Ready!

[Below you'll find live stream video from worship at Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday, and the text of the message shared during the services.]

Matthew 25:1-13

In today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus tells the story of ten virgins who were meant to play a role in the wedding celebrations of a bridegroom and his bride. Apparently, they were to escort the groom, his bride, and his wedding revelers to the groom’s home.

All of the women knew that the groom and his bride would appear. None of them knew when they would appear.

They simply needed to be ready whenever it happened, so that they could enter the banquet at the groom’s home, the place he had prepared for them.

The appearance of the groom and his entourage took a while. Because of the delay, all ten women fell asleep. When the announcement finally was made that the bridegroom was near, five of the women awoke prepared: they’d brought oil to keep their lamps burning. They would have the light they needed to walk through the darkness–even maybe, through the valley of the shadow of death, if necessary–to get to the celebration.

The other five women had candles in hand; but they had no oil. These foolishly unprepared women begged the five prepared women for oil.

But the five with oil, the “wise” ones, Jesus explained, could not comply with that request. If they did so, they too would run out of oil. Then nobody would be able to fulfill their part in the wedding ceremonies.

And nobody would gain entrance into the bridegroom’s home.

As you know, the five foolish virgins set out in the night to buy oil. Later on, they appeared at the locked doorway of the banquet and begged the groom, “Lord, lord, open the door to us!” But the groom refused them entrance, saying, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

After telling this story, Jesus says to us, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:11-13)

What is Jesus telling us in this rather sad story? The great Lutheran preacher and novelist of the last century, Bo Giertz, in one of his sermons, identified three messages we can take from Jesus’ words to us this morning.

First, Giertz says, there comes a time when it will be too late to follow Jesus.

Earlier in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus provokes the disciples to ask Him when the temple in Jerusalem and the ancient nation of Israel would be snuffed out of existence as Jesus had already told them would happen. Instead, Jesus uses their question as a way of talking about the far more important topic of this world’s end, when Jesus will return from heaven and judge the living and the dead. It’s pointless for us to speculate as to the moment of return by Jesus, the Bridegroom to His Church, which is the Bride of Christ composed of all who, by the power of the Word and the Sacraments, trust in Jesus as their God and Savior. “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” Jesus says. (Matthew 24:36)

Our call is to be ready for that moment we meet Jesus face to face, whether that moment comes at the ends of our earthly lives or, if we’re still living in this world, Jesus returns.

We will be ready to meet Jesus when we do so with oil, that is, with faith in Him.

Sometimes, the light of our faith grows weak. We become overwhelmed by life. We fall into sin, failing to love God completely or love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

But the oil in our lamps can be renewed as we regularly partake of the means Jesus has established for delivering His gracious love and salvation to you: when we remember our baptisms, when we worship with God’s people and hear His saving Word, and when we receive His body and blood, receiving the gifts of repentance, faith, and life with God.

The oil of faith will allow us to enter Jesus’ everlasting banquet even when others, who have turned a deaf ear to Jesus, are left eternally outside of His kingdom.

You and I can proclaim Christ, God the Son, as the only Way to life with God. That Word about Christ can be used by God to create faith in those to whom we tell it. But we cannot have faith for them.

As Martin Luther says, “We can shout [the gospel] into another’s ears, but everyone must himself be prepared for the time of death, for I will not be with you then, nor you with me.” For those who spurn faith in Christ, the day of Christ’s return will be too late to receive it. God-given faith in Jesus though, prepares us to meet Him and join in His joy forever!

The second thing Jesus is telling us in this parable, Giertz reminds us, is to keep watch!

Jesus tells us elsewhere, “The Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Matthew 24:44)

You don’t know when you may meet Jesus face to face.

You and I could be killed in an automobile crash on our way home from worship today.

We may be suddenly felled by some unexpected illness. (I certainly didn’t plan on having the widowmaker heart attack my cardiologist said should have killed me thirteen years ago.)

Jesus might return to judge the world, send the unbelieving to hell, and usher in the new heaven and new earth for believers during the Bengals-Texans game this afternoon.

You are ready to meet Jesus when you live in daily repentance and renewal. Jesus describes this lifestyle when He tells us, “​​Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

The disciple knows that saving faith in Jesus comes through hearing and receiving the Word of God as it’s given to us preached, taught, and embodied in water, bread, and wine. With Peter, we tell Jesus, there is nowhere else for us to go for life with God because Jesus alone has “the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

Of course, God remembers that we are only dust, sinners prone to sin, living in a fallen world full of temptations, distractions, and sin.

Like all ten virgins in Jesus’ story, we grow weary.

We have to sleep, work, bathe, get kids to school, see our doctors and dentists, pay the bills, spend time on hold, fight traffic.

Just as Peter, James, and John couldn’t spend their whole lives up on the mount of Transfiguration, bathing in the glory of God 24/7, in this life, in this fallen world, we can’t be constantly receiving Christ’s Word.

But, Giertz says Jesus is telling us, just as you remain nourished right now by the meal you ate several hours ago, when you regularly receive Jesus–in weekly worship with His people and regular encounters with His Word–you will be nourished and prepared to meet Jesus face to face even when the demands and distractions of life pile up. Jesus tells us, “​​I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)

One day, you and I and this world will come to an end. Jesus has prepared an eternal banquet to which He has invited you and all the world. He secured your place in it by dying for your sins and those of the whole world. He secured everlasting life for you when God the Father raised Him from the dead.

You need not be afraid to meet Jesus face to face when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you turn from sin and trust in Christ now, today and every day, before that unknown moment when you meet Him. In 2 Corinthians 6:2, the apostle Paul quotes the Old Testament book of Isaiah: “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” And then, Paul says, “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

Friends, the door to His eternal banquet is wide open to you.

Jesus brings you the free gifts of faith and life through Him now.

He freely forgives your sin declares you innocent and fit for His eternal banquet through His means of grace.

Now, you can believe in Him.

Daily repent and turn to Him as your good God and Savior.

Then, whenever you meet Him, you can do so with peace and joy and hope.

You will be ready to meet your Lord and God and live with Him forever. Amen

Ready to Meet Christ

[This was shared during worship yesterday morning with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 25:1-13
This past Thursday, I met my dad, three sisters, two of my aunts, and two of my cousins for a late lunch at the Route 68 Grill in Bellefontaine. (Yum!) Later, we went to my aunt’s house, where she treated us to desserts, including gluten-free fare for me. (Let me just say parenthetically, that I am now a fan of Amish Pink Salad!)

The lunch conversation got interesting when someone said, “I’ve been praying lately for Jesus to come back.” And someone else said, “Doesn’t it seem like the world is getting worse and worse all the time?”

I agreed, of course, that the day of Jesus’ return--His second coming--will be wonderful.

But, I said, that I actually am happy for Jesus to wait as long as God the Father wants Him to wait. Second Peter 3:9 says: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise [of His second coming, when He will put things right and unveil His new creation], as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

In other words, God has delayed Jesus’ certain return in order to give us time to turn from our sin and trust in Jesus and to give Christ’s disciples--you and me--the greater opportunity to make more disciples.

Which, of course, begs the question: How well and faithfully are we disciples using this time before Jesus’ return? Or this time before you and I will meet Jesus face to face?

We all agreed on that point and after a time, we also agreed that the world isn’t any more evil than it was the day Adam and Eve fell from grace. The world has been in bondage to sin, incapable of saving itself, and in need of a Savior ever since.

Different sins go in and out of style. But we can say as surely of the human race in 2017 what the apostle Paul wrote of it in 55AD, quoting the Old Testament: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” [Romans 3:10-12]

Given that reality about each of us, the second question that comes to the fore is this: Are we ready for Christ’s return? Are we ready for the judgment? Will we stand before Christ at the judgment in our sin and therefore, unworthy of His new creation, or will we be covered by Christ’s righteousness and enter His kingdom?

Frankly, I hadn’t given today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13, more than a once-over when we had that conversation. But as I studied it on Friday and early yesterday, I realized that it points to the answers to the questions our table talk raised.

Through the centuries, people have tried to turn Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, told in today's lesson, into an elaborate allegory. They’ve said that the oil stands for this, the torches stand for that, and so on. The parable though is, as we’ll see, simpler and more direct than that. It has a simple and important message. So, let’s look at the parable now.

In the lesson, we catch Jesus in the middle of talking about the end of this world, when He will return and judge the living and the dead, an event that will happen in one fell swoop. Verse 1: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.”

The word translated as lamps here is more appropriately rendered torches. It refers to a simple torch made of rags twisted on top of a stick after the rag has been soaked in oil. A soaked rag would burn for fifteen minutes. But one not prepared in that way would burn out in a matter of moments. That’s why some of the bridesmaids brought extra oil with them.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago when talking about first-century Judean weddings, the groom’s party might show up for the wedding and the subsequent week-long reception (!) at any time after the marriage agreement has been reached. Even in the dead of the night. The bride’s attendants would have had to be ready to escort the groom and his party to the site where the wedding will happen at any moment.

Here’s the thing: All ten of the bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable are looking forward to the wedding. All ten of them fall asleep filled with eager anticipation of the celebrating and the partying. They’re all picturing a happy time of dancing, feasting, and flirting. But they’re not all ready.

Now, I’m no judge of the human race. That job is God’s alone and I have no intention of applying to replace Him in that job. I’m too busy attending my own knitting to judge someone else for dropping a stitch.

But I have to say that sometimes, when I attend the funerals of people who never seemed to give God a thought and hear their loved ones talk about how the deceased is now with God, I can’t help wondering. Jesus says in Matthew 10:32-33, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”

None of us knows everything that transpires in a person’s life. None of us knows what encounters that even the most violent of atheists may have with God and His Word, as planted by some compassionate Christian disciple earlier in their lives, as they approach the gates of death.

But Jesus does say that His people will be recognizable to others “by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). In other words, faith in Christ is demonstrated in our priorities, our decisions, the ways we treat others, the way we repent when we know we’ve done wrong, the way we own Christ as our Savior.

It’s in a faith in Christ active in love that we prepare ourselves for Jesus’ return, that we ready ourselves for judgment, confident that, though we are sinners, Christ has covered our repentant lives with His amazing grace!

It’s one thing to know about Christ’s return. It’s another thing to be ready for Christ’s return. 

The bridesmaids knew that a wedding could take place at any time. But they weren’t ready for it.

Are you and I ready to meet Christ, now, today, tomorrow? That’s an enormously important question.

Verse 6: “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. [That literally means, they lit their torches.] The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’”

Don’t misunderstand. Jesus is not here commending selfishness.

As Lutheran Christians, we believe in letting the whole of Scripture interpret Scripture. This principle of Lutheran Biblical interpretation prevents us from isolating a piece of Scripture and riding it like a hobby horse, making it say what we want it to say. When you let Scripture interpret Scripture you look for the meaning of individual passages in light of the witness of the whole Bible.

And in this case, Scripture tells us that the God we meet in Jesus never has been selfish and has never commended selfishness. The Lord Who underscores the Old Testament command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 27:39) and gave His Church a new command that we as disciples “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34)...This Lord is not going to tell you to be selfish or refuse to share with others the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.

What Jesus is saying here though, is that no one can make your preparations for meeting Jesus for you. Christian faith is lived out with support and encouragement from and accountability to Christ’s church. The Church is indispensable. But each of us is either saved or damned individually, one by one. On the day of Christ’s return, He will judge us on our individual faith in Him. Not our parents or grandparents’ faith. Not our spouses’ faith. But on our faith in Christ alone.

About a week after Jesus had risen from the dead, the apostles encountered Him on the lakeshore. Jesus feeds them fish He’s prepared. The dinner done, Jesus asks Peter three times and in different ways, “Simon, do you love me more than these?” Whether we’re seeking to answer that question with a, “Yes!” through lives of daily repentance and renewal, will tell us whether we’re ready for Christ’s return or not.

Do we love Christ more than we love our sins?

Do we love Christ more than we love things we covet or lust for?

Do we love Christ more than the fears that keep us from doing God’s will?

Do we love Christ more than our desire to be in control?

More than our desire to give our kids way more than they need?

More than anything?

If we are seeking day by day to say, “Yes,” to Christ and no to the finite, dying stuff of this world--no matter how imperfectly we may seek them, we will be ready. Our lamps will be trimmed. We will be ready to meet the Lord face to face.

In verse 12 of our lesson, Jesus says that after the foolish bridesmaids had finally gotten oil for their torches, they showed up late for the wedding feast. They bang on the door, trying to get inside.

But the bridegroom, standing in for Jesus, says from inside, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

You’ve probably heard me say it before: The Christian faith isn’t about what you know or what you do. The Christian faith is about Who you know and what He has done for you on a cross and from an empty tomb. 

If we expect Jesus to know us at the judgment, He must know us now, in this life. He must know that we trust in Him, follow Him, and draw life from Him and not from the world. The door will be shut to us if we wait until the party has started.

So, Jesus says in verse 13: “...keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” We don’t know the day or hour we’ll meet Jesus at the end of this life or the end of this world. But we get ready to meet Him and for ready for everything in this life by knowing Him and following Him now, trusting in Him now. Be ready for anything; surrender your life and your priorities to Jesus every day. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Real Grace, Not Cheap Grace

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 25:1-13
The other day I decided, as I do every week in preparing for my messages,  to check out what different Bible commentators had to say about today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13.

One commentator's opening sentences compelled me to stop immediately. That’s because he wrote that this passage was disturbing and didn’t sound like Jesus to him.

What the writer really meant was, “In this passage, Jesus doesn’t sound like I want Jesus to sound.”

We live in an era in which people who masquerade as Bible scholars are really Bible speculators, speculating that the Bible is wrong and that they’re right when it comes to understanding what Jesus is really like.

They want to whittle Jesus, God in human flesh, down to what they want Him to be, turning the Savior the Bible calls, “the Lion of Judah” into a pet cat, making Him palatable to the masses, a benign teacher of platitudes who doesn’t disturb people.

Nowhere is this whittling, this cheapening, of Jesus more apparent than in the misuse and the misconstruction of what the Bible calls grace.

The Bible teaches, as I say obsessively, that we are saved from sin and death by God’s grace--God’s charity--through our faith in Christ. Through God’s grace given in Christ, we are forgiven and given the promise of God’s presence with us in this world and of eternal life with God in the perfect world to be.

But we must remember, as Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught, that grace is free; but it isn’t cheap.

In the eyes of the Bible speculators, grace tells you and me when we suspect we should feel guilty about something we’ve thought, said, or done, “It’s no big deal. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it; you’re forgiven.”

Jesus and the Bible tell us something altogether different about grace, though. For Jesus and the Biblical writers, grace says, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Grace doesn’t flinch from telling us that sin is wrong. Taking God’s Name in vain is a sin. Gossiping is a sin. Dishonesty in financial matters is wrong. Failing to forgive those who have hurt us is sin. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman is unholy in the eyes of God. Failure to honor those in authority, established in their offices by God Himself, is a failure to honor God.

Grace agrees with the law about what God reveals in His Word to be right and wrong.

But grace also says to those who turn from their sin and cling to Jesus as their shield from the death sentence their sin has earned them, “Your sins are forgiven. They are covered by the grace of Jesus Christ, Who took your punishment for you.”

Grace says, “Your sins are a big deal. They should spell death for you. But when you honestly confess your sins and trust in Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, as your only hope for life, their power over you is destroyed.” That is grace!

Jesus gives us a true picture of grace in our Gospel lesson for this morning. Please take a look at it now.

Jesus has been talking about the coming end of this world and His return to bring judgment and to usher in His eternal kingdom for all who have trusted in Him. Now, He tells a parable, a fictional representation of the coming of His kingdom.

Verse 1: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.”

In first century Judea, where Jesus lived, weddings, followed by days of banqueting, took place at night. A messenger would go ahead of the bridegroom’s party to let people in the bride’s neighborhood know that he was on his way and to be prepared for the start of the festivities. In the parable, the wedding feast symbolizes the great heavenly feast that Jesus will one day enjoy with all His saints.

Jesus, as in other places in the Gospels, is here portraying Himself as the groom. In doing so, Jesus isn’t just claiming to be the Messiah, as we’ve talked about recently. He is also claiming to be God. In the Old Testament,  God is often portrayed as the loyal husband of His chosen people, Israel.

The twist in this parable is that the ten virgins, who all want to go to the party and celebrate with others, are the Church. They’re you and me. And like you and me, they want to be with the groom at the feast. They take up their lamps in order to wait for the arrival of the groom.

Please notice something about this verse: Everyone is invited to the feast.

God wants everyone to be at His table in eternity.

God’s grace calls everyone.

God loves everyone.

Jesus died and rose for everyone.

But, as we’ll see, not everyone responds in faith and those who refuse Jesus’ call to daily acknowledging our sin and receiving forgiveness and new life by faith in Him willfully separate themselves from Him.

And God will, at the ends of people's lives and at the end of this world's life, respect the choice of those who have rejected His invitation.

Verses 2-4: “Five of them [of the virgins] were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.”

The “oil” as The Lutheran Study Bible puts it, “represents a faith continually sustained by the means of grace, thus able to endure until Christ’s return.”

The oil for the lamps represents things like the fellowship of Christ’s Church, attentiveness to God’s Word, receiving the Sacraments so that the light of faith isn’t taken away by the darkness of our world and of our sinful selves, a willingness to do what God wills for us.

These are the things we need to make it through this world with our faith intact, our relationship with God intact, our integrity restored.

If we’re to be ready for the return of Jesus to our world, or ready to face Him at the moments of our deaths, or ready simply to deal with the everyday challenges of life, we need to be stocked up on the oil of an ongoing faith relationship with Christ.

If not, we could run out, the light of our faith extinguished, our relationship with God destroyed, our only reason for hope displaced by the distractions of life.

Take a look at Ephesians 6:10-13 (page 817 in the sanctuary Bible): “...be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

The only people who will remain standing when Jesus comes to bring this world to its end, the only people who will remain standing when the chips are down and the devil and this life hit us with their worst shots, are the people who stand on Christ alone. They keep burning with faith, hope, and courage.

The five young virgins left to welcome the bridegroom, not thinking about what they needed to power their lamps. That’s like us when we make decisions or establish priorities without leaning on God. We then stand naked in the face of evil that will otherwise overtake us and destroy us for eternity.

Look at what happens next in the parable: “The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps.” [Trimmed here means to adjust the wicks so that they can burn brightly.]

Then comes the crisis: “The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’But while they were on their way to buy the oil [there must have been an all-night oil distributor], the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.”

Jesus isn’t commending selfishness when He has the wise young women refuse the request of the foolish ones for more oil.

Here’s what He is saying:  No one else can have your relationship with Him for you.

We can’t rely on our parents’ faith or our friends’ faith or, God forbid, our pastor's faith.

Faith is you and I personally trusting our lives to Jesus ourselves.

Jesus told His fellow Jews in Luke 3:8: “...do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”

The only one who can ensure that our lamps are filled with the oil of enduring faith is us.

We need to keep filling up on Christ and His Word through worship, study of God’s Word, receiving the Sacrament, trusting Christ’s presence in, with, and under the bread and the wine.

These are the ways God can prepare us for the ends of our lives, the end of the world, and even for just waking up tomorrow morning. And the next morning. And the next.

Verses 11-13: “Later the others [the foolish virgins] also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

Jesus is using a common, idiomatic saying here. He's not saying that the lord inside the house was unaware of the identities of the women trying to get into the wedding feast, any more than God Himself will be unaware of the identities of those who have let their faith lapse or turned their backs on Christ or let things other than God become more important than God. He knows every human being by name and DNA.

But God cannot in eternity, pretend that there is intimacy between Himself and those who, during their time in this world, forgot all about Him.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'’ Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

And, Jesus says in John 6:29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." That means trusting in Him and seeking His power in our lives even when we think we’ve got everything under control and that we don’t need God’s help, counsel, or authority over us. That's our job: to accept grace, to receive grace with honesty and vulnerability and gratitude.

This is where the Bible speculators flinch. They want a grace without  admission of guilt, without the acknowledgement of the human need of God Who is infinitely greater than we are. They want a grace without God telling us to follow Christ and Christ alone, a grace with no need to trust Jesus with our lives.

But real grace--the kind that comes...

to those who repent and believe,

who pray, “Thy will be done,”

who acknowledge that "we are in bondage in sin and cannot free ourselves," then throw themselves at the foot of Jesus Christ...

that grace, true grace, brings us the power to live each moment on this earth--the challenging and the joyous--and gives us the certainty that when the Bridegroom Christ finally appears on this earth, our faith will find us ready to welcome Him, and we will join the marriage feast that has no end. Amen

[I received great inspiration for this message from the video presentation of Dr. James Nestingen this past week.]