Sermon — December 24, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

If you are like me, primarily a dweller of the city of Boston, there is a normal level of this kind of existential terror that happens when you move to Wyoming. And not just because of the hunting, fishing, cowboys, bears, or the ever-present wind. 

I moved to Wyoming to do the Episcopal Service Corps right after I graduated from college. I arrived on the last flight into Cody, Wyoming and the director of my program picked me up in the pitch blackness. I got vague glimpses of the asphalt as we wound through the roads of the Bighorn Basin, going to Walmart because I had forgotten some basic necessities, and then eventually pulling into the house at the retreat center I would live in around 9:30 pm. 

Over the course of the next few days I would steal glimpses out of windows, and see the landscape as it passed by as we drove around on various errands around Cody. I remember this feeling of terror, of anxiety, of wonder, and pure awe. For the first time the world was so big, the mountains so grand, the sky so looming, the desert basin so vast, and the glory of God reflected in such a way that I was wholly unaccustomed to. I had a number of conversations with people that confided that they had shared a similar experience upon moving there, it was a landscape that inspired awe and wonder and terror for the unaccustomed. 

At some point in October after I had moved I got used to it though, seeing for dozens of miles in every direction became expected, I grew accustomed to distances that were unfathomable to my Massachusetts mind, it became my normal life just like my life in Boston. The views settled in and became commonplace–the background image of my new life. Until they didn’t.

Every so often, I would suddenly see the landscape around my house as if it were the first time–the terror, the awe, the wonder renewed in my sight. I would look at Foretops’s Father (the mountain at the center of the Bighorn Basin) again and my heart would be strangely warmed, I would sit on the top of the hill out back of our house and see Teepee’s Doorway (the valley that leads into Yellowstone) and wipe tears from my eyes. There was no pattern to these moments, nothing that I could do that would definitively make these new moments of wonder unlock for me. Though I did have to make the first motion to actually look, and look again, and to keep looking. 

As we approach Advent this year, I am feeling like we have allowed a lot of our most profound and radical stories to settle into the landscapes of our lives. Though, I cannot deny that the familiar stories bring a level of comfort. The birth narratives of Jesus are what many Christian children cut their teeth on when they are being introduced to the faith, and at this time of year we easily settle back into them like a big comfy chair–particularly as Christmas becomes an ungrounding and stressful time. There is a nostalgia and a familiarity to the birth narratives such that they remain stalwart in people’s minds even if they do not remember much else about Christianity. 

And this makes sense, there are really cool angels who bring the glory of God to earth and talk to people, Jesus is born in humble (but usually depicted as quite cozy) beginnings, wise men come bearing strange gifts, in some apocryphal traditions a small boy comes to play the drums for the newborn Jesus and his family, and humble shepherds are invited to witness the newborn king. However, I have been attempting. comforting as I find these stories, to put myself out there into the stories again, to look again and again and hope for that same sort of radical transformation. 

Today’s story, the Annunciation, feels to me like it has settled into the territory of a bit nice and mystical. Mary just seems to have some cool stuff happen to her, the angel Gabriel comes, and the Annunciation seems to be the mystical stepping stone to the real hoo-rah that we are waiting for, the birth of Christ. 

However, if we look and look again, I think what we miss in this story is how brave Mary’s “yes” actually is. In my reading, the bravery of Mary’s action in this story is threefold. 

First, this angel greets her in a very strange way, and she is greatly troubled. Here we can note that an unrelated man and woman conversing in public would have been unusual and scary. And also that this man is an angel. Mary is truly greatly troubled to even find herself in this situation. 

Second, we can note what exactly the angel is saying to her. In the first bit of what the angel Gabriel is saying to her, the whole thing about kingdoms and her son, is a direct threat to the Roman occupation under which she lives. The region in which Mary lives is a powder keg of a place ready to explode at a moment’s notice. It had only recently come under full Roman occupation and dissent was brewing in major ways. At this tense moment an angel comes and tells her that her son will be the one to upend all of this. 

We see this idea most clearly in the Magnificat, one of our most ancient Christian hymns that we sang today. It promises that God will totally cast down the powerful–the kings, the emperor, the governors. It promises that the rich–the landowners, the merchants, the emperor–will be sent away empty-handed. It promises that the proud–the generals, the politicians, the scholars–will be scattered in the imagination of their hearts. All the normativity of the world under which she lives will be destroyed and upended, and she will be an accomplice to this.

Third, Mary is a young, unmarried woman who is told she is going to bear a child. I think there are a lot of apparent dangers here that we can understand. Being any one of these things in Mary’s society comes with a certain amount of danger, to be a young unmarried woman who is bearing a child puts Mary in significant danger. Many modern commentators note that Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth–her cousin who lives kind of far away where nobody knows Mary and she can lay low for a bit–may well have been the result of the danger that she must live through in order to bear the Christ-child.

I hope I have sufficiently highlighted the bravery of Mary’s “yes” in this story, and maybe even shifted your view of this story to how earth-shaking this moment is. For this brief moment the fate of the world hinges on one young woman’s decision to make the brave choice to say yes to bearing the Christ-child. The birth of the Christ-child is predicated on Mary’s  heroic choice to step out of what would have been a normal life to step into danger. 

The good news is that Mary did say yes. Because of Mary’s bravery our savior in Jesus can join us in our humanity. Because of Mary’s daring decision, Jesus can be incarnated to be our salvation. The world has been profoundly changed because one woman decided that she would make the brave choice and say “yes” to what the Lord called her to do. We only get to revel in the joy of Christmas because of the danger Mary took upon herself, and she did so with great faithfulness and with rejoicing. 

So let us rejoice because of Mary’s yes, on account of Mary’s courage, and for the coming of the Christ-child to be with us this Christmas. 

Sermon — December 3, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Now, I don’t often stand up here and brag about my own accomplishments, but you should know: In addition to being loving father and a decent cook and a once-distinguished student of ancient languages, I happen to have been known, in the late-’90s Winchester youth sports scene, as one of Little League baseball’s worst-ever hitters.

Now, I know it’s hard to believe, but no matter how many hours my mom and I spent in “spring training” out in the front yard, no matter how many how many times I fantasized about being up to bat for the Sox in the bottom of the ninth, there I’d be, batting ninth—they’d have me batting tenth if they could—failing to connect with yet another pitch.

I had a brief renaissance during the first years of “kid pitch,” when the combination of my gangly frame and my peers’ complete inaccuracy led me to an on-base percentage driven by walks and being hit by pitches, but I swear my batting average was never above about fifty; and I do mean that like .050.

But my coaches were nice guys, so I was mostly on the receiving end of positive, affirming coachly shouts. “Good eye!” they’d say as the ball sailed past, four feet from the strike zone. “Keep your head in the game!” as I instinctively ducked to avoid a pitch we all wished I’d let hit me in the helmet. And my favorite piece of sports advice: “Look alive!” an expression they surely teach in Dad School.

“Look alive!” Now that’s one I can do. I cannot hit a baseball to save my life, but I can look alive, because I am alive, gosh darnit. And I can look the part!

Of course, that’s not what “look alive” means. It’s not “look alive,” but “look alive.” Pay attention, be alert, keep your eye on the proverbial or literal ball. If Jesus were your baseball coach—surely that’s the title of a country song, right?—if Jesus were your baseball coach, he’d say, as you stepped up to the plate, “Come on, now! Keep awake!”

“Look alive!” Advent is here.

“Keep awake,” Jesus says to his disciples. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” (Mark 13:37, 33) We often spend these four weeks in December looking forward to Christmas Day, to God’s arrival in the world in the form of the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem. But the church’s worship also looks forward to something else. When Jesus says “you do not know when the time will come,” he’s not talking about his own birth. That would be a little odd. He’s not talking about the “First Coming” of Christmas. He’s talking about what’s sometimes called the “Second Coming,” some future day when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” the stars will fall and the heavens will shake and “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-26)

And this is why Jesus tells the disciples to “keep alert,” “keep awake,” because that day is coming, “but about that day or hour no one knows,” neither the angels, nor the Son, nor any preacher who tries to calculate the date—but only the Father. (Mark 13:32) So they should keep watch, Jesus says, lest it catch them unawares.

Now of course it’s hard to know just what this means. Jesus has to be exaggerating, somewhere. If the “Second Coming” is some actual day of earth-shaking darkness and divine judgment, which still hasn’t happened yet, then the urgency is exaggerated: surely the disciples do not need to stay awake for more than two thousand years. And if they really did need to keep awake, to keep alert, to “look alive”—if it’s really true that that first generation of disciples wouldn’t pass away before these things happened—then maybe he’s not actually talking about some literal day of darkness, some future day of the “Second Coming.” Maybe he’s talking about something else.

Advent, after all, isn’t just a season of vigilance. It’s a season of memory, and comfort, and hope. It’s a season in which, during what are literally the darkest days of the year, we are reminded of the great things that God has done, and the great things that God will do, and the great things that God is doing even now.

The prophet Isaiah looks back to the past, reminding God of the times “when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” (64:3) And Isaiah hopes for the future, Isaiah prays for God to do something—one of my favorite prayers, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1) But Isaiah also acknowledges the ongoing work of God: “O Lord… we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (64:8) And my middle-school pottery-class skills were as poor as my elementary baseball skills, but even I know that a potter’s work is not one and done. There’s a shaping and a guidance that takes place, between a potter’s hands and a sad old lump of clay, and I love this as an image for human life, because you can’t look at any given pot at any given moment and know what the future has in store for it, any more than you can do with people. That one looks pretty rough now, but it’s still on the wheel. That one looks pristine, but maybe it’s about to crack in the kiln.

Paul does the same thing, balancing the future and the past with a healthy dose of the present. He begins his letter to the Corinthians by giving thanks for the grace that has been given them in Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:4) And he reinforces the promise that God will strengthen them, so that they can be found blameless at that Second Coming, “on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 13:8) But he’s more focused on the present: on the ways in which God is enriching them now, on the spiritual gifts God is giving them now, as they wait. He talks about what God is doing for people in the present, because he wants to talk about what the people are doing to each other in the present: after this positive and encouraging opening, he’ll go on to spend most of the letter trying to sort out the conflicts and disagreements that keep happening between the members of this very human church. Like Jesus, Paul also wants these Christian disciples to be vigilant—not for the ways in which God will one day come to them, but for the ways in which God is already now among them, working in them and through them, and in and through the people around them, people who sometimes really get on their nerves.

In the darkest days, in the midst of great suffering, when it seems like the whole world, the whole universe, is coming apart—in other words, most days—the Son of Man is coming, wrapped in clouds. But those clouds are apparently pretty thick. You’d think that when God does tear open the heavens and come down, it would be an obvious thing. And yet Jesus tells the disciples, over and over again, to look alive. Keep awake. Be alert. Because this awe-inspiring appearance of the Lord might otherwise go as unnoticed as his birth did, in the back of an inn, somewhere in Bethlehem.

How many awe-inspiring moments sail on by while we’re swinging at something else and missing? Not the baby’s first steps, or your first time at Niagara Falls. But the child’s 100^th drawing of a ninja or the blueness of the sky on a November morning. Not the few big moments in life, but the hundred thousand small ones. Not the one big life-changing experience, but the million little spiritual gifts that lie hidden for us, scattered throughout the stuff of daily life.

So keep awake, this Advent! Be alert! Keep watch for the ways God is appearing to you here and now; keep watch for the hand of the potter shaping you, and the people you love, and the people you don’t much like. Keep your head in the game, and eyes on the ball. And if that’s too much, during this chaotic season before Christmas—if it’s too much, amid the shopping and the cooking, the family visits and the final exams—then at the very least: Look alive! Because you are alive, thank God—and “I give thanks to my God always for you,” knowing that God loves you, and that “God is faithful” to you, and that by God you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sermon — November 26, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year, an armistice agreement took effect between the Allied Powers and Germany, which would lead to the end of the violence of the first world war. Trenches had been carved across landscapes, toxic gasses had clouded the air for months, new horrors and new forms of warfare emerged to claim hundreds of thousands of lives, and left hoards of veterans scared physically and mentally.  In the deep grief and turmoil after the war, new political movements and ideologies would arise from the shadows and ashes that were left behind. In Italy, Mussolini would seize power less than four years after the end of the war, giving rise to the first modern fascist government. This would be followed by other fascist and authoritarian movements, in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere around the world. I don’t presume to speak for every single person living in these countries in this period, but I imagine the sense of chaos, the unsettledness, and the uncertainty these changes in government would have brought. I imagine that no matter what political ideology they believed, this period still brought forward fear and uncertainty. 

The Pope at the time felt similarly. Three years after Mussolini’s rise to power, and as the reality of this new and dangerous government set in, Pope Pius instituted a new feast day. The Feast of Christ the King, this was a brave and defiant reminder to the faithful that no human government is the true ruler of people. In that new age of ultra-nationalism, of secularization, and authoritarianism, the new feast–the Reign of Christ–served as a reminder of God’s presence and providence even in the face of Mussolini’s regime. 

In the ensuing decades, many other global churches would adopt some form of this new feast. In the Episcopal Church we situate it at the end of our liturgical year, so I will also wish you all a happy new year. Liturgically, our year begins with Advent, a period marked by waiting. In Advent, we wait and anticipate the birth of Christ, a moving and exciting time. I love Advent, and do not mean to take away its shine. However, this Sunday serves as an important reminder that even as we go into this season of anticipation, Christ is already present with us. Not only that, but that Christ is already Ruler of the Universe. The Christ we anticipate every year is the same Christ that has already saved in the resurrection, that continues to save even today, and that will continue to save. Throughout all human history of war and peace, feast and famine, none overturns the Reign of Christ. 

In our own time, we are also less than a calendar year from the next election in our country. I make no comment on candidates or policy. But, in my own life, elections are a deeply troubling time, a divisive time, and a time where it feels like everything is crashing and burning. 

However, it seems that we do not even need to wait a year for the world to feel like it is crashing and burning. The Russo-Ukrainian war continues to claim lives in the service of God-knows-what, the current ceasefire in Gaza seems likely to expire and return to a state of violence, our agricultural zones have shifted because of a warming climate, the MBTA needs like a gazillion dollars to fix itself, and it just seems like everything’s coming up bad news. 

In tandem with all this bad news, today is a reminder that we as Christians put stock, above all else, in the saving work of Christ. When our governments are in disarray, when we feel powerless to stop violence, and everything is a mess. Christ is not only with us, but Christ will have the final word, not any human creation, not any human government. The Reign of Christ has happened, is happening, and is still unfolding. 

But what actually is the Reign of Christ. It is a tough question to answer, and so it actually has quite a few answers. We see answers in the very many parables we get in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We also see answers in the many descriptions we get in other scriptures, such as the Epistle this morning. The Reign of Christ has many aspects. 

Today, we get a parable that describes one aspect of the Reign of Christ, referred to in this parable as ‘the Kingdom’. Parables are interesting because they rely on analogy and metaphor to describe things that are hard to describe, and typically only describe one facet of the multi-faceted, hard to define kingdom. Today’s parable is no different. 

First though, it is tempting when we read this parable, and others like it, to see in it a stark and violent condemnation of a certain group of people. In this case those uncharitable people who pass by the “least of these” and do not offer any reprieve to those suffering. What strikes me in this are two things. The first being that I think everyone in this room actually fits into both camps, every one of us has definitely both passed by someone in need, and every one of us has almost certainly done something for those in need. The idea that we can be sorted in a binary way falls apart at that realization. The second being that, a literal reading of this ignores a host of other scriptures about grace, salvation, and forgiveness–though those are topics for a different sermon. 

So, if the Reign of Christ is not about sending bad goats into eternal punishment, what is it about? As we set aside a judicial reading of today’s gospel, we can see a more affirmational reading emerge from the story. What we see emerging is a description of an aspect of the kingdom that describes what kinds of behaviors are going to be held up and celebrated in the kingdom. The acts of feeding the hungry, providing water to the thirsty, visiting the prisoner, are actions that are indicative and will be held up in the Reign of Christ. Those things that divide us, that cause us to ignore the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners; things like war, division, greed, and apathy will be washed away and unwelcome in the Reign of Christ. 

In the Ephesians reading today, Paul says something notable about what the Reign of Christ actually meant for the community of the Ephesians, and also fits into what it means for us today. I certainly think it beats me trying to parse out the complexities of eschatological theology for the next few minutes. Maybe you picked up on it already, but he says this really long sentence about hope and power. To paraphrase and shorten it a bit to make my point, he prays that the Ephesians will come to know the hope to which they are called to, according to the power of Christ, and that this same power is that which resurrected Christ, and seats Christ above all of creation in his reign. 

Today, I think we share in that same calling to the Ephesians that is also expressed in the feast day of the Reign of Christ. We are called to hope, just like the Ephesians were–as they dared to live and worship under an empire that would likely kill them if it discovered they were Christians.  We are called to hope just like those faithful that lived and suffered under fascist regimes around the world. And just like the many Christians who have come before us that lived through famines, wars, and persecutions. We are called to hope–and to trust in–the Reign of Christ. Which is not a reign of war, division, and strife among peoples, but as we see in the gospel it is a reign where nobody is left to suffer. It is a reign of caring, peace, and the full reconciliation of all creation to God and one another. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Sermon — November 19, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Like many of you, I sometimes wake up at night, troubled by important questions. Did I remember to reply to that email, or did I leave it as a draft? Should I buy a copy of Britney Spears’s new memoir, or should I just my name on the library waiting list? Is it possible that that the Revised Common Lectionary is past its prime? (You know. The big questions in life.)

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Revised Common Lectionary or RCL is the three-year cycle of readings that we follow on Sunday mornings. The lectionary was first created in the 1970s and 1980s and revised in the 1990s as a kind of inter-denominational project bringing together Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches to settle on a common way of reading the Bible. We believe different things and pray in different ways, but on Sunday mornings, you can walk into any church of any one of these denominations, and you’ll probably hear the same readings from this shared sacred text that you’d hear down the street.

And this is great! Not only is it a nice form of ecumenical cooperation between churches, but it prevents preachers from inflicting the same small set of favorite readings on their churches over and over, and exposes us all, over the course of three years, to a wide breadth of selections from the Bible.

Sometimes too wide a breadth. I worry sometimes that the lectionary assumes that we’re living in a very different era of the church: an era when weekly church attendance was much higher, and most people who were in church on any given Sunday are there four Sundays a month. And it sometimes selects readings that make sense if you already have a developed faith and understanding of Christian theology and the narrative arc of the Bible, but otherwise just seem weird. Let’s be honest: Many of you here are regulars. But if you just walked in off the street, hoping for a little spiritual uplift on a sunny fall morning, hoping to hear some compassion and love in an often unkind word, and you heard that reading from Zephaniah about the coming day of wrath, would you not simply write off Christianity as a lost cause?

So I sometimes worry that the RCL is past its prime. 

But then, of course, the lectionary providentially assigns the Parable of the Talents on the day that turns out to be our Stewardship Ingathering Sunday, when people will make their annual pledges of financial support to the church, and pairs it with the fearsome prophet Zephaniah, and you all hear that “neither [your] silver nor [your] gold will be able to save you!” (Zeph. 1:18) So hand in your pledge cards, for “in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed!”

Let’s see the NPR Pledge Drive top that.

Seriously, though, this Parable of the Talents has often been read as a parable of stewardship, and it is. Not in the narrow sense of “stewardship” as in “annual church fundraising campaign,” but in the broader, theological sense of stewardship. Stewards, after all, are people who care for property that is not their own, people who are entrusted with something that they will ultimately give back.

Each of the three slaves in the parable is entrusted with a vast sum of money. A “talent” is a unit of measurement, of weight; one talent is a quantity of silver worth about 20 years’ wages for a laborer, something like $600,000 at today’s minimum wage. One enslaved steward is given $3 million by the enslaver before he heads off on a journey; he invests it for a 100% return. The second is given about a million, invests it, and doubles it as well. But the third is either very wise or very foolish: this one, fearing the wrath of the master, doesn’t risk losing the one talent he’s given by putting it into a high-risk, high-reward business venture. He buries it in the dirt, and when his enslaver returns, he gives it back: Here. This was your property. You entrusted it to me. Take what’s yours.

The returning master is not impressed. These other two had great success, he says. Maybe you don’t have their business acumen—he had given to each one of them, after all, according to each one’s ability—but couldn’t you at least have put it in the bank to keep it safe, and earned a bit of interest on top? And the third slave is cast out into the outer darkness, to weep and gnash his teeth, without a dental plan.

In the traditional reading, this preaches well. Each one of us has been given many gifts by God. We live by grace alone; we haven’t earned our lives, and we could never pay God back for the price of every day we’ve woken up and drawn a breath. We’ve been given a certain of time, and a certain amount of money. And we’ve been given certain talents; and the modern English sense of the word “talent” as a natural or God-given ability comes directly from this metaphorical reading of the parable. Our “talents” are the things God has entrusted to us, and we ought to use them, and use them well, in the service of God and our neighbors.

Put a bow on it and send it to the printers, Amen.

But I have a problem with that. Because while that sermon might preach well, on this Stewardship Sunday, I think it skips over of the most troubling parts of this morning’s texts, as if the preacher could simply razzle-dazzle you into forgetting how you felt after that reading from Zephaniah.

The third steward is right. The master is a “harsh man.” He reaps where his slaves sowed, and gathers where they scattered seed. He punishes him in a way that’s way out of proportion to the loss he suffered, which was exactly nothing, or an “opportunity cost” at most. And he’s not just a harsh man; he’s a bad manager. He failed to communicate to this third steward that he cared more about the upside than the down; that he’d be angrier at him for doing nothing with the talent than he would for losing it.

The lectionary committee, in their great wisdom, assigned this reading from Zephaniah to be paired with the reading from the gospel, because the day of the Lord described in Zephaniah is like the day on which these three men’s enslaver returned: “a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom,” a day on which God will make “a terrible end…of all the inhabitants of the earth.” (Zeph. 1:15)

And here’s my problem: This doesn’t sound very much like the God I know. Or, to put it a different way: this doesn’t sound very much like the God who reveals himself in the life and death of Jesus Christ; a God who comes to earth, not to destroy us, but to be destroyed by us, and somehow, through that self-sacrifice, to save us.

The traditional reading assumes that the slaveowner is God, and the slaves are us, and there’s a whole other sermon in that. But Jesus doesn’t say that that’s how it is. Jesus sandwiches this parable between two others, without any explanation or interpretation, just the segue: “Likewise: a man was going on a journey…” We’re left wondering: is this a parable of how God behaves or a parable of how we behave? Is it God who punishes people for not making a sufficient profit, or is that us? I wonder how much the master in the story really tells us not about God, but about how we behave at our worst.

Jesus doesn’t answer: he just tells another parable, which is next week’s Gospel reading about how when you feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and visit those who are in prison, you’re feeding, and clothing, and caring for him; and how it’s our stewardship of the poor, and the naked, and the hungry that determines whether we’re exalted in the kingdom of heaven or not.

The day of the Lord may be a day of darkness for Zephaniah’s listeners, seven hundred years before Christ. But “you, beloved, are not in darkness,” Paul says. (1 Thess. 5:4) Because between that prophesied day and you, Jesus came, and the story didn’t unfold the way we expected. Jesus came, not with a sword in his hand, but with love in his heart. And he gave us spiritual armor, a “breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” (1 Thess. 5:8) He gave us the assurance that we are loved and that we are being saved, whether we use our talents well or not; because when Jesus came, he died for us, he died in our place, “so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” (5:10)

So use your talents well! Be good stewards of what you have! Not because you’re afraid of being punished by God if you don’t. But because you aren’t afraid of anything. Because there is no risk. Because everything you have has been given to you by God, not as an investment, and not as a reward, but as a gift of love, given to you so that you might love as well. And when we our “seventy years” are passed—“perhaps in strength even eighty”—and we “fade away like the grass” (Ps. 90:10, 5), God will welcome us in, and say to us, talented and talentless alike, “come into the joy of your master.”

Sermon — November 12, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while homeschooling a kindergartner whose tastes lean toward the spookier elements of the spooky season, it’s that if you’re going to teach out of an early-elementary curriculum on ancient history, you need to have a strong stomach and a good sense of humor; a graduate education in religious studies doesn’t hurt.

Take, for instance, the case of Ammit the Devourer. The ancient Egyptians, our textbook tells us, believed that after they died, people journeyed to the underworld, in a process that inspired the practices of mummification and pyramid-building that most of us have heard of. At the climax of the journey, they reached the Hall of the Two Truths, where the dog-headed god Anubis would bring them to a set of scales. The heart of the person who had died would be weighed against a feather as a measure of their purity and righteousness. If their heart weighed less than the feather, they passed on into blessed eternal life. If their heart weighed more than the feather, then it would be handed over to be eaten by Ammit the Devourer, a ferocious demon with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion, and the rear end of a hippopotamus.

(Like I said: equal parts strong stomach and sense of humor required.)

Most religions contain a balance between the inspirational and the gruesome, and it seems to me that our readings today contain more than a hint of that Ammit-the-Devourer side of religiosity. Did you hear it in the readings? Can you hear it in the music? Daylight Saving Time ends, and suddenly the hymns are in minor keys, it’s dark in the middle of the afternoon, and our lectionary readings are full of doom and gloom! It’s as though the season of Advent has already started, even though it’s still a few weeks away. The liturgical themes of this time are unsettling and sometimes surprising: in the weeks leading up to Christmas, our readings anticipate not the “First Coming” of the cute baby Lord Jesus to lie in a manger, but the much more ominous “Second Coming,” in which he “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

It’s this day of the coming of the Lord that unites our readings today. We began with the prophet Amos warning the people of Israel against looking forward too eagerly to the coming day of judgment. You want God to return and save you from your enemies, Amos asks the people, judging the world and destroying the unjust? “Alas for you!” You’re trading a fearsome enemy for a God who’s even more frightening! “Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear,” (Amos 5:18-20)— with the head of a crocodile, you might be moved to add, and the bottom of a hippopotamus! Amos certainly has that Ammit-the-Devourer vibe. And he goes on to explain. He condemns the people for their injustice. God doesn’t want their sacrifices and songs; God wants justice and righteousness, and they are sorely lacking. And that’s why the day of the coming of the Lord will be gloom for them: an unjust people, Amos says, should not be so eager for God to come and judge their enemies, because they will be judged as well, and found sorely lacking.

The apostle Paul offers a more uplifting take on the “coming of the Lord.” By the time that Paul writes to the Christians of Thessalonica, it’s been a couple decades since Jesus died and rose again. They believed that Jesus was going to come again soon, to achieve his final victory in this world, and yet it hadn’t happened yet. And even worse, some of that first generation of Christians had themselves died before the Lord’s return. Paul reassures the Thessalonians that their hope has not been in vain. Jesus hasn’t come back yet, but he will come, Paul says; and those who have died will not be left out of the kingdom. They too will be raised. It may be hard for us to wrap our heads around, two thousand years later and still waiting for Jesus to return, but this was a very real concern for the first Christians. But Paul foretells a trumpet’s blast and an archangel’s call, the dead descending from the heavens and the living rising up to meet them in the clouds. The day of the Lord, for Paul, will be a day of reunion and celebration, and we do not need to worry if it seems like it isn’t coming soon enough.

And then Jesus gives us a middle way between the frightening vision of Amos and the hopeful vision of Saint Paul, with a parable about ten bridesmaids: five foolish, five wise; all staying up late into the night to wait for the groom, and all eventually falling asleep. At midnight when the groom arrives, the foolish have no oil for the lamps; the wise have oil but will not share. And so while the foolish run down to 7-Eleven to stock up, the wise bridesmaids and the groom go into the wedding feast together, and shut the door behind them. (Matthew 25:1-12) The five foolish bridesmaids are left out in the darkness, where—as Jesus says often in the Gospel of Matthew, although not in this passage—“there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt. 8:12, 22:13, 25:30, et al) At least they’re not the teeth of Ammit the Devourer. But this is a rather grim vision from Jesus, nevertheless, and it closes with a warning: “Keep awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)

Amos warns the people not to pray for God’s judgment, because they’re going to be judged by it. Paul encourages the people to remain faithful, because the day of the Lord going to be even better than they thought. And Jesus tells us that it all depends: Did you have oil for your lamp?

I wonder, though, whether Jesus’ parable is as stark as it may seem.

Why is it that the five foolish bridesmaids are left out in the dark? Is it because they’re bad people and the wise bridesmaids are good people? There’s no indication of that. If the wise bridesmaids were particularly virtuous, maybe they would’ve shared. Is this a parable of decadence and luxury—did the five foolish bridesmaids burn up all their oil partying late into the night? No, not at all. In fact, they never brought any oil to begin with. Foolishness, in the parable, consists of showing up to wait for the groom, and thinking that he’ll arrive before sunset. Wisdom is being prepared to wait.

It’s foolishness, in other words, to expect that this great day of the coming of the Lord is going to arrive any time soon; and wisdom to expect God to show up when you’ve already gone to sleep. It’s foolishness to act as the Israelites did in Amos’s day, and allow injustice to fester because God was coming soon to make it right. But it’s also foolishness to worry, as the Thessalonians did in Paul’s day, that God won’t be able to make things right for us in the end, whatever’s happened and however long it’s been. Jesus tells us that we know neither the day nor the hour, and that saying encompasses this tension: we ought to live every day as if it might be our last; and yet to say it might be means that it might not.

Maybe you have a strained relationship with someone, and that relationship needs to heal. And maybe you’ve been putting off that difficult conversation, because it’s hard, and there will always be time for it later. But you know neither the day nor the hour! You may never have the chance to say the things that need to be said. Or maybe you’re in a “grass is greener” mode, where you’re putting in your time now doing something hard, and hoping and yearning for better days ahead. But you know neither the day nor the hour! Those days of greener grass may never come, and it’s a reminder, to me, to try to live in a way that’s satisfying now, and not to push happiness off to a future that may never arrive.

But in the end, here’s the thing: we live in the world of Paul, not Amos. We live in the hope of the Resurrection, not in the fear of judgment. If the world ends tomorrow, and you haven’t made amends—if your father or sister or friend died long ago, and you were never reconciled—you’ll be okay. Because we do not believe in Ammit the Devourer. We do not believe that God is coming to judge you harshly. In fact, in Jesus, God already came to us, and we judged God, and God was devoured by death—and found to be indigestible, and gave Death a stomachache so bad that one day we will rise with him again, and be reunited with Christ and one another, and that there will be time for all the things we never had the chance to say.

So “keep awake,” remembering that you know neither the day nor the hour. And “let justice roll down like waters,” remembering that there’s no time to lose. But be encouraged, always, with the Resurrection hope that you do not have to make it all right, in this life: that all things will be made well, in this world or the next, because God loves you with a love that’s stronger than any crocodile’s jaws. Amen.