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 1st 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
be a different, separate event. I can't bring the past into the
future. I can't transcend the present. But God can.
When we sing the Alleluia verse
before the gospel reading we say to God, "You have the words of eternal
life." Not "you had the words" or "you will have the
words." Frequently we say, "the Lord be with you," as in "the Lord be
with you now." Same thing in the hymn of praise when we sing
"Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world." It's
something the Lamb is doing now, on that thin little moving edge. Only,
the Lamb's saving act happened almost two thousand years ago, in the
distant past. But somehow, it's also happening now. How can that be?
Part of God's promise to Abraham was
that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. (Genesis
12:3) All the families of the earth. Everyone. And God has
been fulfilling those promises ever since. The promises God made to
Abraham so long ago defined God's plan for the salvation of the world.
The return of Christ our Lord will mark the completion of that
salvation. We were included in those promises of old, and we are
included in the plan of salvation that is occurring now and will be
completed in the future.
Our culture and our dictionaries
understand hope as a feeling that what we want to happen will
happen. Our plans for our families. Our careers.
Our stocks. Our retirement plans. But what would happen
if we put our hope and our trust in God, rather than in the things and
the people that God created?
That's what Amos was talking about.
The people weren't trusting in God for deliverance from their enemies;
they were trusting in rituals and sacrifices. Those who love and trust
God look forward to the coming of the Lord and the Lord's eternal
reign. Those who put their trust in other things will be sorry to find
that everything they believed in is gone, and all that they trusted for
deliverance has betrayed and abandoned them.
Then we get to the Thessalonians. They
had their hope in God, but they had been expecting that hope to be
fulfilled according to their timetable. They were afraid that those
whose lives ended before Jesus' return had hoped in vain, but Paul
assures them that God's salvation transcends not only the barrier
separating past and future, but also the barrier separating life and
death.
And the Gospel? The Gospel lesson is a
word of encouragement. God doesn't go by our timetables, and we will
encounter frustrations. We'll have our times when we're caught up in
the worries of this world and lose sight of the true source of our
hope. But even though we don't know the day or the hour, the fact is
that the bridegroom will come. And if we forgot extra oil for
our lamps? It occurs to me that ten people don't need ten separate
lamps, if they stay together. I wonder if the sin of the foolish
bridesmaids wasn't that they forgot oil, but that they stopped watching
for the bridegroom and instead gave their attention to the worries of
this world. Their hope wasn't in the coming of the bridegroom; their
hope was in having enough oil. Whenever we celebrate a baptism, the
newly baptized is told to let their light so shine before others that
they may see their good works and glorify their Father in heaven.
Others who at any given moment do not have oil in their own lamps can be
illuminated by the lights of the baptized, and encouraged in their own
faith to fill their own lamps with oil. That is witness, and we are
witnessing to the confidence that we are guaranteed participation in the
completion of God's saving act by all that God has done in the past.
Of course, if our hope truly is in God
and his salvation through Jesus Christ, then we will have oil for
our lamps. But sometimes it's difficult to hold on to that hope,
because there's so much in the fallen creation that can frustrate us and
lead us away. And it's in those times that it's better for us to
be with someone whose light hasn't gone out and share in their
light than to struggle alone in the darkness. And the opposite holds
true, too. If you see someone who is struggling alone in the
darkness, isn't it an act of cruelty to deny them your light?
We can't make someone else believe or
have faith, but we have been given a truly awesome gift, and we've been
commanded to go out and share it with the whole world. That's why the
bride of Christ is the Church itself. It's not so we can get together
and sing songs and participate in rituals. That's what God was
denouncing in Amos' community. It's so we can go out and share this
wonderful gift we've each been given.
If we're talking about literal physical
lamps, then yes, the oil is limited. But if we're talking about the
light of faith, then I say the five wise bridesmaids were wrong. There
is enough to go around. I once saw the flame from a single match
light a candle, which went on to light another candle, which went on to
light another candle, and so on, until there were over two
hundred people standing in a circle, each with their own lit candle.
And it all started with a single little flame, just like that one right
there.
We are loved. We are encouraged. We
are blessed. We are participants in God's salvation which comes through
Jesus Christ our Lord. And we know this because we have gone to the
Lord and received the word of eternal life. And that word tells us what
God has done for us in the past. So we also know what God will do for
us in the future. That is the hope that we have now.
May the God of hope fill you with all
joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power
of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
