Holding Up Our Lamps on the Day of the Lord

The Day of the Lord: who living under His covenant could not hope for it? The day when God's power washes over the earth and makes all things right. The days when God's enemies are finally and forever defeated: who could not hope for that day? Who among us does not want to see righteousness triumph and evil be thrown down?

Many years ago, Melissa happened to be listening to a local radio preacher, and he said, “You know, the Day of the Lord could be today! And wouldn't that make today extra special?” And even given how this utterly fails to grasp the awe that such a day should force upon us, let me just say that Amos rejects even the idea that we should expect to rejoice in that glorious deliverance—for he says, do not expect to be delivered, but expect instead that we might be that evil that the world is to be delivered from. And he says, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon.” So what is wrong, that the offerings required by the Law are rejected? Well, the answer is in the next verse: “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

The same prescription is given by the prophet Micah:

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

And when we turn to the parables, we see the same. The King in the parable of the Sheep and the Goats says to the latter: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’

It is through our love of neighbor that we show our love of God. Not that we are to neglect worship of God, but these prophesies and parables are directed to the religious, not to those outside the fold. They are directed to us. We believers, if our faith is to be true, must make it so through justice and mercy and humility, not just through prayer and worship. Nor should we grow complacent and contemptuous as if our works elevated us above others, saying, “Lord we thank you that we are not like other people, not like that banker over there or that social justice advocate over there.” Our works do not save; only Christ does that, the Christ who shall return in judgement.

For when that terrible day comes—and it will be terrible, no question about it: the Revelation spends chapter after chapter on it, what with the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of God's wrath poured out over the earth—we shall indeed be called to account, with only the grace of God in Christ speaking for us. And that day will come upon us in a flash, like lightning across the earth, said Jesus. The parable I have just discussed falls at the end of the same chapter which begins with today's gospel, and like the chapter just before it, the emphasis is upon being prepared. And for the bridesmaids, the point to catch is that the bridegroom is delayed; he is coming at an unexpected hour, not catching them by surprise by coming early, but indeed, his arrival is heralded. But because of the delay, the foolish have run out of oil.

Now, when looking at this closely, the thing seems to fall apart. Why are the wise so churlish? What does the oil represent? How about the merchants? But really, this is the wrong way to look at a parable. The oil doesn't have a specific meaning; it is simply something that is emblematic of the lack of foresight by the foolish. It is the flame that matters, the light of the lamp that welcomes the bridegroom. Therefore keeping the lamp lit signifies our continued attention to our work as Christians, though the bridegroom's arrival be two millennia coming, and still longer. And then, on that awful day, if we have been steadfast in the Lord, our faith worked through in justice and mercy, let it be as Paul promises: we shall be taken up in the new life, to meet our God as he comes to judge the earth. For it is in that faith that we can say, in the face of that dread day, Maranatha: even so, Lord, come.

And Thus We are Freed

Preached Good Friday, 2023

Who was the guilty?

Who was it that killed the Son of God?

Most immediately, a band of soldiers, who with hammers and nails bound Jesus to the instrument of his final and fatal torment, at the command of Pontius Pilate, who yielded to the will of the crowd and the Sanhedrin, led by Caiaphas, after Judas betrayed him in the garden. This is all spelled out in the gospel we have just heard. So it would seem that we have exhausted the list of those responsible.

And yet.

All of those I have named are long, long dead; indeed, we are within a few years of the two-thousandth anniversary of the crucifixion, if it has not already past. There is neither man nor woman living, it would seem, who is responsible for Jesus' death; no Jew, no gentile; no authority either Jewish or Roman (for all such governance has passed away); no soldier, no bystander. All responsibility has been ended by the passage of time, at least as the world would count it.

And yet.

And yet, we look to the ultimate reason for Jesus' death, and it is our salvation. We modern Christians are reduced to bystanders before the cross, with John and the women, or else fled like the other disciples. The passion reading of last Sunday puts the crowd's words upon our lips, but then we sit again, and become merely the audience to the passion play. If we are more sensitive perhaps we feel for his suffering, but either way we are at a safe remove from the events of that holy and terrible day.

And yet, as we sit before the cross, the altar bare and the sanctuary stripped, the responsibility still lies upon us all. It is our sins which brought about the incarnation; it is for us that Jesus was born the Christ. For us he walked the earth in human flesh; for us he taught and prayed; for us he was given over to suffering; and for us he was betrayed, abandoned, and tortured unto death. We who would be bystanders are yet participants, for it is our sinning, and the sinning of all humanity, which brought all this to pass, and while we comfort ourselves that our sins are small compared to those of others, in the end, it matters not. So what if one man hammers upon the nails in His hands and feet by murdering and theft and exploitation, and we feel that we have naught to confess but our petty contempt and shaving at the edges of the law: nonetheless, it is all the same hammering. And it is the same love of Jesus for all that laid him on the cross and stretched forth his hands and feet. Within the past few days I saw an illustration of Jesus washing the feet of various reviled figures, and yes, his salvation was made for them as well as us, and not because his salvation is so great as to encompass even them, but because it is so great as to encompass us, whether we see the full extent of our sins or not.

For the full extent of our sins is that they pervade our whole being. Sin is in our very nature, and the only “cure” is death. So therefore we are cured, on Calvary's hill, by the death of God himself, given up to the evils humanity has wrought upon one another, so that the Son of Man is offered up, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world as no other offering could.

And yet, we are still bound to the world, with every failing to feed and cloth and comfort the word, and by every harsh word, every theft, every slander, every injury. Each act against our fellows, even the contempt and malice we carry in our hearts: each chains us more securely to the dead weight of sin, that we may not escape the destruction it surely rains upon us. And yet, even knowing this, we hammer away, though we know not what we do.

And there is nobody to blame but ourselves. Judas may have betrayed Jesus, but it is we who put him in the garden. Caiaphas may have decided that Jesus was a threat to the Jewish authorities, but it was our sins which made those offensive teaching necessary. Pilate may have passed sentence, but we put the Son of Man before him. The Soldiers may have wielded the hammers and nails, but it is we who laid the Lamb of God on the cross. We are not innocent; we may not blame our neighbors, but only ourselves.

And yet, here we see that in Christ's suffering and death, all is forgiven. Salvation is accomplished, once and for eternity, upon the cross. Whatever we may think or feel about the matter, we free, and we who are baptized are bound to that salvation, so that every good we do likewise pours out the grace we have been given. Every witness to Jesus we make, be it through word or deed, manifests God's love. The cross is The End, at least to the first act of creation; sin is broken, though it continues until the end of all time, when death is destroyed forever.

And so, I am done today with “and yet”. For now we are in the age of “and thus”: and thus we see the glorious morn the result of sin's destruction is manifested. Thus we see our freedom realized. Thus we see our work set before us: to carry the church, Christ's body, his hands and feet and mouth, to all about us, and to enlarge that church through baptism in His death. And thus we look to that glorious day when all blame, one and for all, is burnt in the everlasting fire, that the eternity of salvation is harvested and gathered into God's house forever and ever. Amen.