Be Prepared!

25th Sunday after Pentecost
November 6, 2005

Scripture Lessons
Hebrew Scripture Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Epistle Reading 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Gospel: Matthew 25:1-13

This is a text about being prepared. Do we have any boy scouts here? Join me in the Scout's Pledge...
On my honor I will do my best

To do my duty to God and my country

and to obey the Scout Law;

To help other people at all times;

To keep myself physically strong,

mentally awake, and morally straight.

And what is the Scout motto? Be prepared. This morning, we are going to look at what it might mean to be prepared for the Kingdom of God. What will be required of us when we wake up to see the bridegroom ready to start the feast? As we dig through the Scriptures, we find at least 3 themes. We need to be prepared by accepting Christ, by laying down a firm foundation, by being prepared in prayer.
If we want to be at the Wedding Feast of the bridegroom, we have to first get on the guest list. We have all been given the invitation. You may remember from four weeks ago when Jesus said, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a King who threw a banquet and ultimately invited everyone. Or our first talk on grace, the Prevenient Grace, that is nothing more than an invitation- God wooing us since the dawn of creation. But to get on the guest-list, you have to say 'Yes'. To turn in the R.S.V.P. A.S.A.P. The unfortunate and uncomfortable reality, the one that we are embarrassed to talk about, is that accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is a requirement, a prerequisite, to getting on the guest list of the heavenly banquet. Be prepared by accepting Jesus Christ.
But simply being on the guest list is not enough. In this allegory, we are told ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.” Now lets stop right there. I think that it is safe to assume that all of the bridesmaids at the wedding are on the guest list for the banquet. But as we read on, we see that only half of them make it through the gates. The tradition has always held that the bridesmaids represent the church. And so, this allegory is a tragedy. Think of a wedding, any wedding that you may have participated in. When I have think weddings that I have been a part of, and I think of the rest of the wedding party, and then I think of how I would feel if half of my friends couldn't go to the reception- it saddens me. And so, even for those who are prepared, who are invited in to the heavenly banquet, there will always be a tinge of sadness and regret. Why didn't I remind my friends to go get some oil? Why didn't I do more to make sure that they had what they needed? Could I have given them a ride to the lamp shop? Could I have made the oil more accessible to all? At the end of the day though, it is up to each of us to be prepared. “Oh nobody else, will walk it for us; we have to walk it by ourselves.”
We need to be prepared by laying down a solid foundation. We read before about the wise and the foolish. We read how the wise man built his house on the rock and the foolish man built his on the sand. To get at what we mean by being prepared with a firm foundation let us look at the real story of Rosa Parks. I have heard repeated many times this week the lies that my teacher told me. The story of Rosa Parks usually goes something like this. Once upon a time, their was an African-American woman in the south who sat down in the front of a bus. Then a white man came along and asked for her seat. Well, she was tired and didn't want to move to the back of the bus so she decided to say, “no” and this started the Civil Rights Movement.
This is the way the story usually goes. You get the image of a regular old lady who one day just snaps at the injustice around her and says, “no”. The real story, as told by Ms. Parks herself, is that she had been actively involved in the civil-rights movement for quite some time before this historic day. In fact, she was the secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. Parks said, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” Ms. Parks did not come out of nowhere. She was shaped in a community- 2 communities to be more precise. The first was the American South, where from the day she was born she was told that she was inferior, that she had to walk to her nearly condemned school while the white kids took their new bus to their new school. She was told that she was inferior when absolutely everything in her society was given a label of white and black. Most of us believe what we are told over a lifetime- and that is a powerful reason why segregation lasted so long. But she was also a part of another community. She was brought up in strength in the civil rights movement. Through this other community she was putting into practice what she had read all along in the Scriptures- that she was a child of God and therefore equal to all other children of God. It was this community building her up that gave her the foundation needed to stand up against that bus driver. Alone, she would have crumbled. But with her foundation, she recalls that she felt like she had a warm quilt of strength at the moment when she felt called to make history.
If we are going to be prepared for the kingdom of heaven, we need to ensure that we have a solid foundation. A foundation that only comes from being in the community that we call the church. It is only by allowing ourselves to be shaped into the body of Christ that we are able to be prepared. That is why communion is so important for us. It is the table that we gather around that builds us up in community. That allows us to commune with Jesus Christ and with one another. Be prepared by making a firm foundation.
Be prepared to pray. Being prepared to pray means that in any circumstances, a prayer is ready on your lips. And the only way that you can do that is if it is such an ingrained habit that you can't help but pray.
“Mary Lou Retton catapulted to international fame at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, becoming the first American [to] ever win the Gold Medal in the All-Around in women's gymnastics. When asked about the secret of her success, Mary Lou said, "To be a complete gymnast, someone should be able to sneak up [might I add, like a thief in the night] and drag you out at midnight [maybe like the bridegroom], push you out on some strange floor -- and you should be able to do your entire routine sound asleep in your pajamas. That's the secret. It's got to be a natural reaction."”
Because of the countless hours spent in the gym practicing, gymnastics became as natural to Mary Lou as breathing. So this morning we ask ourselves, does praising God come naturally to you? The opportunity for practice is now. Practice now so that you will be ready to spend eternity praising Him. Through prayer and song, each day is another day to perfect your praise. (Turning Point Daily Devotional, 10-19-05)
We hear the same idea being illustrated as an explanation of why Japanese school children generally have a higher level of math skills than their American counterparts. Parents expect that their 8 year old children will not just know their multiplication tables, but ought to be able to tell you what 8 times 7 is when awoken from a deep sleep. Pray needs to be an immediate reaction to everything- that which comes before all else- worry, action, anger whatever. Prayer must come first. Matthew makes it clear in his telling of Jesus' parable that all of the bridesmaids were asleep. Elsewhere, we read that the bridegroom, that is Jesus, will come like a thief in the night. There are some who interpret the term gregoreo, keep alert, in the sense that we should constantly be on the lookout for the parousia, the end of the world and the coming of Christ. This is not the message that we see here. The idea is not that we need to be second guessing the time of the second coming, because scriptures say that that is the work of false prophets. Instead, we are to be in a state of constant readiness. We are not meant to have panicky last-minute anxiety, but the assurance of doing the appropriate thing at all times. I think back to school and those times where I waited until the night before to cram in everything that I thought would be on the test. And I compare the stress of those times to the other ones where I simply kept up with studying over the course of the semester. In the former, life was hell. I certainly did not enjoy the material and dreaded the test even more. But when I was prepared, I was able to soak in what I was learning, enjoy the growth, and when the test came, I enjoyed taking it in order to demonstrate what I had learned. This is the difference alluded to in this text. The bridesmaids see the bridegroom coming and some run off for last second preparations and others are prepared and greet him. It is as simple as that. Which path are you going to choose? Might I suggest being prepared by accepting Christ, establishing the foundation that can only come through community, and by being prepared in prayer. Amen?