Pentecost 23

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life.

Grant that having this hope we may purify ourselves as he is pure.

When he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom, where he lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, long ago your neighbors, your ancestors, Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods.

Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many.

Now therefore revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness.

Put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in a region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Then the people answered, Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight.

He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.

And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land.

Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.

But Joshua said to the people, You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God, and he will not forsake your forgive your transgressions or your sins.

If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good.

And the people said to Joshua, No, we will serve the Lord.

Then Joshua said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that you had chosen the Lord to serve him.

And they said, We are witnesses.

He said, Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.

The people said to Joshua, The Lord our God we will serve, and him we will obey.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made statutes and ordinances for them at Sheckham.

The word of the Lord.

The psalm appointed for today is from Psalm 78.

We will read responsively by the half verse.

Hear my teaching, O my people.

We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord.

God set up decrees for Jacob and established a law for Israel.

That the generations to come might know, and the children yet unborn, that they enter, so that they might put their trust in God.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring with him those who have died.

For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.

For the Lord Himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air.

And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Therefore encourage one another with these words the word of the Lord.

Glory to you, O Christ.

Jesus said, 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's 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 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 gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

So I just want to offer the surface level reading, which is, I think, pretty clear.

There are two kinds of folk in the world.

There are the folk who have plenty and the folk who just don't seem to be ready.

And if you're not ready and you miss the party, the door will be closed, and that's that.

It's a little bit tough, right?

Because it sort of suggests that if you're not ready for God to come, and the story tells you, God might come late.

If you're not ready, well, you might just spend eternity in hell.

So be ready.

And notice what the bridesmaids do, they refuse to share.

So not only be ready, but hoard your righteousness to make sure you make it to heaven.

I'm going to argue with that reading today because you know that just doesn't sound anything like virtue or compassion.

And I want to suggest to you that all of our readings are going to do something with this cognitive dissonance in which we find ourselves waiting for what we expect and where God is to be found in spite of our expectations.

So a little bit about lamps.

You have to remember there's no electric lights at this time, and candle lights are pretty darn dull, and this is the kind of lamp people have.

You can put olive oil in here that will burn for an hour.

Olive oil is not particularly efficient.

Most of your candles at home, in fact, probably none of them, use it.

How bright is this?

It's like a birthday candle.

Consider a birthday candle with no street lights.

It lasts an hour.

When you hear that the bridesmaids, five of them didn't have oil, of course they had oil in here.

They had enough.

If you burn the wick, it just burns up, right?

What they didn't have was enough oil to last for several hours.

Just enough for the hour because that was the expectation.

It was party time.

This business about weddings is a little foreign to us, but if you've been to an Orthodox wedding, this still is true.

There are essentially two ceremonies.

There is the one that happens before the wedding in which a contract is signed between the bride's father and the groom and a number of sort of the elders in the synagogue.

When the contract is signed and all the terms are agreed upon, then you go to the party.

So why is the groom late?

Well, we don't know, but they could have been dickering over the terms of the contract.

We don't know.

Or maybe along the way, what would happen is there would sort of be a parade that you'd go through the town, and then you would start, of course, at the bride's home, and you would end up at the groom's home.

And don't think of one house, think of like multiple houses making a family compound, because what's going to happen is the groom will leave his father's home and live in an adjacent home in a family compound with the bride, right?

You're going to go into the compound, hence there's a gate, right, for the whole little family dwelling, and there's going to be a multiple-day feast.

Multiple days.

Like when Jesus goes to Cana, consider the problem at Cana is they ran out of wine on the first day.

That's a real party foul.

So Jesus redeems the party, right?

He replenishes the wine.

So on they go.

Now look, everybody falls asleep.

Do you notice?

Nobody's awake the whole time.

They're all standing there, and through no fault of their own, they were ready.

The groom's light.

So they fall asleep.

I'm going to come back to the story in just a second, but just please notice when they say share your oil, the wise bridesmaids say no.

I want to suggest to you, when we hear that word wise, we're actually really invited to consider if that is the right translation.

Because I want to suggest to you there is a difference between wise and shrewd.

And the difference between being wise and shrewd is the presence of compassion.

I did not translate the word, the shrewd bridesmaids.

But if you get nothing else from today, reread the story and consider these ones shrewd.

Because as I understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are not called to hoard.

We're called to have compassion and empathy and share.

So when Jesus compares God's family to this story, please don't think that you have to make a one-to-one comparison.

In fact, this could be the photographic negative.

I don't know why that's happening.

Bob, I'm sorry.

I don't know what I did.

I heard it by Oh, okay.

It's not me.

Okay, let's go back to Joshua.

I want you to imagine you've turned in your pledge card and you get a note from the priest that says, I got your pledge and you won't keep it.

It's too hard for you.

That's what the story says.

Joshua says, Choose who you'll serve.

Will you serve the gods you used to serve in Egypt?

Please read that.

Will you serve the gods you served on the other side of the river?

Those are the Egyptian ones.

Will you serve the gods in Canaan or will you serve the Lord?

As for me, I'll serve the Lord.

Usually that's the one bit of the story we hear.

As for me in my house, we'll serve the Lord.

The people say, We'll serve the Lord.

Now, in my training, you're supposed to say, you made the right choice.

Good job.

Let's support each other.

And Joshua says, No, you won't.

You're lying.

You can't do it.

And I'm going to tell you, any scholar you read is going to tell you that this part of Joshua, very different from the first.

If you read the book of Joshua, Joshua starts out leading the people to do military conquest and take all the promised land.

And there's some epic battles, there's some wonderful miracles like the walls of Jericho coming down.

And then all of a sudden, in chapter 13, Joshua's occupied like 10% of the land.

And now he's old and can't lead any battles.

And this comes from the second half of the book, which says, hey, look, why is it we have not occupied the land like we thought we were going to rapidly?

This is taking longer than we thought.

There are Philistines, there are other enemies, and we keep suffering setbacks.

Why isn't it easy?

Why isn't it happening now?

And this portion of the book tells you why.

This is the wisdom of Israel saying the reason it didn't happen like we wanted is because we didn't do the right stuff.

Now, this is, to use a modern term, prosperity gospel.

The prosperity gospel is when I make investments in the Lord's name.

I don't give gifts, I give investments.

So I pay a portion of my pledge, or I help somebody who's hungry, and I do it because when I do those things, God will prosper me financially.

If you've never heard this, go home and turn on the television.

You will hear it.

Most of us accept it at a very root level, no matter how much we want to argue with what I just said.

Most of us think at a certain point you get what you deserve, and when you give gifts to God, really what you've done is you've made shrewd investments because God is obligated to pay you back.

That's the wisdom of Joshua.

It's taking a long time.

We're not getting what we want.

Something must be wrong.

The bridegroom is late.

It must be because we were foolish.

Paul is writing to a similar bit.

People at the time of Paul thought Jesus was coming back in their own lifetime, like any day.

Now, I will tell you, I grew up in a tradition that said stuff like that.

And this is not one of those traditions that is counting down the minutes for Jesus to return.

So you can have a lot of different experiences with that bit of theology.

But in Paul's day, people thought within their own lifetime Jesus is coming back and it's going to set everything right.

That is, it's going to make the world the way they want it to be.

And lay and behold, some people die.

They die before Jesus comes back.

And the question is, well, look, if they're just going to die, what's the point of my faith?

Well, reward is there for people who die and don't get to experience Jesus righting all the wrongs in the world.

And by the way, why is he taking so long?

You see, this is the common thread.

And Paul says something really quite interesting.

He says, look, you've kind of got it all wrong.

What you're expecting God to do is frankly what you're expecting God to do and not what God is expecting to do.

So in order to write this wrong in people's conceptions, Paul says, look, the people that you think are missing out are exactly the ones who get it first.

I don't know if you've ever read this Flannery O'Connor short story called Revelation.

You can read it on the internet, actually.

You don't even have to buy the book.

It's about this southern lady who's super judgmental, but she pays her servants really well, and she has a really sad encounter with a young girl in a waiting room who calls her a pig or something.

And she goes out, and with all of her propriety, she has this vision of all, and I'm quoting her, of all the white trash and all of the servants going to heaven before her.

All the people who were less important and less valuable go first.

And she goes last.

And Paul's saying something like that.

And unless we're super mistaken, this is not Paul just writing about what happens at the final judgment when everybody's dead.

Paul, I think, is telling us what kind of party that the Lord enjoys, which is really different from the kinds of parties we wallow in.

In the Lord's party, the people who celebrate the most are the ones we already think are dead.

I don't just mean physically, the ones we hate and despise and disagree with.

Those are the people who go first.

I know that sounds crazy, which is why it has to be right.

Because we don't come into church to worship ordinary things.

We do ordinary stuff out there all the time.

We know how to revel and gloat and be cruel, and that is not what this is about.

This is about extraordinary things that are impossibly hard to imagine.

God finding joy in people that we have dismissed to the point of death.

And I want to suggest that this whole story about the bridesmaids and their candle and the light that they shine in the world reveals to us what story we revel in, so that we can trade that out for the kind of story that God revels in.

That is to say, I think often we cannot figure out when the groom is going to show up because we failed to perceive that Jesus Christ is embodied right here, right now, in the people next to us.

When are you going to come?

I'm already here.

And I think we've also unfortunately bought into, and maybe I'll just talk about my own spirituality, if we often find ourselves thinking about how we need to jockey with somebody else in order to get into God's party, we're going to the wrong party.

If we ever think our spirituality is about our personal advancement, I would suggest we need to trade it in.

We could think to ourselves, the world will benefit if I just shine my birthday candle, my single birthday candle, if I'll just shine that for a really long time, that'll help.

Instead of thinking about whether or not the world wouldn't be brighter if there were more candles lit, we settle for single candles.

And I think the gospel confronts us.

Flame, we find ourselves on social media.

And there have been many, many trying things this year.

Look, this isn't just like somebody who goes out to run a 5K and then finds that the course has been changed to a marathon.

By the way, those have nothing to do with one another.

If you've ever done this, you know that having the race distance dramatically increased is really disempowering.

And boy, that's been the experience of COVID.

We sure all were hoping this was gonna blow over fast, and now here we are.

In March, I was looking forward to a 5K, and look, we're not even maybe halfway through this marathon, and it's exhausting, don't you think?

And let me reveal how short our our patience and pain threshold is as a country, and you may not be here.

You may not have been one of those people who on Wednesday was refreshing your browser of election results every five to ten minutes.

I was one of those people.

And it was really, really frustrating.

When is the result, whatever it is, just going to come so we can move on?

We don't handle waiting very well.

And then there's this really interesting thing that I see on social media because I have friends of different political persuasions.

I have family members of different political persuasions.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to be friends in family if I didn't have a Facebook, which reveals there's something very wrong with me.

And it goes something like this: whatever your politics are, I hear people on both sides of the aisle, and unfortunately we've settled that there are only two ways to be, um saying how terrible the other folks are.

They cheat or they lie or they're bigoted or they're suppressive.

And they hate the way these people talk.

Hate what these people stand for.

And the way they talk about the people that they're indignant about makes them exactly like the people they're indignant about.

And I just want to suggest that the thing I think that is most important, not just for the country.

I mean, what do I know?

I'm not a politician, but I think that becomes most important for the church is the um, I learned this at a really, really young age, even though I don't do it super well, is there's such a thing called good and bad sportsmanship.

And gloating over somebody because they got locked out of whatever party it is has no room in the gospel of Jesus Christ whatsoever.

And talking about somebody whose words have bothered you as if they're a monster is how our colloqu started today.

Because I want to remind you that the word devil means slanderer.

Part of the works of the slanderer we're being called as a church to do is to stop slandering other people.

And particularly people, whether you're a Yellow Dog Democrat or a member of the Tea Party, if you've considered somebody with a different different political persuasion than your own to be dead to you, you need to replan around the Lord's party because those people rise first.

And I want to suggest that anything less than that is just ordinary and doesn't belong here.

And doesn't belong here.

And this is not just for the sake of our civics, it's for the sake of the gospel, and honestly, it's for the sake of us being who God intends for us to be, because it diminishes our own humanity to be shrewd bridesmaids instead of wise ones.

The truth is, if we really think the world's dark, we need as many birthday candles lit as we can help light, so that God's imagination can become visible.

And so I remind us here at the maybe the beginning of a really complicated process, not the end, that the world sure could use a lot more of God's visible light, and we get to do that.

So please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ.

For the peace from above, for the loving kindness of God, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace of the world, for the welfare of the Holy Church of God, and for the unity of all peoples, let us pray to the Lord.

For the people and clergy of this church, for bishops and other ministers, the priests in our community, Mike, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, our bishops, Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kai, in the Diocese of Texas St.

Mary's, West Columbia, St.

Paul's Freeport, St.

Thomas Wharton, and St.

Thomas Lake Jackson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin, and our presiding bishop Michael.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For our parish and our vestry, that the source of wisdom may guide us, the source of strength may support us, and the source of love may unify us.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For St.

Thomas the Apostle's school, that those who teach and those who learn may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, that we may teach our students to love whatever is just and true and good, and that we may be bearers of your grace to all who come through our doors.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who govern and hold authority in every nation, for the members of the armed forces throughout the world, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plant the signs of your dominion everywhere.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For the good earth which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For the aged and infirmed, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, especially Chris, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, Joe, Larry, and Nancy.

Let us pray to the Lord.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebrations or petitions, silently or aloud.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who have died in the hope of resurrection, especially Patty and Bill, and for all the departed, let us pray to the Lord.

For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degradation.

Let us pray to the Lord.

That we may end our lives in faith and hope without suffering and without reproach.

Let us pray to the Lord.

In the communion of Saint Thomas and of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

And let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God.

Almighty and most merciful God, we are thankful that your compassion is higher than the heavens, wider than our wanderings, deeper than all our sin.

Forgive our careless attitudes toward your purposes, our refusal to relieve the suffering of others, our envy of those who have more than we have, our obsession with creating a life of constant entertainment, our indifference to the treasures of heaven, our neglect of your wise and gracious law.

Help us to change our way of life so that we may desire what is good, love what you love, and do what you command through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Almighty and Compassionate Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The socially distanced peace of the Lord be always with you.

And in about 80 minutes, we served 75 cars representing 387 people with more than$8,000 worth of food.

That's not me, right?

I'm in front of the microphone.

Maybe it's me.

So it's really great.

And what I want to raise up to you that's super hopeful is that we have people who come to that food distribution week month after month who don't go to this church.

In fact, I don't know if they go to any church, but they want to come and do more together to help people in need, and frankly, like that's the gospel.

And so it's this wonderful thing that we're doing together as a community that you're supporting, and uh to hear that 387 persons um have food in their grocery.

It's just it's great.

It's good news.

It's good news.

Um, speaking of groceries, we do have an opportunity.

We have about eight days left.

So Monday the 16th is the last day we're collecting to bring Thanksgiving dinners and a bag to folks at McWurder.

The good news is you don't have to cook.

Uh it's canned, or there's a gift card for uh turkey or ham.

Uh, and we're collecting them just inside the front door or uh in the box if you feel more comfortable with that.

There's that box outside the front door.

Um the need is great, honestly, uh, and and we can do more together.

So we have about eight days uh to get that together to give families at McWord or a Thanksgiving dinner, who honestly they otherwise may not have one.

And so it's lovely as we shop for ourselves to shop for our sisters and brothers, uh, whether we know them or not.

Um to walk in love.

As Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.

You who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.

Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.

The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

It is very meet right in our abandoned duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father Almighty, everlasting God.

And therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna and the highest.

All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth, and didst make us in thine image.

And of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.

He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the entire world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice until his coming again.

For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when he given thanks to thee, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, and when he given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink this all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for all for the remission of sins.

Do this as often as you shall drink it in remembrance of me.

Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people do celebrate and make with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.

Grant we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and also that we and all thy whole church may be made one body with Him, that He may dwell in us and we in Him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

By whom and with whom and in whom in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Therefore, let us be feast.

These are the gifts of God for you, the family of God.

Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.

And I'm going to invite you to receive a bread or a blessing by coming to the aisle immediately to your right in six-foot increments, and then coming back around to your seat.

That flows by the throne of God on the margin of the river, washing up its silver spread We will walk and worship ever all the happy golden day.

Yes, we gather the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river gather with the saints and the river that flows by the throne of God.

Oh grace our spirits would enforce the beautiful, the beautiful shot.

Almighty and ever living God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us in these holy mysteries with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us, and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people, and are also heirs through hope, thy everlasting kingdom.

And we humbly beseech thee, O Heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honor and glory, world without end.

Amen.

May God, who by the Holy Spirit cause those of many politics, languages, and worldviews to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and remain with you forever.

Amen.