• Biblical Hope, Matthew 25:1-13, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Amos 5:18-24, Rev. Karen A. Goltz
   
• Making Choices with Our Voices, Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25,
  by Rev Randy Quinn
   

• Ten Bridesmaids,  Mat 25:1-13, by Rev. Thomas N. Hall
   

• We're All in This Together, Ephesians 4:1-6, John 17:20-26
  by Rev. Frank Schaefer
   

• Promises, based on all lessons, by Rev. Brad Hall
     

• Giving of Ourselves, Mat 25:1-13, anonymous
     

• RP or PR, Mat 25:1-13, anonymous

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Biblical Hope
based on Matthew 25:1-13, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Amos 5:18-24
Rev. Karen A. Goltz

When I read through today's lectionary texts, all I could think was, 'Wow!  How depressing!'  The reading from Amos talks about God ignoring the songs and sacrifices dedicated to him in worship, and says that the Day of the Lord is darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it.  The reading from 1^st Thessalonians talks about dead people and whether or not they'll be able to participate in the Day of the Lord, and the Gospel reading seems to issue a stern warning about being constantly prepared.  It seems like it's saying you're out of luck if you're not completely ready at that unexpected time.

            But as I read the texts over, I began to realize that the readings together aren't proclaiming a message of gloom and doom.  They're talking about hope.

            Hope.  The word itself only comes up once in all our readings today, and that's when Paul cautions the Thessalonians not to be like those who don't have any.  But it's the undercurrent, the subtle theme linking all of today's lessons together.

            Hope is a nice word that conveys a nice idea.  We have hopes for our children, for our families, for our careers.  We hope that the stock market will recover enough so that we can retire as we'd planned.  Each and every one of us has a hope that's specific to our own wants and needs.  That's one of the things that's so great about hope: there's enough for everyone.

            My regular desk dictionary defines hope as "a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment."  Sounds good.  Only, that's not the kind of hope that's running through our texts.  That kind of hope applies to any wish we might have, as long as we expect it to happen. 

            Amos, Paul, Matthew, and even the psalmist are talking about biblical hope.  My Bible Dictionary defines this hope as "the confidence that what God has done for us in the past guarantees our participation in what God will do in the future."

            When we think of what God has done for us in the past, we might think about these antiquated old stories in the Bible that seem to have little to do with our lives today.  When we think of what God will do in the future, we might think about the much-talked-about second coming of Christ, maybe the way it's presented in the Left Behind series.  The present is what's most real to us, because it's all we've ever experienced.  And it seems so far removed from God's activities, past and future.  But the truth is, the present is just a tiny, slim little moving edge separating the vastness we call the past from the vastness we call the future.  Ten minutes ago my reading the gospel lesson was in the future.  Five minutes ago it became the past.  Even if I read it again now, it would...[continue]