Thursday, February 25, 2010

The End of the World - Part 2

For those who missed the last post here's the parable of the Ten Virgins retold. It's got a lot to do with the end of the world so you may wanna read it closely.

Ten women go with lamps to await the arrival of the bridegroom. Five of them are prepared with extra oil. Five of them however make no extra preparation. It is what makes them "foolish" for reasons we will soon discover. The bridegroom is delayed in his coming and, tiring of waiting for him, the women fall off to sleep. Suddenly at midnight the bridegroom’s arrival is announced. The women wake up and check their lamps, the ones without surplus oil realizing that their lamps are running dry. They plead with the other women to share their oil, but the women refuse, saying there is not enough to go around. As the women without oil go out to try to find some, the bridegroom comes and takes those who are prepared with him to the wedding banquet. When the foolish women arrive much later, they are not allowed in. "I do not know you," the bridegroom says.

We're the women in the story - Christians carrying the lamps of salvation. The oil is, of course, generally considered a symbol of the Holy Spirit (cf. Exodus 29.7, 27:20, Psalm 133:2, Mark 6:13, James 5:14, Leviticus 8), and some of us are filled with him! As a result, love overflows from our hearts. And joy. And peace. And patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (cf Galatians 5:22-23). That's what happens when your lamp is full. Others among us have just about enough to get us by.

Jesus is the bridegroom and he is a little late in coming (folks have been expecting him for nearly 2000 years!), and we get complacent. Then suddenly - you gotta picture this - you hear the rumble of excited noise and, then, a moment later somebody yells out that Jesus is around the corner and he is headed your way. You do a lamp check and discover that you're short of oil. Very little love. Hardly any peace. You're low on everything. Worse, you got unconfessed sin your life. You have unforgiveness in your heart. There are areas in your life that are unsurrendered. You go out looking to right whatever's wrong and while you are gone, Jesus comes in and takes whoever is ready.

Finally, you get everything sorted and you make your way to the wedding banquet, which is heaven in case you haven't figured it out already. The gates are closed and as you approach it you see a man knocking on it. Jesus comes out and the man says to him, "Jesus, let me in. I'm a believer. I went for mass every Sunday and went for prayer meetings every Friday." But Jesus says to him, "Sorry, buddy, but that won't do. Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (cf. Matthew 7:21).

As you watch, open mouthed, another man knocks on the gates and says to Jesus. "Lord, let me in. I drove out demons and healed the sick and did other assorted miracles, all in your name." But Jesus says to him, "But you didn't have any love in your heart. Sorry, but I don't know you. Away from me, you evildoer!' (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Matthew 7:22-23).

You stand there frozen as yet another man approaches and asks Jesus to let him in. "I'm sorry, but I can't," Jesus replies. "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' And the man answered, "Lord, when did I see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' And Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me" (see Matthew 25:31-46).

What do you think is going to happen to you? Are you going to be allowed in?

These things that I have spoken about are things that Jesus has said. He may have been speaking to the Jews, but His words are equally relevant to us. He constantly cautions us to be careful about how we lead our lives. Faith in Christ Jesus is the only thing we need to be saved, but once we are saved we can't continue to live like pagans. Paul and the other apostles also warn us repeatedly to be careful about this. See Paul's warning to the Galatians:

"The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Paul was speaking to baptized Christians! As a Christian preacher I am duty bound to warn you too, despite the fact that it is an unpopular (and very scary!) message. A lot of people would have you believe that you have nothing to worry about and lulled into a false sense of complacency, you'd probably find yourself sleeping well at night. I would rather keep you awake a few nights here on earth, than have you spending an eternity of sleepless nights. I want to see you there at the wedding feast.

Which brings me to the important question? When is the feast gonna begin? Or, if you want to ask the question in a different way, when is the world going to end? I don't know. It could be five years from now; it could be fifty; it could be five hundred. But what I do know is that for YOU the world ends the day you die. And that could happen at any moment as the people in Indonesia discovered when the Tsunami came and swept them away. Or, more recently, as the people of Haiti found out when the ground swallowed them up; nearly 300,000 of them died in one single blow.

Are you ready?

Friday, February 12, 2010

The End of the World

In the third week of December 2007, while I was in prayer I had a strong sense of God speaking to me, telling me that I needed to speed up on things a little because time was running out on humankind. "I'm going to pour out my grace in great abundance for the next five years," he said. "So make the most of it."

"And after that, what, Lord?" I asked. "You're gonna pull the plug?"

There was no reply, except for a repetition of the same message again, that for the next five years he was going to pour his grace out like never before, but about what was going to happen after that nary a word. God can be pretty annoying with the way he communicates sometimes.

I shared this with a few people who were close to me, and after a lot of subsequent thought and prayer came to the conclusion that — assuming the message was legitimate — God was going to do his best to draw as many people as he could for the next five years after which he would, quite possibly, take a step back and let the pieces just fall where they would.

Fast forward to January last year. I got into a conversation with a neighbor who asked me if I had heard anything about the world coming to an end in December 2012. My first thought was that somebody had told him of the "message" I had received and was getting set to rag me about it, but then decided that he couldn't possibly have heard about it. None of my confidants had big mouths. I asked him what made him think the world was coming to an end. He grinned cryptically and asked me to Google it.

I went home and did as he suggested, my mouth dropping open at the number of links about December 2012 that popped up. It seemed that everybody from the Mayans and the Chinese to the New Agers and certain astronomers believed the world was going to end in that month! A few months later Roland Emmerich got into the act, releasing his extremely popular disaster film 2012 based on these beliefs, leading a lot of people who had seen the movie, especially youngsters, to ask me if the world was ending in two years. For some reason people think preachers have the answers to all questions. Some folks asked Jesus the same question too, but, unlike me, he does have the answers to all questions, so it's best we see what he says.

Jesus had been sitting on the Mount of Olives when his disciples approached him. "“Tell us,” they said, “what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).

After a long sermon on the signs they could expect to see, Jesus said he couldn't tell them when he would return. "No one knows about that day or hour," he said, cautioning them to be alert, therefore, because when the day did come, he would come like a thief in the night (cf. Matthew 24:36, 42-44). He then went on to tell them three stories: one about a bunch of women who were invited to a wedding; another about a man who went on a journey leaving varying amounts of money with his servants; and the third about the sorting out of the righteous from the unrighteous after the return of a king. We'll look at all the stories, the first in some detail.

The Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13)
“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ “ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. “Later the others also came. ‘Sir! Sir!’ they said. ‘Open the door for us!’ “But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’ “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

As with all the parables that Jesus told, this image is borrowed from the practices and customs of Jesus's times. Let's take a brief look at an Israelite wedding. In an Israelite wedding, the focus was not on the bride, as it is in our weddings. The focus was on the bridegroom.

When the time came for him to be married, he would leave his house, or his parents house, and make his way across town to the house in which all prospective brides waited. He would pick them all up and then make his way back to his house where the wedding celebrations would be held.

It could be pretty late when this happened, and night time in a first century Israelite village could get very dark. If you wanted to negotiate the darkness you needed a lamp, and you had to make sure that it stayed lit.

This is the setup for the story. And this is the story retold:
 
Ten women go with lamps to await the arrival of the bridegroom. Five of them are prepared with extra oil. Five of them however make no extra preparation. It is what makes them "foolish" for reasons we will soon discover. The bridegroom is delayed in his coming and, tiring of waiting for him, the women fall off to sleep. Suddenly at midnight the bridegroom’s arrival is announced. The women wake up and hastily trim their lamps. The ones without surplus oil realize that their lamps are running dry. They plead with the other women to share their oil, but the women refuse, saying there is not enough to go around. As the women without oil go out to try to find some, the bridegroom comes and takes those who are prepared with him to the wedding banquet. When the foolish women arrive much later, they are not allowed in. "I do not know you," the bridegroom says.
 
Next: So what does it all mean?

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Frogs

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything lately, but I've been busy talking to catechists, confirmation kids and assorted others over the past few days, I didn't have any time to write anything. But here is something I felt you may enjoy. It was sent to me by a friend this morning (thanks Julie!) and I found it charming.

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner asked the man where he could possibly get so many legs.

The farmer replied, 'There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs - millions of them. They croak all night long and drive me crazy!'

So the restaurant owner and the farmer made a deal that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.

The farmer returned to the restaurant a week later looking rather sheepish. He had with him with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner asked him: 'Well? Where are all the frogs you promised me?'

The farmer replied, 'I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure made a lot of noise!' 

Lesson: Next time you hear someone criticizing or making fun of you, remember, it's probably just a couple of noisy frogs with big mouths.

Also remember that problems always seem bigger in the dark. Have you ever laid in your bed at night worrying about things which seem almost overwhelming ... kinda like a million frogs croaking? Chances are pretty good that when the morning comes and you take a closer look, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.