This Reflection is taken from the Sunday Devotion written by this blogger for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on November 8, 2020
Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord:
Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
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;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
REFLECTION
+In the Name of our faithful God+
A couple of months ago in one of these refections the question was asked, “Where are we taking God?”
That question came from my reading of biblical prophesy. What becomes particularly apparent in reading the prophets of the Old Testament is that they were prophesying about things that should have been obvious to the religious leaders and the rulers of Israel and Judah at that time. A prophecy involving judgment was not a case of its being delivered because people and their rulers didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong. On the contrary, it is precisely because they did, didn’t care, and were willfully turning a blind eye to it.
What condemns these kingdoms, one after the other, is their lack of faith as exhibited by making a mockery of their the worship of God by turning to other gods for help and their lack of concern for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Given that they were in a covenantal relationship with God these prophecies of judgement and doom should not have come as a surprise and were often ignored when delivered
Ultimately, God proves to be compassionate in these prophesies. In the meantime (in our time), those in the past and we in the present have experienced and can experience the shadowy side of God’s compassion; in the sense, that God goes where we go and interacts with how we act. While the prophets spoke of such interactions in terms of retributive justice, the reality is these kingdoms brought such destructive moments on themselves, and God, through the prophets pointed out that a day of reckoning was coming. In some cases, God was open to averting disaster if people woke up and took to heart what the prophet was telling them. More often not than not, they didn’t and tried to suppress the message and suffered the consequences.
Prophets have the unenviable task of pointing out the ignored obvious and speaking truth to power. People ignore the obvious for one basic reason: They don’t want to be bothered by it.
Ignoring the obvious is not a case of mere misjudgment. It is not a case of being unaware of what is taking place. Ignoring the obvious actually takes some effort in the form of willful ignorance, justifying wrongdoing, and fomenting lies that make ignoring the obvious appear like the right thing to do. It was a problem in Amos’ day and it remains a problem today, making his prophecy relevant in every age.
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The prophet Amos lived in the Northern Kingdom of Judah in the eighth century BCE. In his prophecy, Amos is clear that he did not consider himself to be a prophet. As far as Amos was concerned, he was a shepherd and a keeper of sycamore fig trees who found himself being sent by God into the Southern Kingdom of Israel to deliver devastating news.
The prophecy of Amos is not a pleasant read. The premise for God’s immense displeasure with the Kingdom of Israel and its neighboring kingdoms was their brutal treatment of each other or their faithlessness, as in God’s condemnation of the Kingdom of Judah. God’s primary focus, however, was on the Kingdom of Israel and its treatment of the poor and its faithless abandonment of what has been referred to in these reflections as the Trinity of Requirements: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. God could no longer let Israel and its neighbors continue in their wrongdoing. In the end, each of the kingdoms Amos addresses are vanquished and their people carried off into exile.
In today’s reading from Amos, God was taking issue with Israel’s insincere worship; that it was a ruse to appease God and validate the rule of corrupt kings. This is one of several familiar themes found in Old Testament prophesy; God’s displeasure with treating worship as a futile attempt to deflect God’s attention by offering the trappings of religiosity and solemnity for no other purpose than to ease the worshiping community’s mind and divert it from doing what God requires.
The religion of the ancient Kingdom of Israel relinquished its prophetic role to guide its people in the ways of righteousness. Instead it was used to appease the powerful by fostering a belief that God was on their side and would come to Israel’s aid; believing that on “the day of the Lord” God would fight for their causes because of who they were, Israel, God’s Chosen People. Amos, however, challenges that belief, saying on God’s behalf, “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light.”
The Day of the Lord is a term used in apocalyptic literature throughout scripture. Its use in scripture usually was taken to mean that God would intervene militarily to defend Israel and Judah from their enemies. In the case of ancient Israel, however, Amos says “the Day of the Lord” would be the day of Israel’s reckoning; a day in which Israel’s enemies would vanquish them because of their faithlessness
The prophecy of Amos almost ends on that dire note. In what appears as an addendum to this prophesy, Amos offers a glimmer of hope. God promises in the last verse of Amos’ prophecy, “I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them.”
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Jesus' parable of the Ten Wise and Foolish Virgins, like the prophecy of Amos, addresses the issue of faithfulness. In this parable, Jesus differentiates between faithfulness, portrayed as wisdom by being prepared for all contingencies and unfaithfulness, portrayed as being unprepared for any contingency.
The day of the Lord in this parable is set in the context of a wedding in which young maidens await to escort the bridegroom to his wedding feast. Fr. Robert Capon, who wrote a series on the parables of Jesus, writes that this parable begins with inclusion and ends with exclusion, a feature in many of Jesus’ parables of Judgment.* Everybody gets an invitation to participate. Both the wise and foolish maidens are invited and included in the wedding party. What ends up excluding people is their lack of faithfulness as demonstrated by the five foolish maiden’s lack of preparation for the role they were to play.
In this case, preparedness is differentiated between people who believe they know how things will happen and people who are faithfully prepared for the unexpected. The wise maidens are guided by the reality that things don’t always happen as planned and faithfully prepare for the “what-if” moments. The unwise young maidens are taken by surprise and find themselves unprepared, arriving late, and deemed unrecognizable by the bridegroom.
What ends up getting people in trouble is a faithless, self-assured certitude that ignores the obvious and is not prepared for the unexpected. As the prophet Amos said, they are like “someone (who) fled from a lion and was met by a bear; or went into (a) house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake,” or, in the case five foolish maiden, never thought that a bridegroom would come in the middle of the night to be escorted to his wedding feast.
In the end, the Day of the Lord comes and so Jesus advises us to “Keep awake… for you know neither the day nor the hour” when it comes. Keeping awake is a daily exercise that involves seeing and addressing the needs of others; treating others as we would like to be treated, to do what the Lord requires, and to follow Jesus’ example so that “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness becomes an everflowing stream.” Amen.
Capon, Robert,“The Parables of Judgment,” William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids Michigan,1989
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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