Being Prepared

What do you do when it comes to year end? Here’s what I do. I start thinking about tax time in a few months and I start gathering documents. I start reflecting on the previous year of work, asking myself (and  few others) what went well, what did not, what should be done again, and what’s better left behind. And I start planning for the new year. I ask not only what should be done again, but what new opportunities and challenges might be embraced. I begin to think about the church year, about sermons and bible studies, about writing. And I say to myself, I really should lose some weight.

That’s what I think about when it comes to year’s end. What do you think about?

As I look at my thoughts—and they might look strategic this morning, but in practice they are a lot more scattered—a theme begins to emerge. Preparedness. Being ready. I remember once watching a really bad action movie—so bad I can no longer remember the stars or the plot. But the motto of the bad guy stuck in my head. “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Plans never go to plan, in other words. But that doesn’t mean plans are pointless; rather, we plan, we prepare so that there’s a place from which to respond when life interrupts. And life always interrupts, doesn’t it?

My plans for the two years have not unfolded exactly as I had hoped. That’s not a bad thing. That’s life. That’s the way it will always be. But the good thing about having a plan is that it prepared me to think through the various contingencies that have come along. And I am convinced that the plan, even if it remained largely unrealized, left me and our family better ready to absorb and address what life has given us, both good and bad.

We are coming to the year’s end in the Christian calendar. It’s only three weeks away. November 26, Family Sunday, will mark the end of the this church year, and the next Sunday, December 3, we will begin Advent and with it, the next church year. And as our year winds down the Scripture lessons direct us to the concluding chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, and the theme of preparedness, of readiness.

The parable for today, that of the wise and foolish virgins, is sandwiched between two parables in which slaves play key roles. In the first, a master sets two slaves over his property and goes away. The “wise and faithful slave” administers his master’s property and treats his fellow-slaves well; the “foolish and wicked slave” is a lazy lie-about who abuses his fellow slaves and doesn’t care for his master’s property. When the master returns, he rewards the faithful slave and punishes the foolish one. The point of the parable? The master will return when the slaves do not expect him; the blessed slave is the one who is found faithful. That’s the top slice of our parable sandwich.

The bottom slice of the parable sandwich is very similar. It has similar characters—a master and slaves. It has a similar plot line—the master is going on a journey of indeterminate length; the slaves are entrusted with the master’s wealth while he’s gone. Two of the slaves buy and sell and invest the master’s wealth and grow it. They are rewarded on his return. One buries his share and does nothing with it for fear of losing it altogether. That slave is adjudged to be wicked and lazy. He is punished. The parable It has a similar theme—a call to faithfulness in the master’s absence. We’ll talk more about that parable next week.

For now, notice the theme of faithfulness in the master’s absence. Jesus has been talking about the end time, about the day of judgment, about the fact that no one knows just when it will come. Furthermore, Jesus is about to go away from the disciples. He is going to the cross, and thence to his father to await The Day of Judgment, the day of his appearing. He provides his disciples with these parables as an exhortation to be faithful while he’s gone.

The meat of the parable sandwich is the parable that is ours for today: the wise and foolish virgins. There are several differences—instead of a master and his slaves, we have a bridegroom and the virgins, the bridesmaids if you want. The theme of absence is continued, but a new wrinkle is added: what does faithfulness look like when the coming day is delayed? It looks like being prepared in the event of a long wait.

The foolish virgins were foolish because they did not prepare for a delay. They expected the bridegroom to come quickly. And had he come quickly, he would have found them ready. The wise virgins were wise because they packed extra oil. They hoped the groom would come soon; the prepared for a long wait. The wise disciple, the three parables tell us, is not simply the disciple who is faithful in the master’s absence, but who prepares for that absence to last an indefinite amount of time.

Perhaps it’s difficult for us to enter into the expectant mindset of the bridesmaids, whether wise or foolish. Difficult because we do not long for the Day of His Appearing, we do not anticipate, hope for, or expect to see Christ’s return. Far easier it is to think about what it takes to be a faithful slave—busily administering his or her master’s property while the master is away on a journey, than to think about what it takes to be a bridesmaid, whose only job, it seems, is to wait for the coming of the groom.

Even when we do think about the return of Jesus, we seem to want to turn it into some sort of “Fright Night for Christians” that will scare the children into good behavior. I remember once really wanting to go to a movie—Star Wars, I think, so I would have been 8. No one ever said no. The only thing that was said—that I recall, anyway, was this: “Is that where you’d want to be found if Jesus came back?” The point being, Jesus’s return is something to be anticipated with great fear.

Now, lest we get to huffy at that point, let me quickly say that that kind of approach does capture the tone of the parables of the slaves. Jesus there warns his disciples to be found faithful on his return lest, when he comes, he finds them lazy, or wicked, or fearful, or whatever. But it does not capture what it means to be a bridesmaid.

A bridesmaid is getting ready for a party. THE Party! The party to end all parties, because it is a party that will never end. Speaking in anticipation of that party, this is what the prophet Isaiah wrote: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations” (Isaiah 61:10-11).

That’s what the bridesmaids are waiting for. Endless abundance. The never ending feast. The union of God with Creation. The fulfilment of God’s Covenant with Israel. The marriage of Christ and his Church. New Testament scholar Susan Hylen writes, “This is the wedding the bridesmaids await.” She then quotes Revelation: “‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away’ (Revelation 21:3-4). The bridesmaids await not only the groom but the removal of pain and suffering. The wedding feast initiates the reign of God’s justice and mercy, the realization of all the hopes of Israel.”

The disciple who takes this parable to heart is one who is faithfully waiting, anticipating, hoping, longing for all that is wrong with the world to be set right. She’s waiting for the party to start. For the end of hunger, of war, of disease, of death. For every tear to be wiped away. The day is not a day to fear, but a day that should so enflame our vision and our action that it becomes the motivation of our faithfulness. It helps us to see that the faithfulness of the slaves is not to be some sort of drudgery embraced in fear, but a joyful waiting that fills our faithfulness with life and anticipation. Such was the joy of Charles Wesley that he could write these words as the last stanza to Rejoice the Lord is King: “Rejoice in glorious hope! The Lord our Judge shall come and take his children up to their eternal home.”

The bridesmaid is not one who waits in fear because she’s waiting for a party. The disciple is not one who waits in fear, for she awaits a judge who is her saviour. A judge who will make everything right. A King whose reign will know no end and under whom every grief will be banished.

That much the wise and foolish bridesmaids have in common with each other, and which they invite us to have, too. If we are the Bride of Christ (and we are), if we are bridesmaids, then we wait in joy, in hope, in anticipation.

AND, if we are wise bridesmaids, our joy is prepared. It is ready for a delay.

Here of course is the punch of the parable. Not only does it invite us to ask whether our faithfulness is joyful (and it does), but it also forces us to reflect on whether our joyfulness is prepared for a delay.

This gets us to the question that everyone asks on the first hearing of the parable, and perhaps on more than the first. Namely, “Why didn’t the bridesmaids share?” Isn’t it, after all, a Christian duty to share with those who have less? Well yes, of course it is. But the parable is not about sharing wealth. It’s about being prepared for a delay, and in matters of Christian faith, one disciple cannot prepare on another’s behalf. It is something we each have to embrace on our own.

I can (and do!) love my wife; I cannot give her the grace of perseverance nor the joyful preparation that ought to mark her life as a disciple. She loves me. But she cannot prepare for me. We both love our children; we are doing our best to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord as St. Paul advises Christian parents. We cannot “make” them into prepared disciples. Rather, they have to take up and own the promises made on their behalf at their baptisms. They have to respond to the call of God’s grace as it has come to them and persevere in it for themselves.

And that is true for each of us here. As much as we might like, we cannot provide the preparation for another. We cannot plan for them. We cannot give our perseverance to them. As much as we might like, we cannot rely on the preparations or plans another, we cannot receive their perseverance.

So it is that the call to be prepared, to be alert, to be awake is a call that is extended to each of us individually. To receive the Good News with Joy, to be faithful in the master’s service, and to be prepared in the event of a delay. Because at the end, it will be worth it.

In the final scene of the Last Battle, Aslan the Lion welcomes the Pevensie children to his country, where to their shock they find out that they have in fact died; that they cannot return to England, but will live forever in Aslan’s Country. But rather than mourn what they’ve lost, Aslan calls on them to greet this day with great joy! This is what he says: “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And here is how Lewis ends his book: “And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

That is the best way to describe the day for which we prepare. For which we long. I cannot make you be ready; nor can I be ready on your behalf. But today, I invite you to make ready with me. So that when the bridegroom comes, we might be welcomed together into the party that will never ever end.