Year B
Amos 5:18-24
Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

It’s Advent… and we wait… the word advent means that we wait for the arrival of a notable person or thing… but what do we wait for… do we wait for things to go our way… or for things to go God’s way… in our case… as Christians… we not only wait for the birth of Jesus… but we wait for the full manifestation of God’s reign on earth… but we can also wait for the return to as much normalcy as possible during the remainder of this pandemic… and when it’s over… for the return to in-person worship… and singing… and receiving communion in both kinds… in Advent we wait… but we also wait on a cusp… and what is a cusp… it is a point of transition between two different states… it’s like being in that thin space… between the two sides of a coin… like being between childhood and adulthood… like being between sleep and wakefulness… and over and over again… Jesus calls us to be fully awake…

We’re also on the cusp of waiting for all of the ballots in this week’s election to be counted and certified… we are on the cusp of waiting to see whether the transfer of power will be contentious… as has been indicated… or whether it will be a peaceful transfer… perhaps even with a traditional concession speech… and we pray for these latter things… and sometimes… it is only through the presence of Wisdom and the  peace of the Holy Spirit that these things are possible…

Charles Péguy… a French poet and writer… who died in the early twentieth-century… wrote… Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics… everything… begins in mysticism… and ends in politics… there is a seamless continuum which begins in the mystery from which we come… and we are called to discern the guideposts along that continuum… aware of the points of departure from that path… so we can remain on it… but this continuum ends in the concretized specificity of what we think we know… and it often becomes polarized… partisan-ized…

And in the world of politics… there are litmus tests which we hold onto… litmus tests imposed by various people onto various candidates… what’s their record on this issue… what’s their position on that… how did they vote then… how will they vote now…

And I wonder… if our privilege has enabled us… to be in denial about the injustices around us… has even made it next to impossible for some of us to see them…

And the mistake too many of us make… I think… is that we tend to begin with politics… and then… we try to see whether we can make any room for the law and the prophets… we see how many values from the three Abrahamic faiths… we can squeeze into our civic life… whether we can figure out how to incorporate anything from Matthew 25… into our state and national… laws and policies… but usually… we end up inventing more reasons for not being able to… than for being able to… and if we do incorporate them… there’s often one caveat heaped upon another… that excuse us from following through on them…

In November 1947… Winston Churchill said… Many forms of Government have been tried… and will be tried in this world of sin and woe… no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise… indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government… except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time… 

Yes… our country is divided… but the divisions between us are lies… and God’s diversity was never intended to be divisive… it is our God-given choice… whether we choose to see division… or unity…

But the prophet Amos was quite clear when God said… I hate and despise your solemn assemblies… take the noise of your songs away from me… but instead… let justice roll down like waters… and righteousness… like an everflowing stream…

Let justice roll down like waters… on December 16, 2010… talk show host Stephen Colbert said… If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor… either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are… or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition… and then admit… that we just don’t want to do it…

Ten bridesmaids… five with enough oil… and five without… The Rev. Dirk Lange… Assistant General Secretary for Ecumenical Relations at The Lutheran World Federation in Geneva… writes… the young women were all waiting for the bridegroom… they all belonged to the same community… to the same group of friends… they all fall asleep waiting for the bridegroom to come… and within the community… it is impossible to tell who has enough oil in their lamps… who has been more faithful… and it’s not for us to judge… the church remains a mixed community… making the issue of who’s foolish or who’s wise… the center of interpretation… would miss the point of the parable… the so-called foolish young women also knew the bridegroom… calling out to him… Lord… Lord… open to us… that they remain unrecognized by the bridegroom… raises the question of knowledge in the parable… what is it to know the bridegroom… what is it to recognize the one called Lord… what is it to avoid litmus tests… and have Wisdom…

Earlier in Matthew 7:21… Jesus says… Not everyone who says to me… Lord… Lord… will enter the kingdom of heaven… but only those who do the will of my Father in Heaven… and in order to do… you need knowledge… and knowledge is based in Sophia… in the Ground of Being… in the Wisdom which existed before creation… knowledge grows on the cusp of Wisdom…

The Rev. Valerie Bridgeman… professor of Homiletics and the Hebrew Bible at the Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio… writes… I grew up in a home with a plaque that quoted Joshua 24:15… As for me and my house… we will serve the Lord… in its context… this chapter of Joshua recounts the people’s history… and their willful rebellion… and this portion of scripture was edited by the Deutero-nomistic school… which was against any hybrid faith… what we would call syncretism or idolatry… and while she still embraces these words… she also writes… but we must examine the gods we do serve… more often than not… the gods of our choosing live in our skin… in our wallets… in our aspirations… we bow too often at the altars of greed and of power… honoring them with our time… our attention… and our energy… so before we look at the ancestral “gods” of others… we might reflect on whether we keep covenant with our own baptismal commitments…

It is Advent… and we are waiting… like the bridesmaids who had oil in their lamps… and whose light shone before others… our faith enables us to do God’s work… even before the bridegroom appears… even if he seems to be late… even before the parousia… and as Pastor Lange wrote… the parousia then becomes… not a one-time event at some “end point”… but rather a continuous event that involves us –– the community of Christ –– in our baptismal vocation… living in the light of the cross in mercy… and not judgment… and the feast to which we are invited is the Lord’s Supper…

And just as the new life of resurrection is available to us in each and every moment… the parousia is Christ’s continual presence with us throughout all of our waiting… enabling us to move backwards from a political certainty which may reflect our agendas… to mystery… helping us realize that we already own… what we just think we’re waiting for… it is an acknowledgment that we exist on the cusp between looking away from… or looking towards grace… forgiveness… patience… and love… and then maybe… perhaps… Wisdom can help us realize… that Gospel Truth… is the only litmus test we need… and the only one that truly matters…