Checking the Oil in the Lamps

Sermon by Father Richard Mallory 

speaking from the Book of Amos, Thessalonians, and Matthew

I invite you to join me in hanging out for a while with these three readings, you have just heard, from the books of Amos, Thessalonians, and Matthew. 

Here is Amos, the hick, from another country who came up to the northern kingdom. He couldn't bear, for one more second, the corruption and injustice he saw in the ancient Israel, of his day, eight centuries before Jesus. He sees the enormous income gap between rich and poor. He sees the superiority and disdain that the upper class has toward the lower class who are being oppressed. The courts were corrupt; bribes were commonplace. 

In today's reading, Amos deconstructs the prominent belief in a Doctrine so dear to people's hearts. They believe that in the day of the Lord Yahweh would come and crush all of Israel's enemies and promote his special people to even greater privilege and Glory.

 Not so fast, says Amos. Your accountability day will be the opposite of your expectations. There will be darkness, not light, and no place to run for safety. In contemporary speech, he might be saying, you're lost in your narcissism, your sociopathy, and your aggrandizement. 

Jewish scholar Julian Morgenstern thinks the entire book of Amos happened in one day. Amos cuts loose in the town square as the town crier, the Street Preacher. Someone tipped off the chief priest, Amaziah, who rushed over to stop this troublemaker and end this nonsense. “The land cannot bear your words”; indeed, the chief priest most certainly could not bear his words. The status quo system was not accustomed to being questioned. Amaziah denounced Amos and told him to get out of town and go back to where he came from; so he did, and we know nothing about his life thereafter except that he, or someone, or a little group that surrounded him, wrote down his words; so we have them today.

In this reading, we have one of the most anti-religious statements in the Bible. He goes after the religious establishment hook, line, and sinker. Speaking for God, saying “I hate, I despise your festivals.” I'm not interested in the offerings of your big fat animals. I will not look upon them. I won't accept them. Take away the noise of your songs. Let Justice roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. for Amos, God is the god of justice and love. Justice and love are twins, especially in the Old Testament. Clean up your act before it's too late, says the prophet, before your world implodes around you. Look in the mirror. Get real. Drop the phony stuff. Pay attention to those in need. Stop leaving them out. 

There's something about Amos that is almost too hot to handle. I never heard a sermon on the Book of Amos as a child growing up. It is because of his strong stand for justice. It would have been disturbing in Alabama to start messing around with justice as an issue in the 1950s. If a preacher dared talk about justice from his pulpit on Sunday morning in the Deep South in the 1950s he would be fired Sunday afternoon. 

Then we go to Thessalonians, the oldest New Testament writing.  It is Paul's earliest piece of writing. Christians anticipated the return of Christ and they were worried about their loved ones who had already died. What was going to happen to them? Not to worry, says Paul, for when Christ returns (and here Paul uses metaphorical language) those who have died will go up, first, to greet the returning Christ, followed by those who are alive. This metaphor of going up into the air sheds light on the New Testament language about the future. It is a reference, or a signpost, pointing into a mist. We don't get the literal snapshots or photos of the future; rather, we get pointers in the right direction. Here's the meaning of the metaphor. In the first century, when a king or potentate from Rome arrived in a colony or province, the locals would go out to greet him beyond the city limits to accompany him back towards the town through the gate and into the Town Center. When Paul speaks of meeting the Lord in the air the point is precisely that believers would then stay with him and then come together back to the Earth where they all belong. All of this was a way of saying Jesus was Lord, not Caesar, and this is about an arrival, not a leaving. It's a coming, not a going.

Now on to that wedding feast in our Gospel where we have a missing bride and a very tardy groom. There were 10 bridesmaids. Five are called wise and five are foolish. We can imagine this entire wedding party as teenagers, which they were. The marriage was for people in their late teens and the wedding party would be younger teens. I cannot think of a passage that has been more widely used as a shame and blame. Five bridesmaids are wise and good. Five are foolish, ill-prepared, and bad. The wise bridesmaids get saved. The foolish are unsaved. The groom is the returning Christ coming to gather the elect. The good bridesmaids join the wedding party. The poor bridesmaids are left at the gate, out in the cold; they are destined for eternal torment. Now how's that for a horrid and abusive theology? They're teenagers for goodness sake. One commentator says he has four teenagers and “I can tell you not one of them would have remembered to take extra oil unless I reminded them six or seven times.” A second approach upholds conventional thinking, the basis of the Boy Scout motto, and that motto is “Be Prepared”. Wow, there are a lot of people who remember their scouting experience this morning. There is a deeper meaning related to time. The Greek word, kairos, is for a time that is incredibly significant, where something matters more than the ordinary flow of life. It's a moment when what is decided, what is chosen, will make all the difference in the time that flows thereafter. Kairos can be a make-or-break moment defining which path in life to take. “Do I stay or do I go,” as the song goes. 

Remember that parables do not have just one meaning. They are intended to be like diamonds with many facets of meaning. Its meaning in one phase of life may have a different meaning to you as the circumstances of your life change. A teacher of mine said parables can be sneaky little devils; and, I use that in the most complimentary way. Sneaky little devils that are meant as a subversion sometimes take us to the very opposite of what the parable says literally. Sometimes a bridegroom is just a bridegroom and no more. What kind of bridegroom is so late that he finally shows up at midnight and imperiously disowns half of the wedding party shutting the door in their faces? What's going on here? What about those bridesmaids?

When asked to share some oil the so-called wise bridesmaids go coldhearted and clutch their surplus oil in selfish scarcity. Instead, they tell the others to find a dealer for more oil. Pardon me, but a dealer open, at midnight, in a village, a rural town…good luck with that. There weren’t any Circle K’s in ancient Israel; there were no city lights so, unless it was a full moon, it was very dark. The foolish ones could have been wise at this point and not taken the advice of the rejecting bridesmaids. They could have stayed put and accepted their lack of preparation. They could have been present when he came into the room. There wouldn't have been a great blaze of light since they didn't have enough oil. Better to have remained, tolerating the selfish bridesmaids, following Jesus.

The story still has a cosmic backdrop. Perhaps we are being invited to find both the wise and foolish sides of ourselves. What we deem wise may cloak feelings of superiority and “better than thou” beliefs. We might discover times when we went off half-cocked and impulsively did something harmful rather than remaining grounded and patient. While the story reminds us of time's finitude; what am I procrastinating?  I'll tend to that someday. Here, the image of midnight arises. There is an ending and a beginning in an auspicious moment. So why am I procrastinating over this relationship that needs some attention? Why do I keep postponing the telephone conversation with one where I might be able to have some reconciliation. Time is limited. A pronouncement of “I do not know you” chills the bones. Could it apply to a lifetime of avoiding the knowing of oneself, one's own soul, by having chosen habits of distraction like the foolish ones who seem to choose activity over staying centered. There is no better way to snuff out the Still Small Voice than to live life with a frenetic pace. Keep the TV on in the background so you'll never get to know what's inside your soul. 

This parable ends with a party. Those outside might recall Jesus’ teaching, “knock and it will be opened to you” along with that friend, at midnight, who shows up at a neighbor's house to get some bread because an unexpected visitor has arrived. These girls outside better start knocking loudly and get in there so the bridegroom can get a better look at them in the light and realize that he knows them after all. A party's going on. 

The kingdom of heaven is like a party for you know not the day nor the hour. Father Robert Capon says when all is said and done, when we have scared ourselves silly with the “now or never” urgency of faith, and the once and always finality of judgment, we need to take a deep breath; and, let it out with a laugh because what we are watching for is a party and the party is not just down the street making up its mind when to come to us, it's already hiding in our basement banging on our steam pipes laughing its way up our cellar stairs. The unknown day and hour of its finally bursting into the kitchen and boisterously making its way through the whole house is not dreadful. It's all part of the Divine, of grace. God is not our mother-in-law coming to see whether her wedding present china has been chipped, but, rather a funny old relative with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other. Indeed we need to keep watch because it would be such a pity to miss out on all that fun 

 Amen