This past Sunday was Laity Sunday in Oxford. Many people took part in leading the service (at least 20) and the service was excellent! I do have to apologize to everyone who sat around me though, because I have a tendency to talk in church! I know, it's scandalous, but I guess that's why they put me up front all by myself regularly.
While Oxford celebrated Laity Sunday, McDonough had already been there and done that, so they got to hear the following sermon:
Our scripture was from Matthew and was the story of the 10 bridesmaids (5 wise and 5 foolish). While this story was about bridesmaids waiting up for the bridegroom (read groom), with 5 not having enough oil (the foolish ones) and 5 having enough oil (the wise ones), we also talked about another story, the ant and the grasshopper.
The ant and the grasshopper is a story about an ant that works all through the summer and fall to store up enough food for the winter, while a grasshopper plays all summer and fall and has no food stored up. When winter comes, the ant reaps the reward of his hard work, while the grasshopper is left starving. The moral of the story is to be prepared. The moral of the 10 bridesmaids is also one of preparation, but the context of the two stories changes the application slightly. The ant and the grasshopper comes out of the context of an agrarian society that relies on good harvests for survival during the winter months. The context of the 10 bridesmaids can be found in the passages immediately before and after the story.
As you can see by reading the passages from Matthew before and after this week's passage, the context deals with Jesus' second coming and how his followers (us) are supposed to live in his absence. Now the preparation that the story speaks of is more than having money saved in a bank, or food stores in a barn, but a preparation of our total lives. We had some discussion of what this preparation might look like, and some good suggestions were studying scripture, prayer, loving one's neighbor, fellowship with other Christians and regular church attendance. I suggested that all of these activities ultimately have one purpose, namely to live in an ever growing relationship with God.
In our passage from Matthew, the 5 foolish bridesmaids returned, after purchasing more oil and attempted to gain admittance to the wedding banquet, but the bridegroom denied knowing them. I suggested that to truly be prepared means to have a relationship with God and therefore cannot be summed up in any one action (or even several actions) and like a relationship can never be completed, but must continually be maintained and allowed to grow. For this reason our preparation is never complete.
This is where our sermon title comes into play. I mentioned a movie that I had seen ("Joe Dirt"), which although not really appropriate for church (or "good church folks"), does have some relevance to this discussion. The title character is constantly picked on, beat up, and put down by other characters throughout the movie, and several times he states to them, "is this where you want to be when Jesus comes back?" The phrase is a fitting reminder and appropriate question for us to ask ourselves. So while you're working at living in relationship with God, and while you're continually endeavoring to live a life prepared for Christ's return, a helpful question to ask yourself is "is this where I want to be? Is this what I want to be doing when Jesus comes back?"
The answer will inevitably be "no" more often than not, but in that question you will be given direction to respond to that "no" with a change in your activities, your attitudes, and your lifestyle.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
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