The sermon below was written on Friday Nov. 6, 2020 in preparation for preaching on Sunday Nov. 8, 2020. I didn't know as I was writing that the cough I was ignoring would lead to getting tested for COVID-19 and being advised to isolate until we know the results. I also didn't know as I was writing that Biden and Harris would be declared the projected winners of the presidential election the next morning.
This was written to end short so that Christian Dashiell could talk more about praying for our children, and specifically for foster and adoptive families, as Nov. 8, 2020 is Stand Sunday. When our committee originally was planning for this day, Christian had offered to preach and give me a vacation week. I said no because I wanted to be involved in this special day. God had other ideas and needed to have Christian in the pulpit on this day. I only regret that I didn't decide that sooner so that Christian could have more time to prepare.
All of which reminds me that God is working even when I'm clueless, and that we should always be praying and hoping, for the future is in God's hands.
----
Praying
for the Future – Matthew 25:1-13 (The Parable of the Bridesmaids)
Theologian
Walter Wink said:
“History belongs to the intercessors,
who believe the future into being. . .”[1]
An
intercessor is someone who prays for other people. History belongs to the intercessors who
believe the future into being...people who pray for the future.
Our gospel
reading today is about the future. It’s
part of a whole set of teaching about the future that we find in Matthew 24
& 25 in which Jesus was teaching his disciples as they sat on the Mount of
Olives not long before he was arrested and crucified.
We are used
to hearing parables in Matthew that start like this one. The kingdom of heaven is like… But this one doesn’t say “is,” it says “will
be.” In the future.
It will be
like a group of bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom. Half of them brought enough oil to last
through the unexpectedly long time of waiting.
The other half didn’t bring enough oil and had to go to the store at the
last minute and buy some more. By the
time they got back, it was too late and the door to the wedding was closed and
locked. And the bridegroom wouldn’t open
the door. He says, “I didn’t know
you.” So be ready, because we don’t know
the day or the hour.
In this
story, Jesus is the bridegroom.[2] Jesus got started on this teaching about the
future because he’d told them that someday the temple would be destroyed. The
disciples asked him when this would happen and would this be the end of time. In typical Jesus style, he doesn’t tell them
when, he says in v13 that we won’t know the day or the hour. Earlier, in Matthew
24:36, Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the
angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
By the time
Matthew is writing this gospel, the temple has already been destroyed, as Jesus
predicted, but unlike they thought, this didn’t bring about the end of time or
the second coming of Jesus. So they were still left wondering about the
future. How much longer, Lord?
Maybe you’ve
been wondering the same thing. How much
longer, Lord?
Again the
answer is that we don’t know, but Jesus says at the end of today’s reading that
we need to be ready. So how do we do
that?
Make good
use of our time. Psalm 31:15 says that our
times are in God’s hands. We don’t know
how long, so we need to make the best use of our time while we’re waiting.
How do we do
that? By doing the good works that God
has called us to do. (Eph. 2:10). In the
rest of this chapter Jesus tells parables that talk about using our resources
wisely, investing for the future, and we’ll talk more about that next week, and
then the end of the chapter is taking care of people. That’ll be our focus in two weeks.
Doing good
works and staying ready to keep doing those good works. How do we continue to have the power to do
that?
In the
story, being ready is having oil for our lamps.
In modern terms, this might be having enough electricity. But this is a parable, so the oil or
electricity is symbolic. What do you think the oil represents? . . . The Holy Spirit.[3]
Proverbs
13:9 The light of the righteous rejoices, but the lamp of the wicked goes out.
Jesus said that we are the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14) To be the light to the world, we need the
power of the Holy Spirit. We need to use
the power of prayer.
There was a
little town that had two churches and one distillery. They were often at odds with each other. The two churches decided to hold a prayer
meeting to ask God to intervene and settle the matter once and for all, and so
they all gathered together one night for prayer. All through the prayer meeting a terrible
storm raged. During the storm, lightning
hit the distillery, and it caught fire and burned to the ground. The next Sunday both pastors preached about
the power of prayer.
Insurance
adjusters told the distillery owner that they couldn’t pay his damage claims
because his insurance policy didn’t cover “acts of God.” The distillery owner was furious and sued
both churches saying that they had conspired with God to destroy his
business. The churches denied that they
had anything to do with the cause of the fire.
When they
came to court, the judge said that he found the case most perplexing. The plaintiff, the bar owner, is professing
his belief in the power of prayer, and the defendants, all faithful church
members, are denying that very same power![4]
Did prayer
cause lightning to strike that factory?
There’s no way to know for sure, one way or the other, but this raises
an interesting question: How much do
we really trust in the power of prayer? I think most of us do, or at least we want
to. Jesus definitely did. He prayed all the time. And he told us to do the same.
As we
pray for people, we need to keep on praying – We never know how long it will take. There was an
older widow that lived next door to a family with a boy who would come do
chores for her. As part of his pay, she
would always have him sit down in the kitchen to eat a piece of apple pie,
usually freshly baked. He would eat it
as quickly as he could so he could get out to go play with his friends, but
then she would bring him another piece of pie, and he would have to listen to
her endless talking as he ate it. Ten
years later, he gave his life to Jesus at a college event. He didn’t know who to tell, and then it
occurred to him to go tell the widow.
He found her in her back yard enjoying the beautiful spring day. He asked her if she knew Jesus, and she said
she did. So he said, “Well, the other
night, I committed my life to Jesus.”
She looked up and said firmly, “You stay right here.” She hobbled up to her back door and up the
steps, and came back ten minutes later with a huge piece of chocolate cake. As he ate it, she was smiling broadly but
silently, and finally after a while, she said, “For the last fifteen years,
since you moved in next door, I have prayed every day for you. I prayed every day that you would come to
know Jesus.”[5]
I consider
it a bonus whenever we get to see the results of our prayer like that widow
did. I think more often than not we
don’t get to know the outcome when we’re praying for someone. In the book of James it says that the
prayer of a righteous person is powerful and produces results (5:16). Sometimes that may seem like a pipe dream and
we may wonder if our prayers really are helping. The Bible says they are. We just have to keep praying and trust that
God will bless our faithfulness to his call to us to pray for one another.
Richard
Foster said, “If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is
within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is
a way of loving others.”[6]
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer said that “Christ stands between us and we can only get into touch
with our neighbors through him.”[7] I think this is true. There’s a connection we make with people as
we pray for them that’s different than if we don’t. Our connection in Christ transcends the bonds
of time and space.
Praying for
children is praying for the future, for they will live beyond our lifetimes.
Here are some ways to pray for families who are fostering and adopting children.
[1] Greig, Pete. How to Pray: A
Simple Guide for Normal People (p. 93). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.
[2]
“The idea of Jesus being the bridegroom of the parable is easily established,
since already in Matthew 9: 15 Jesus himself alludes to it.” –Sammy G. Alfaro
in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship. Ed.
Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby, Carolyn J.
Sharp. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition (Kindle Locations
14818-14819).
[4]
Bob Russell, When God Answers Prayer (Howard Publishing, 2003), 43-44.
[5] Phillip
Yancey, Prayer: Does it make any difference? (Zondervan, 2006), 303.
Adapted.
[6] Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding
the Heart’s True Home (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008), 204. As
quoted in Greig, Pete. How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People (p.
93). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.
[7]
Cost of Discipleship, 305.
No comments:
Post a Comment