He referred to those years, and then said:

Blacks have been holding fast to the promise of America for all that time [400 years of anti-black racism]...Not without anger. Not without rage. But with a fidelity that in the darkest moments -- those moments when the flow of blood seemed like it would never stop, when enslaved families were wrenched apart, when entire communities were put to the torch, when the breeze put the stiffened bodies of lynched victims in motion, when even small children were murdered and Dr. King was taken from us — even in those dire moments, African-Americans held fast to the promise of America with a fidelity that defied logic.

And for which, let me add, white Americans owe them our deep gratitude.

The multiracial crowds dancing with unrestrained joy from coast to coast on Tuesday night were proof that the promise of America lives -- and that you can’t always hang your hat on logic.

In terms of today’s parable, it was black America who kept the lamps lit -- all those years -- Hang in there. Carry on. Keep the faith.

If you supported John McCain, those are words to test you today. John McCain himself passed the test with flying colors in his concession speech, when he not only conceded gracefully, but also spent time acknowledging the historic dimensions of the victory and calling on his supporters to rise above (or maybe rise from) their disappointment and work for unity and progress together with the opposition.

I’m an Obama supporter, and on Tuesday I rode a van into Virginia to help get out the vote. There were signs along the highway I haven’t seen before. They said “Vote the Bible.” My first reaction was to think, “that’s just what I’m doing.” My next thought was, “what on earth does that mean?” The Bible is vast, and if you try hard, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. But the true Word of the Bible -- the underlying and overriding Word -- is the word of justice and mercy and abundant love and outrageous hope. So when I say I am voting the Bible, what I mean is, I am voting what I believe in.

Vote the Bible. Vote what you believe in. Vote what makes you joyful. Vote justice, vote mercy, vote love and hope. Hang in there. Carry on. Keep the faith. But don’t only vote the Bible...live the Bible...live your faith...shop the Bible, work the Bible, laugh and cry the Bible, be a parent and a child and a neighbor and a citizen according to the Bible, by which I mean, of course, do all these things according to what you believe in. I was talking to a member of the parish last week -- about how should I preach today -- and she sent me this e-mail:

Democracy is like our faith – we can’t just practice it on Sunday or, in the case of democracy, on voting day. As Christians, we should...be living out our faith every day, in how we live our lives, interact with other people, etc. If we only act as Christians when we are in church than we’ve really missed the point – of course it would be a lot easier to just limit it to Sunday. But that is not what we have committed to do. Verna Dozier was once asked about her prayer life, and she is said to have responded that her whole life was a prayer and I think that is what we are supposed to try to do.

And then she went on:

The same is true of democracy – in order to work it needs an ongoing commitment, not just voting or even working one’s heart out for a particular candidate. But what do we do when election day is over?

What do we do when election day is over? When we’ve come down from our high or up from our gloom.

I liked the note that Brock Hansen wrote to the St. Mark’s listserv (which I’m still on). There had been an earlier note reminding everyone to bring in casseroles for the soup kitchen at Church of the Brethren:

With the joy of the Obama victory swelling my heart, I walked out of my home on Wednesday morning and saw the familiar street with its familiar traffic and thought..."Everything is different."

The second thought to strike me was that all the problems are still there, but I am a member of a huge team that can work on them. Where do I start? What can I do to help?

Then I opened this email [about the casseroles] and I knew one thing I could do. Chop vegetables. I've done it before, but not for a long time.

Thanks for the reminder.

Hang in there. Keep the faith. Chop vegetables.

A young boy on the radio told the interviewer that the Obama election has inspired him to work harder on his school work. (He sounded as though he really meant it.) Hang in there. Keep the faith. Do your homework.

Many people have pointed out that the work of citizenship doesn’t end with voting. Candidates have to be held to their promises, and supported when the hard work of government is unpopular. Hang in there. Keep the faith. Make those phone calls. Research that issue. Write those letters and papers. Make that noise. Dare to be obnoxious.

Here at St. Mark’s you have a deliberate commitment to racial reconciliation. Keep it up. It is great work, and it’s is not finished.

There’s one more thing I need to mention. Someone said, in talking about the history of the civil rights movement, “Civil rights always come in fits and starts” -- our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters need to hang on to that, because their rights were set back in this election by bans against same-sex marriage in Florida and Arizona and in Arkansas by a vote to ban all unmarried people, LGBT or straight, from adopting children or serving as foster parents. In Oklahoma a highly qualified openly gay candidate was defeated for public office. Hang in there. Keep the faith. Carry on the work of inclusion. Remember that the arc of the universe bends towards justice. We’ve seen it happen. Sooner or later we will have a gay president.

The earliest Christians believed that they would see the Day of the Lord in their own time. “End time,” and the, “second coming of Christ,” are not part of our daily faith, but in our liturgical year (as in the physical year) things are closing down and getting darker as we wait for just that, liturgically .. the “second coming of Christ.” This late Pentecost season is also early Advent...and the coming that we wait for is more than the anniversary of the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago. We’re waiting for...something...And as we wait, we help make it happen. What we learned this week is that the impossible...is perfectly possible...and that hope is not outrageous at all. It is the foundation of our lives.