Sunday 12 November 2017

Practice Makes Possible (Matthew 25:1-13)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 12, 2017, Proper 27)



The Practice of Introductions,
The Possibility of Friendship

Growing up, ice cream was a treat.  Normally my bedtime snack would be a simpler affair.  Toast and jam, maybe.  Or a cookie and milk.

I still remember the day that my mom made a deal with my brother and me.  Instructing us on the importance of making introductions, of looking people in the eye and offering our hand and saying, “It’s nice to meet you,” she agreed to reward us with ice cream every time we made an introduction.  Now, my brother’s the extrovert, so I feel like this deal favored him a bit more.  But that’s beside the point.  With ice cream on the other end, even I could find it in me to make a proper introduction.

I am grateful for all the practice that resulted from this delicious dairy experiment.  As it turns out, looking people in the eye or offering your hand or saying something nice is often what turns strangers into friends.  Sometimes I wonder if I would have the friends that I have today, if my mom had not first instructed me in this practice.

They say, “Practice makes perfect.”  In my experience, that’s not true.  I can still be quite clumsy in my introductions.  In my experience, practice makes possible.  All that practice—and ice cream!—from my childhood is what has made possible some amazing friendships.

The Practice of Faith,
The Possibility of the Kingdom

In today’s scripture, Jesus tells a parable about the kingdom of God.  “Keep awake,” he urges at the end of the parable, “for you know neither the day nor the hour” (25:13).  Throughout the centuries, Christians have speculated on the “when” of Christ’s return.  But here Jesus makes his point pretty clear.  Don’t worry about the day or the hour.  Stay awake!  The coming of God’s kingdom is “not a ‘when’ to be calculated, but a ‘how’ to be lived.”[1]

In other words, practice makes possible.  Just as the practice of eye contact and handshaking and introducing made me ready for the sudden arrival of a new friend, so the practice of faith makes us ready for the kingdom.  If we are practicing hospitality to strangers, forgiving our enemies, loving others for no good reason—if we are practicing all these things that make up the way of Christ—then when the kingdom comes, we will be ready for it. 

Traditionally we think of the kingdom coming as a once-and-for-all event, the endpoint of all time.  But I wonder if Jesus has something simpler in mind here.  Elsewhere, he says that the kingdom is near, that it is in fact already among us, within us (cf. Luke 17:21, 31).  It’s almost as though he’s saying that the kingdom is always a possibility, just as friendship is always a possibility.  What matters—what determines whether a stranger becomes a friend, or whether the world is transformed into the kingdom—is whether we are practicing or not.  Practice makes possible.  Welcoming strangers and forgiving old grudges and loving people who give us no good reason to: these are not things we only do once we’re in the kingdom.  They’re what we do in order to make the kingdom possible, in order to be ready for it when it arrives.

And I wonder if the kingdom isn’t arriving when we least expect it: in conflicts and interruptions and the daily drone of our lives.  For it’s precisely in these moments that forgiveness and hospitality and love make a difference.  Remember the parable of the prodigal son, where the wasteful and ungrateful son comes to ruin and then returns to his father?  Is it only the son who returns?  Is it not also the kingdom that arrives that day?  And the father is ready.  The father forgives his son, and for a brief moment, we catch a glimpse of the kingdom.  The father made it possible.

Readiness Cannot Be Shared

I’ll have to admit, though, that today’s parable does not wrap up neatly.  If the point is that we must practice our faith to make the kingdom possible, then why is today’s story full of characters who have such bad practice, whose behavior is the very opposite of the way of Christ?  Jesus said, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matt 5:42; cf. Luke 6:35).  So why do the “wise” bridesmaids refuse to share their oil?  And Jesus preached forgiveness and urged his followers, “Don’t judge” and “Don’t condemn” (Luke 6:37).  So why does the groom in the story respond so resentfully toward the unprepared bridesmaids, refusing them entry to the wedding?  If people actually modeled their behavior on the wise bridesmaids and the groom, it’s hard to imagine how the kingdom of love and forgiveness that Jesus proclaims would ever arrive. 

To me, today’s parable illustrates the danger of reading too literally.  If you’ll recall, there are other parables with troubling characters too, kings who return violence with violence (e.g., Matt 22:1-14) and rulers who slaughter their citizens with little cause (e.g., Luke 19:11-27).  My guess is that Jesus is telling flesh-and-blood sorts of tales, perhaps stories of events that actually happened—certainly stories that people could relate to.  In today’s case, it would be all-too-human, all-too-understandable, for a handful of bridesmaids to secure their own ticket to the party at the exclusion of others.  Likewise, it would all-too-human for a resentful groom to exclude guests because they didn’t care enough to prepare for a change in plans.

The point, then, is not necessarily to model our behavior on the characters’.  We’ve already seen how much their conduct deviates from the way of Christ.  The point, I think, has to do with Jesus’ conclusion: “Stay awake therefore.”  If Jesus is proclaiming that practice makes us ready, makes a new world possible, then the bridesmaids’ refusal to share and the groom’s refusal to open the door makes a lot more sense.  These refusals are an illustration, a metaphor, for what it means to be out of practice.  If you are out of practice, there’s nothing that can be shared to help you, there’s no last-minute adjustment that can be made to make your ready.  Readiness cannot be shared.  It must be cultivated through patient practice.

An Alternate Ending

Jesus was always playing with old stories, giving them new twists.  So I trust he’ll understand if I do the same.  I wonder what today’s story would look like if its characters were not all-too-human, if they actually practiced the way of Christ.

Imagine with me for a moment that the wise bridesmaids share their oil with the foolish bridesmaids.  And then, no one has enough oil.  But the bridegroom welcomes them all anyway because in the kingdom of God, that’s what you do.[2]  That’s the practice.  In the kingdom of God, grudges are dropped, the needful are lifted up, and outsiders are welcomed.

The kingdom of God turns no one away.  The question is not, Will we have enough of this or that, or, Will we look presentable enough to the host?  The question is simpler: Will we see the kingdom?  Will we appreciate it?  My mom taught me how to see a friend in a stranger, how to practice eye contact and offering my hand in order to open up that possibility.  In the same way, the kingdom is always coming, but we’ll never see it and appreciate it if we’re not already practicing its ways.  “Keep awake therefore”—keep giving and forgiving, welcoming and loving, for in this way we make the kingdom and its abundant life possible.  In this way we are ready when it arrives.

Prayer

Loving Lord,
Friend of sinners—
May the holy chance
Of your kingdom
Captivate our hearts
And inspire our bodies
To practice the ways
That make it possible.
Amen.





[1] John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 140.
[2] I am indebted to Lauren F. Winner for this imagined alternative ending.  See Winner, “The Parable of Five Catty, Hard-Hearted, Virgins,” http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/yeara/ordinary32gospel/, accessed November 7, 2017.

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