Staying Awake

Poolesville Presbyerian Church

11.27.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Mark 13:24-37

Over the last week, I've been seriously slacking off.   I have, despite the whole world's efforts to the contrary, managed to totally neglect my duties as an American shopper.

For the past several weeks, the busy busy people of America’s marketing and advertising industries have been spooling up for the most important shopping day of the year.  Every retailer we’ve ever done business with has been filling our email inbox with excited announcements, and our snail-mail box is a cascading cornucopia of catalogs.   Banner ads are splashed across every web page.  Our newspaper arrived on Wednesday bearing an advertising supplement insert that weighed more than most butterball turkeys.   Employees of retail outlets across the region are putting in long, long hours, working through the small hours of the morning.

And even in the face of all that herculean effort, I just can’t seem to get myself motivated.  I can’t  seem to managed to get out there and shop during this long four-day vacation, which business media outlet CNBC described as “Black Friday Weekend.”   That’s what this is, right?  “Black Friday Weekend?”      

Instead of camping outside of Best Buy in the hopes of getting a half-price flat-panel TV, I spent Thursday afternoon eating tofurkey and stuffing and gravy in a room full of family.  Instead of being encouraged to line up under the illuminated Toys R Us sign for a super, super deal on the latest Call of Duty game, my children were preparing music and impromptu comedy routines to entertain the adults.   Instead of rushing out from the family gathering to hit the anchor stores at Tysons, my family went home and curled up on the sofa and watched a movie.  A Norwegian movie, with subtitles, a clear sign that our credentials as American consumers are deeply in question.

When we’re called up before the Committee on UnAmerican Consumer Activities, that’s the question that’s going to get us in trouble.  “Are you now, or have you ever been, a watcher of Norwegian films with subtitles?”  Couple that with the tofurkey, and I could be in some serious trouble.

And then we went to sleep, while the lines snaking around the stores hadn’t even been let in yet.   

Oh, there was a chance to redeem myself on Black Friday, that day of all shopping days.  It was a banner day, by all reports, fully six point six percent better than last year.  I don't know if that does the next decimal place to six point six six, but if it does, that opens a can of worms we just don't want to mess with this morning.

I could have gotten up early.  I could have rushed out to hit the second wave.  But no.  I was too lazy.  Too self-indulgent.  Instead, I woke up at about seven-thirty.  I walked the dog.  I had some coffee.   I read the paper, the whole paper.  Our entire Friday morning vanished in a warm haze, a morning when we could have been productively consuming.   And then, because it was a distractingly beautiful day, we all went for a five-mile roundtrip walk to go get lunch.   We.  Weren’t.  Even.  Consuming.  Gas.  Then I came home and took a nice little nap.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.   Every moment counts, and we’ve got to stay awake and on the ball.  That’s the point Jesus is trying to make in this morning’s passage from Matthew, although I’m pretty sure his completely different spin on it wouldn’t pass muster before the Committee on UnAmerican Consumer Activities.

This text comes to us from a portion of Mark that is often called the “little apocalypse.”   The “little apocalypse” runs for most of chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel, and contains much familiar imagery.  It’s a description of the destruction of the temple and the catastrophic collapse of society, followed by the fulfillment of the messianic age.

There are wars and rumors of wars.  There are earthquakes, trials and tribulations, cats and dogs, living together, the whole shebang.  At the conclusion of the sequence of events, we hear, in verse 26, that there will be the arrival of the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

It’s pretty much the essence of what we visualize when we visualize the apocalypse.  There are a couple of elements, however, that make this a bit different from the typical end-times schpiel.  

First, most apocalypses follow a particular format.  In the Book of Revelation, the apocalyptic chapter twelve of the book of Daniel, and a variety of apocalypses that didn’t make it into the Bible, there is usually 1) a bizarre vision being presented from God; 2) an angelic intermediary to interpret the strange visions, and 3) a clear judgment of bad folks.   We don’t see those elements here.

Second, and more significantly, this “little apocalypse” strongly implies that the events that are unfolding are not in the future, or even imminent, but in process.   In verse 30, Jesus seems to clearly indicate that everything that he’s talking about will occur within the lifetimes of “this generation,” reiterating a commitment that he also made earlier in Mark 9:1, where we heard that “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”   It’s a bit of a fuddler, frankly.

The world didn’t appear to come to an end in the first century, nor are there, to my knowledge, some 2,000 year old Judeans kicking around anywhere.  How are we supposed to read this, then?

It helps to remember that much of what Jesus declares in chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel did occur.  Within the lives of most of his listeners, Judea had been completely destroyed by the Roman Empire. The city of Jerusalem fell, destroyed in the year 70 by the combined assault of three Roman legions. The second temple was razed, and Israel as a nation was shattered for nearly 2,000 years.

Yet though that “suffering” which is described earlier in the chapter and is referred to in verse 24 seem certain to have happened within a generation of Christ’s saying it, the passage does go further. Jesus suggests strongly that somehow Christ’s Reign may be something that the disciples will experience...and yet it clearly hasn’t happened yet. The Son of Man descending? Has he? Angels gathering the elect?  They can’t have. Can they?

It is that tension between the fulfillment of the Reign of God and the anticipation of it’s arrival that is why this passage gets served up on the first Sunday of Advent. What Jesus is saying is not to be understood as being true only for the generation that heard him first. The reality he is describing isn’t something that occurs at one moment in time, or at one place. The arrival of God’s Kingdom does not belong to one particular generation...it belongs to all of them. 

It’s not a reality that happens at one moment, and then passes on. As Christ says, though Heaven and Earth will pass away, my words will not pass away.   That call to stay awake, then, has direct implications for how we are to live our lives in the now.

Are we structuring our lives so that we’re clearly prioritizing those things...in the right now, the this-instant...that mean our existence reflects our Maker’s purpose?   Attentiveness and giving priority to those actions that best mirror the gracious intent of the Gospel is absolutely essential.   It reinforces the necessity of considering how and in what way our actions mirror our reason for being, and how the ways we choose to focus both our minds and the precious time we’ve been given reflect the Reign of God.

That, I think, is the biggest challenge facing us in the festivals of consumption our culture encourages.  We like the shiny shiny things we’re offered, and that fleeting hit of Splenda sweetness that comes from getting a new thing.  

But the “new” things we cram in the backs of our ‘utes, big boxes coming home from big boxes, well, they’re not really new.  They lack the ability to change us in any way that matters.   Well, perhaps that’s not true.  They do reduce our patience, increase our hunger for possessions, and distract us from both injustice and the glories of creation around us.  The choice we’re given--between shopping and shabbas, between time in line and time to catch our breath and find connection with loved ones--is a real one.   Attending to the life that Christ seeks for all of us needs to guide our every moment.

We do not know, after all, when that hour will come.  Is it next year?  Is it next week?  Is it tomorrow?   Is it one forty five this afternoon?   Is it now?  Was it yesterday?  Was it Friday?

We are called to live as if those all were true.   We are called to stay awake.   Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Greyscale

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

11.20.11;  Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 25:31-46

Before we begin...I have a confession to make.  

I am, and have always been, a gamer.  I like gaming, and by “gaming” I don’t mean someone who participates in the “gaming” industry, that peculiar institution that involves you giving someone money so that you can experience the thrill of losing money, over and over and over again. I never did understand the appeal in that kind of game.  It used to be called “gambling,” of course, before they decided to hide the “B” and the “L,” because I suppose they thought doing so would hide away the fact that it’s BL.  

No, I play video games.  I have since I was a young lad, and that first Atari 2600 arrived one Christmas after a sustained campaign of cajoling and whimpering.  It filled my fallow tween hours with Combat, and Centipede, and PacMan, and Star Raiders.  I once played Space Invaders for such a prolonged period that when I went to sleep that night, I found that when I closed my eyes, I could still see the game cranking away.  That was strange, but stranger still, I found I could control it.  Must have inadvertently downloaded it, I guess.

Whichever way, that Atari was the latest and greatest technological advancement, providing cutting edge entertainment through the raw processing power of its four kilobyte chip.  Given that a Word Document that contains only the number 4 and the letter K is 15 kilobytes, things have clearly come a ways since then.

Having gamed for over three decades, across several dozen different platforms, I’ve watched the medium evolve.  One of the most striking changes in the last few years is the introduction of systems of ethics and morality into the virtual world in which you’re gaming.   The first game to do this well arrived about a decade ago.  It was called Fable, and you played a young man growing up in a place called Albion.  How you grew up, however, depended on you.  As a child, you could help others, run errands, find lost cats, and stop bullies from hurting other children.  Or, if you so chose, you could steal things, intimidate other children into obeying you and giving you stuff, and punt chickens down the street.  That last one was rather tempting, particularly given that the game kept track of your chicken-kicking skills.

As you grew into adulthood in the game, those choices continued.  You could choose to be kind and giving and noble, in which case everyone would be overjoyed to see you, villagers would applaud your arrival, and you’d eventually start glowing just a little bit, as a trail of butterflies and small tweeting birds followed you.  Alternately, you could be cruel and selfish and vicious, in which case you’d grow horns, people would cower or flee in terror at your arrival, and the only things flying around you would be biting flies and lobbyists.

It was interesting, because it meant that the way in which you acted had a direct influence on the way in which the game played.  This went well beyond just shooting something and having it blow up, or jumping over something.   The dynamics of the world changed, depending on your ethical choices.

But those choices were almost entirely binary.  There was the good path.  There was the bad path.  Everything was nice and neat and clear, without confusion, without greyscale.  There’s good, and there’s evil, and there’s a nice little gauge at the upper left of the screen that lets you know how you’re doing.

But in non-virtual life?  Well, life out here in the meatspace world tends to be a bit more challenging.  Once you get out of a realm created in binary, things stop being binary.

That’s one of the biggest challenges, I think, in trying to wrap our heads around the story that Jesus tells in Matthew’s Gospel today.   This particular story is unique to Matthew.  None of the other three Gospels contain it.  It is also the only place in any of the Gospels where Jesus explicitly describes what will happen at the conclusion of all things.  When Jesus speaks of the Reign of God, he almost always does so using poetry, metaphor, and storytelling.  These are forms of teaching that require us to use our insights and imagination, and that don’t lend themselves to being taken literally. 

Here in the final story of a sequence of stories that have brought us to the end of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew, though, he steps away from that approach.  This is not a parable, a story told to speak to a meaning beyond the story.  It is not an allegory, in which every thing in the story acts as a symbolic stand-in for some other thing.  It’s just a description, a recounting...or, I suppose, a “precounting”...of how things are going to wrap up.

It’s a pretty classic image, with the Son of Man on the throne of glory, surrounded by angels and suffused in the sort of light you typically see in a Steven Spielberg film.   This is the big cosmic Sorting Hat moment, when the lives of every single human being from every single nation are measured against the only standard that counts.

It appears, as we read it, to be something of a binary process.  The good go on the right hand, in the sheep line.  The not-good?  They go in the goat line.   The sheep are the righteous, the goats, the unrighteous.  

Figuring out the difference should be a simple thing.  All the Son of Man needs to do is check whether you’re a member in good standing in the Presbyterian Church (USA), right?  Oh, and whether you’ve gotten your generous pledge in for the next year.  

But when all those nervous Methodists and Episcopalians and Buddhists get to the front of the line, we find that the judgment call is measured by standards that are somewhat different from those we might otherwise expect.

For all of the really amazing amount of energy Christians have spent arguing about theological and doctrinal issues over the last 2,000 years, there’s no doctrinal multiple choice test administered.  There is also no reference, much to the befuddlement of many followers of Jesus, to whether or not you’ve been a church going Christian or accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Instead, the measure is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those who are sick or imprisoned.  Done it?  Then you’re set.  Somehow managed not to get around to it?  Then things aren’t looking so good for you.

It’s a pretty simple measure, but one that we might, upon some reflection, struggle with a bit.  How does that work? 

Have we done things that are good?   Have we cared for those in need, and given a kind word to those who were lost or hurting?  I’m pretty sure we’ve all done that here and there, more or less.

But life is typically not as straightforward as the drop-down conversation menu in a game, in which you can either give a hungry man some bread or kick him.   

There are times we give of ourselves, but not fully.  There are times we are good, but not wholly.  We might give, but feel a tinge of resentment.  We might pull away, failing to give as much as we could.   We might be meeting one need, but failing to meet another.  That’s the reality in which we live.   How does this vision of how things are measured connect with our deeply greyscale reality?

Here, I think it’s worth keeping a couple of things in mind.

First, that our world is most often not black and white is not an excuse for inaction or paralysis.  Jesus presents us with a living or dying edge, that place in ourselves where we are daily, moment by moment, given the choice to live out grace or live out selfishness.   That choice is not a binary one, an either/or, a one or a zero.  We don’t live in two dimensional space, after all.  

But we are day by day, hour by hour, given the freedom to move closer towards being that soul that we were created to be.   We are given to grow deeper in grace, richer in patience, freer with mercy.  We can speak a kind word about that soul, instead of a bitter one.  We can take a moment for silence, to listen for God, to hear the other.   And we can choose to use our energies, our life, in ways that bring more light into the world.  That is true wherever we are.  

Second, while our lives may be painted in a shade of grey,  we have a grasp of what is expected of us, wherever we find ourselves in our own development as spiritual and ethical persons.   We know what is expected of us.  We are shown, with clarity, that we are to deepen our commitment to love, mercy, justice, and grace.  That is true for churches, which need to take the care of others...the last, the least, the lost...as a significant and visible priority.  That is true for ourselves as individuals, as well.  Wherever we are, we know how to lean more deeply into that reality.   And in doing so, reality itself is changed, as is our relationship to it.  

That’s a meaningful goal.  It’s the goal of the Reign of Christ.  This life is not, after all, a game.  Live it, and inherit that grace that He intended for all of us.   Let it be so, for you and for me,  AMEN.

The Doing

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

11.13.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 25:14-30

Before rolling too far into this sermon, I wanted to be sure we’re clear about something.   The title of this sermon is “The Doing.”   That’s “doing” as in “to do,” meaning “to perform,” “to execute,” “to accomplish, finish, or complete.”   It derives from the Old English “dun,” and is related to the the Dutch verb “doen,” and the Archaic German “tun.”

The title of this sermon is not “The Doinggg,” as in the sound your rapidly vibrating head makes right after Bugs Bunny hits you in the noggin with a cast iron skillet.   

I know you were wondering about that, and it’s important to clear up these things on the front end.  

We all like to think of ourselves, in our best moments, as doers.  Being someone who can “get things done” is one of those values we celebrate in our culture.   If we’re the person who can juggle a thousand events and activities and still maintain the kind of house where things are so you could feel comfortable eating off of the kitchen counter, we’re doers.  This is to be distinguished from maintaining the kind of house where you regularly eat off of the kitchen counter.

If we’re the sort of person who puts in those long, long hours to get a project done, or complete that assignment, then we have that good solid feeling about ourselves and our ability to deliver whatever it is that we’ve been asked to deliver.

Doing, unfortunately, can be something that Presbyterians struggle with.  The challenge we have, I think, is a tendency to think that doing is the same thing as thinking about doing, or meeting to think about doing, or thinking about meeting to think about doing.  While thinking about things beforehand is an excellent way to insure that you’re going to do something right, it can also be an excellent way to insure that you don’t ever do anything at all.

It’s easy, if you’re the sort of person who wants to get everything perfectly right, to think your way into making a task so much more complicated than it needs to be that it becomes impossibly daunting.   

I can recall a seminar quite a few years back with a group of earnestly thoughtful Presbyterians, in which the concept of “putting up a website” was discussed.   There was much thinking involved.  Could you use pictures of people?   People scratched their heads.  What about liability issues?  What about waivers and official policies about site use?   Congregational leadership really needed to set up a task force to examine the potential issues before they could even think about creating a web site.  People asked how you put up links to worship audio and video.  Well, what about music that was copyrighted?  Again, an exploratory task force was required.

It was...well...a bit silly.  Every possible negative eventuality was considered, turning what could be easily be done in a single afternoon by a single motivated congregant into a process involving many months and countless meetings.  

Overthinking leads to inaction, to analysis paralysis, and it was to that issue in the lives of Christians that Jesus was speaking in the parable we heard from Matthew’s Gospel this morning.  This is the second of three stories that comprise the twenty-fifth chapter of this Gospel.  It comes to us from what scholars call the “Q” source, meaning it comes from a hypothetical text, now lost, that contained all of the sayings that appear in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark.   Though the version of the story that Luke presents is somewhat different, the two share a common essential narrative.

In them, a wealthy and powerful man goes on a journey, and entrusts his property to three of his slaves.  Upon his return, he discovers that the one who’d received the most had invested it in business ventures.  He’d taken risks, and doubled what he’d received.   The one who’d received less than half of that amount had also doubled it.

The last one?  Well, he’d been cautious.  He’d been careful.  He took what he’d been given, and he dug a nice little hole in the ground, and buried what he’d been given.  It’s the careful thing to do.  It’s the prudent thing to do, particularly given that his boss was demanding.

And hearing this, the rich man takes back the money, gives it to the first slave, and fires the guy with a flourish worthy of Donald Trump, casting him into the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We don’t like hearing this story, which strikes us as a tiny bit unfair.  It’s not like the slave squandered the money.  He didn’t go to Atlantic City with it, after all.  Heck, if you bury it in the ground, you’re getting nearly the same interest you’d be getting if you put it in 6 month Bank of America Certificate of Deposit these days.   Doesn’t that count for something?

There’s another version of this parable that occurs in an early Christian Gospel that didn’t make it into the Bible, one that changes it around in exactly that way.  The Gospel of the Nazarene has the first slave investing, the second burying it, and the third blowing it all on the ponies, or doing the first century equivalent.   That’s easy for us to buy in to.  It’s a straightforward tale about doing what is morally right.  It’s simple.  It’s fair.

But that’s not the point Jesus was trying to make.  This is not that simple.  

This isn’t a parable about investment strategies, one that provides us with Seven Rules for Making Partner at Goldman Sachs.  It’s a parable about what it means to actively and purposefully engage in the work of God’s Kingdom.  As we engage in that work, both individually and corporately, there are a couple of key things we should take away from this passage.  

First, this is a call for boldness.  It follows on last week’s parable of the Bridesmaids, which counseled adequate preparedness and wisdom.  This parable balances that call for wisdom by reminding us that taking the safest course of action is not always the path to grace.

There are times we need to risk if we’re going to live into the Kingdom, and there are times when the appropriate action is not doing the safe thing, or the easy thing, or the thing that maintains the status quo.   That doesn’t mean being foolhardy.  It doesn’t mean taking wild and unnecessary swings at glory.  

But it does mean steering away from that false wisdom that counsels keeping things quiet and safe, that warped prudence that seeks to protect what is by not doing what needs to be done.

That sort of thinking was what drove mistake after mistake in the tragic and horrific Penn State scandal.  Play it safe.  Keep it quiet.  Bury it away.   That sort of caution, caution that covers it’s own behind instead of taking the risk that comes with seeking justice, always leads to ruin.  

When something must change, then risk is a prerequisite for that change.  That’s true for every venture in life.  It’s true in relationships.  It’s true in our work-life, and in our schooling.  And it is particularly true in the lives of congregations.  If we are called...as we are called...to be servants of the transforming love and grace of Jesus of Nazareth, then we need to be bold about it. 

Second, this is a call to make a little noise.  Bold action is not invisible action, the kind of thing you whisper about inaudibly to yourself as you go about your business.   In the early church, being willing to be forward and visible and audible in their actions was absolutely essential.  

That, I think, is one of the greatest challenges facing churches.  They can be engaged in wonderful, meaningful, important work in the world.   But if you engage in work that is vital and important and has the potential to transform lives, you need to share its importance.  It’s not just in the doing of good, but in the spreading of the desire to do good.   As PPC prepares itself to work towards another year, to apply the resources of our time and our treasure, we need to be mindful of that call.  Don’t hide away this good thing.  Don’t be reluctant to be bold about the doing and the speaking of it.

I guess, honestly, now that I really think about it, that this story isn’t just Jesus telling us about “doing.”  He’s also giving us a little whack in the head, to remind us what we're about in the world.   

So... “doingg.”

Let it be so, for you and for me,  AMEN

Gassing It Up

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

11.06.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 25:1-13

Every time I have ever preached this sermon, I’ve said I hate preaching it.  

It’s stewardship season again, and there’s a strong tendency among many pastorly types  to approach this in much the same way you’d approach that corner of your sofa where the puppy you’re puppy-sitting decided to surreptitiously go number two.  

Meaning, you grimace, roll your eyes, and then go about the messy business that you’re obligated to get done, while trying not to breathe through your nose.   This does not tend to make for good sermon writing.

I’m hardly the only pastor to have this problem.  Many of us just don’t like talking about money.  It feels grasping and materialistic.  It makes us feel like we’re taking that first step on the slippery slope to televangelism.  

We’re terrified that once we start talking about money, the next thing you know we’ll be standing there on the stage next to Joel Osteen, our big hair and shiny white teeth glistening in unison as we tell everyone that the Lord loves a cheerful giver, and that if you have a need, you got plant a seed, and if you want to be blessed abundantly, you have to bless this ministry abundantly.  Just swipe your Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express through the card-reader on the pew in front of you, brothers and sisters.    Then, the money pours in like a waterfall.  In the case of Osteen, we’re talking an actual waterfall, one that his congregation installed at the front of the sanctuary to remind people 1) to pour out their blessings and 2) to hurry up about it, because that water always makes them recall the three cups of coffee they had right before the service.  And as that “waterfall of blessings” starts up, every drop pattering down would remind us that we’d sold out.

This week, though, I got to thinking.  Why should I be so distressed by this?  Do I get anxious when I’m doing other things that relate to money?   When I was seven years old, and I had a dollar in my pocket, would I stress out when I went to the counter at 7-11 to buy a couple of X-Men comic books and a Snickers bar?  Nope.  I’d look forward to it.  I'd save up especially for that purpose.

Then there the moment when that little flashing LCD starts cranking away at the bottom of my bike’s fuel gauge, telling me it’s time to get more fuel.  When it comes time to fill up the five point eight gallon tank on my motorcycle, I don’t fret about that, either.   Sure, gas isn’t as cheap as it once was, back in high school, when I would funnel 62 cent-a-gallon leaded gasoline into the endlessly thirsty maw of my beater 1973 Plymouth Valiant.  But I know that without that gas, I can’t run the errands I need to run.   Without that gas, I’m not going to be able to get where I’m going.  

Sure, I could neglect it out of cheapness.  Or I could ignore it, and just assume I’ll get where I’m going.  

But ignoring that expenditure or putting it off always results in the same thing.   You find yourself coasting to a stop, filling your helmet with choice phrases as you drift towards the shoulder, as traffic surges past you and you start wondering whether you remembered to charge your cell phone.

Fuel was the underlying metaphor in the teaching we hear from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel today.   We’ve been taking a journey through Matthew’s Gospel over the last few weeks, and we’re beginning to come to the final sequence of teaching.   The section we’re in now begins at the start of chapter 23, and runs through the end of chapter 25.  Some bible scholars describe it as the “Judgement Discourse,” in which Jesus tells stories and gives some declarative answers to some rather essential questions.  What is valuable and good in the eyes of God?  What isn’t?  How will things end?  What is the destiny of the rich and the self-righteous and the powerful?

Among the stories that were told to answer some of these key questions was the one heard today, which is generally known as the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.    Let me be the first to note that this is a very parable-y parable, told for the purposes of symbolism.  Some scholars argue that it doesn’t represent the typical activities of bridesmaids in the first century, any more than the movie Bridesmaids was an accurate representation of most Bridal showers.  At least, I hope it wasn’t, because that’d mean there are things my wife really needs to tell me about.

Others suggest that the pattern of awaiting a bridegroom in the evening was common, and that delays were frequent, as the event dragged on and on.

Whichever way, the images presented are a call for wisdom in how we approach resources and the world...and, more importantly, the Kingdom.  The parable itself is intended to indirectly describe the nature of the reign of God among us, and begins, as do many of the parables of Jesus, with the words “The Kingdom of God is like...”

Here, the issue is not just being prepared.  All ten of the bridesmaids begin by being prepared, arriving with their lamps filled with oil.  The five wise ones, though, remember to bring extra oil, more fuel in the event that the bridegroom is delayed.  

The others?  Well, they don’t quite manage to get around to it.  They just assume it’ll all work itself out.

It’s a typical wisdom parable, in that there are the wise, and there are the foolish, and the wise are the ones who plan and prepare, who set aside their resources under the assumption that maybe, just maybe, it might take a little while for the bridegroom to show up.  The bridegroom is, here, rather obviously intended to be Christ as the Son of Man.  The bridesmaids?  Well, they’re us.  Do we do what we need to sustain our faith, not just in the short term, but over the long haul?  Do we use our resources in such a way that if Jesus doesn’t show up tomorrow, we’re still going to be doing what we need to be doing to keep that light burning?

That, quite frankly, is what stewardship is all about, and what we need to be talking about when we talk about the needs of our fellowship moving forward into the next year.   As Poolesville Presbyterian Church looks forward to 2012, the resources we commit to that journey have a tremendous amount to do with how bright our light will shine over the next year.  Y’all all each got a letter, and in that letter was a request to think about giving to PPC to support it in 2012.  So, assuming you’re earnestly thinking about it, here are a few things to throw into the mix.

First, as you’re looking at what you may be able to give this year, what’s most important to realize is that this is your church.   The resources you give to support and sustain it are not, in a very real sense, resources that you are giving away.  They are resources that you are committing to your own community, to this church, to something that is a basic and fundamental part of your life.  Faith is, after all, the most radically defining element of our existence, and this community is how we together live out and develop that faith.   

In that very real sense, it’s like making sure your car is gassed up and ready to go.  Or prepping for that big home improvement project you’ve been telling yourself you’d do for the last ten years.  What matters is that you’ve planned ahead, and provided enough for what is to come.  You need oil so that your lamp will stay lit as long as it needs to stay lit. 

Second, it’s not hard to see the impact of your resources and energy here.  This is, rather obviously, not a large church.  There is no big fat endowment.  There aren’t nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine other people giving, so that what you do just disappears in the background.  What you do matters in a little church.  And we’re efficient. We make do.  We deal with things as practically and efficiently as it can.  But those resources are nonetheless necessary, and have a clear impact.  Your giving is the fuel that lights and heats this buildings, and the manse, and Speer Hall.  Those things don’t just magically happen on their own.  The community organizations that we open our doors to here rely on that commitment.  It is that same commitment that makes music and mission possible here.  It is what allows PPC to be a vibrant and bright part of this community, a witness to the light that guides each and every one of us.

So consider what you can do to help prepare for the promise of this ministry in 2012.  What will keep our light lit, both materially and spiritually?  How will we be ready for the surprises that always, always come our way?   What will insure that we are, as a community, ready throughout this next year to light the way for the grace and justice of the Bridegroom?  Let’s be wise.  Let's plan ahead.  And let's do so boldly.

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.