St. Andrew’s Pictou, November 6^th 2005 Remembrance Day

 

Choice Fallout

 

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Matthew 25: 1- 13

 

 Every experience of humanity has a context. To understand another person, to really hear what they are saying or what their point of view is, we have to understand “their context.”

 

A man proposing to his fiancé means something different when he says, “I love you” than a grandparent who greets their grandchild after a long absence and says, “I love you.”

 

Both times the very same three words convey deep love and affection. Both times the three words are genuine and convey heartfelt feelings that are specific and true for the one giving and receiving the words of love. But even though the words are the same and convey deep love, we understand that they mean different things in the two examples:

-the husband and wife mean to live their lives together as partners,

-the grandparent sees the child with a love that embraces family and their own identity that this child is their offspring,

-one love may hope to make children as a result, the other loves the children that are the result.

 

Context: our interpretation and understanding always have a context.

 

In the reading we have from the prophet Joshua, the context is one of a male hierarchy. That is the way it was and that is the way that it worked back then. The men were in charge, they made the decisions and they accepted the responsibility. It is neither right or wrong it is just the way it was.

 

So when Joshua summoned all of the tribes to Shechem, an ancient city of God with a shrine, this was a serious event and you just wouldn’t even think about not showing up.

 

Please note that although Joshua summoned the people to Shechem, they were presented before God. There is a deliberate blurring between the authority of God and the authority of Joshua.

 

But let there be no confusion: what Joshua presented to the people was for them to affirm where their allegiance was: “Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living;”

 

The purpose of this gathering was to renew the covenant between God and his people and this is serious business.

 

First of all, Joshua was loud and clear about where he stood: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

 

Joshua was also not to be taken in by reactionary enthusiasm and there were several affirmations by the people, but each time Joshua made clarifications:

-God was a holy God, (In other words, you couldn’t be sinful and expect your covenant to stand,

-God was a jealous God, (In other words, you can’t serve two masters; God will not take second place or even be part of your allegiance to other gods.)

-God will not forgive your transgressions or your sins, (In other words if you sin and worship other gods and do bad things, the covenant is null and void.)

 

Joshua had to be convinced by the people that they meant what they said. He doubted that they were able to serve to Lord. He even warned them that they were “Witnesses against themselves.” They can say that they were going to serve the Lord, but only the evidence of their faithfulness would back them up.

 

If Joshua were speaking to us today, he would ask if you and I going to serve God or our culture. Some people want the church to be subservient to the culture, but that would never work, because we are in opposition to the culture being  god and anyone who wants God would have to find something different in serving the Lord than they would in the culture. Serving God or the culture would be different by definition.

 

We know that in today’s world, four out of five people surveyed by Martin Marty’s showed that people come to church because of the character of people they admire and respect who have brought them to church. (O’Driscoll p.169) People will only come to church by observing and being invited by people they admire who serve God.

 

The choices that you and I make as Christians have both the quality of our lives and church attendance as their fallout.

 

Jesus amplifies the fallout of choice in his parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.

 

Weddings back then were a huge cause for celebration because the whole community participated.

 

Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven as ten bridesmaids going out to prepare for the arrival of the groom: five were wise and five were foolish. There was no grey area for Jesus: five were wise and five were foolish.

 

The story is simple: the five wise ones brought plenty of oil for their lamps and the five foolish ones did not. So when the night passed, the foolish ones ran out of oil, and asked the wise ones for some of theirs.

 

The wise maids said, “No,” because then they would have all not had enough oil and all of the lamps would have gone out. As it was, the five wise ones had enough and had their lamps shining when the groom arrived, and were invited into the wedding feast, the door was shut, and the foolish ones were excluded because they were not prepared.

 

“Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know neither the day nor the hour.’”

 

The wise bridesmaids were admitted into the kingdom of heaven because they made the wise choice of being ready. The fallout of the foolish bridesmaids was that they didn’t make the grade: by their lack of preparation, they were not admitted into heaven.

 

The purpose of this parable is not for us to use it to find out who is going to heaven, the purpose is to draw lines and to challenge us to make committed and clear choices.

 

The purpose of this parable is not to condemn people to hell, it is awaken us to the reality that none of us, know the day and the hour when we will leave this earth and so we are to be prepared: to keep awake to God’s reality in the choices we make.

 

There is what we might call“fallout;” a consequence to all of our choices:

-if we are honest, people will know us as being honest,

-if we care for the well-being of other people, they will know us as caring,

-if we are consistent, people will know us as being consistent,

-if we serve the Lord, people will know us as being faithful.

-if St. Andrew’s is a healing, loving, welcoming place of God, people will learn to know that it is.

 

We live out each day, but we don’t know the exact moment when our human activity will intersect divine revelation.

 

We don’t know the moments when we will experience some saving moment of grace, some gem of insight, some word of the Lord that will give us life and healing, but the Gospel is telling us today, that we better be ready for it to happen!!

 

When that moment came to fight for freedom, those whose names are on all the plaques on church walls and cenotaphs all over our country and the free world, made a choice and we live with the consequences of their choices and subsequent actions. The peace we have is the fallout of their choices.

 

The challenge of Remembrance Day is for us to be as generous in our choices that we provide by our choices a legacy worthy of what was passed on to us.

 

Each moment of our lives provide us with choices, if we are not ready, we will miss an opportunity that will never come again!

 

Each moment only comes once in a life time!

 

Show me one person on planet earth that can re-create one single moment of their lives.

 

If you are really serious about following Jesus, you can prove it to him by keeping your lamp filled with enough love oil to keep your lamp burning all through the night and the day, every day, until your last breath.

 

AMEN                    Rev. Alan Stewart