Difficult, Challenging, Inviting
Gate Pa – Year A 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2023
Readings:
Psalm Psalm 78:1-7
First Reading: Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25
Second Reading: 1 Thessalonians 4:9-18
Gospel: Matthew 25:1-13
What I want to say:
Explore Joshua and Matthew as difficult, challenging and inviting
We are invited to get ready to live lives of active waiting for reign of God, living for the long haul but looking for the surprising breakouts of the God’s justice, mercy, compassion and generosity.
What I want to happen:
What do we find difficult?
What do we find challenging?
Where is the invitation?
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
I wonder how you responded as heard these readings
3 words for me
- Difficult
- Challenging
- inviting
2. Joshua
Remember being in Abbey at Iona 18 years ago listening to Psalm 136
Give thanks to the one who led his people through the desert—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Give thanks to the one who struck down great kings—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
And killed powerful kings—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Sihon, the Amorite king—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Og, king of Bashan—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Handing their land over as an inheritance—
God’s faithful love lasts forever.
As an inheritance to Israel, his servant—
God’s faithful love lasts forever!
- Great for Israel
- Catastrophic for people already there
Earlier that year been Israel @@@
Knew how verses like that and what heard today
Those same passages
Including some like todays
- God gave it to us
- We’ll have it back thankyou
Justifies Nakba – catastrophe of 1948
- In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Mandatory Palestine's Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias
- Repopulation land with Jewish settlers
- Ongoing expulsion and settling of annexed East Jerusalem and occupied West Bank today
ð Difficult passages used not only by Zionists but Christian supporters around world
For example - find a lot of ideas held in Joshua and in other places difficult and challenging
Also difficult for image God it presents
- God who does harm to those who reject Him
- Who does not forgive our transgressions
That challenges my understanding of God
- Shaped teaching Jesus
- Own experience
But and importantly - invites me to reflect on what mean for me to choose live in God
- what “foreign gods” distract my focus and colour my image of God
- Might summarise as our need for power, wealth and acclaim.
3. Matthew and the 10 virgins
Also difficult, challenging, inviting
Difficult – seeming separating of those who are in and out
è easy to get caught up in the details
- Why groom delayed?
- Why didn’t 5 prepared virgins share?
A way to keep that in mind is to thing about the 3 audiences
o Jesus – why did he tell this story to disciples
o Matthew – why did he tell this story
o devastation of fall of Jerusalem,
o rupture relationship with larger Jewish diaspora,
o and persecution Roman authorities
ð all of which felt like great pointers to Jesus return
o not returned
o what was that about
o how to live in that tension
ð Us – what is it saying to us
Central in this story is image of wedding
- Image of when reign of God comes to pass
- Used by prophets
- Lived out by Jesus in meals he ate with those who had been set aside by religious leaders and society
- World he describes in first block of teaching on hill above Capernaum
è where the most important people are:
o the poor in spirit,
o those who mourn,
o the meek,
o those who hunger and thirst for God’s justice,
o the pure in heart,
o the merciful,
o the peacemakers,
o those who are persecuted for the sake of God’s justice,
- a world where all flourish
- Where the common good is held as paramount
- A world where the needs of the poor are placed first
- Where ALL are treated with honour and respect
- And given what they need to thrive
è This is the wedding party
Challenging because of the image of the bridegroom who shuts the door on the 5 unprepared virgins
è And if we don’t stay awake we are not allowed to enter.
è I find that a challenging image
Also inviting
We seem to be a long way away from the Beatitudes being lived out
Seem to get further away each day
ð We join Matthews community in knowing that there is a lot of waiting to do
ð Invited with them to be like those street-wise or sensible virgins
- Who did fall asleep with the other virgins
- But who were prepared to faithfully wait for that time when bridegroom returned
I’m invited to remember where this story fits in Matthew
- In middle of 5th block of teaching about destruction of temple and return of Christ
o Which ends with parable of sheep and goats
o And then the story moves into the events of the passion
o Where the disciples will all fall asleep
§ Will not be awake when Jesus returns
§ When armed guards come to arrest Jesus
§ Who mostly then flee the other way and have not interest in entering the party
§ And one of those who does will deny Jesus three times
o In contrast to bridegroom - the risen Jesus opens wide the door with grace and forgiveness
o As crucified and risen Christ opens wide the doors to the party for us with grace and forgiveness
4. Conclusion
o So what do you find difficult
o What do you find challenging
o What do you find inviting?
o What does the oil in our lamps represent
o How do we keep our lamps burning so that we might be light to the world
§ Living the beatitudes
Robert Capon that the ultimate point here is that a party is happening: "Watch therefore," Jesus says at the end of the parable, "for you know neither the day nor the hour." When all is said and done—when we have scared ourselves silly with the now-or-never urgency of faith and the once-and-always finality of judgment—we need to take a deep breath and let it out with a laugh. Because what we are watching for is a party. And that party is not just down the street making up its mind when to come to us. It is already hiding in our basement, banging on our steam pipes, and laughing its way up our cellar stairs. The unknown day and hour of its finally bursting into the kitchen and roistering its way through the whole house is not dreadful; it is all part of the divine lark of grace. God is not our mother-in-law, coming to see whether her wedding-present china has been chipped. He is a funny Old Uncle with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other. We do indeed need to watch for him; but only because it would be such a pity to miss all the fun (“The End of the Storm,” in Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002] p.501).
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