In Joy or Dread?

2 part sermon for Bach Cantata

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 5, 2004

Text: Matthew 25:1-13

Part 1 of the sermon

Ready or not, Christmas is coming. Now is the time to prepare. What are the characteristics of our preparation – joy or dread? Are we looking forward in hope? Are we preparing in anticipation of joy? Or, are we dreading our preparing for Christmas and even Christmas itself?

I think it is our focus that shapes our answer. If all I am focused on is the ordeal of shopping for gifts, sending cards, preparing the house for guests, dealing with visiting family members with whom relations are strained, struggling between budget limits and wants that seem limitless, if the ordeal of all this is my focus, dread becomes a significant part of my Advent season.

The parable we read has to do with a wedding, and the dominant mood for a wedding is joy rather than dread. Across the centuries, one of the primary metaphors used to talk about the second coming of Christ is that of the bridegroom (Christ) coming to live with his bride (the people who are the Church). This coming of Christ is to be a time of joyful celebration, a time of feasting. This theme of joyful feasting is reflected in the liturgy of Holy Communion. Each time we celebrate this sacrament we pray that we will feast at Christ's heavenly banquet.

Advent is intended to be a time of joyful preparation, rather than a season of drudgery. This theme of joyful anticipation and celebration is the one that is reflected in the music the choir will be singing. It is the joy of anticipating Christ coming to reign.

In the passage we read from Matthew Jesus was saying: “You want to know what it will be like when the kingdom of heaven -- God's reign on earth -- comes? It is going to be a celebration like the celebration of a wedding. So, get ready for the party.” And so we get ready; we decorate this special place with symbolic reminders about the One who comes and what his coming means.

The parable we read also contains a warning. No one can do our preparation for us. Each of us must prepare. I cannot prepare you for the reign of God and you cannot prepare me. The most any of us can do is prepare ourselves. You cannot give me your faith or hope or love. You can tell me about your faith, hope and love. In your living you can demonstrate your faith, hope and love, but you cannot pour some of your faith, hope and love into me. You cannot prepare me for the reign of God in my life. There are some things each of us must do for ourselves. In the parable Jesus told, he is telling us to get ourselves ready -- ready for the joyful party of experiencing life as God intends.

But our preparing is not out of some dread and fear where our motivation is merely trying to avoid some sort of hell. It is to be the joyful anticipation of a bride waiting for the groom. And as Bach celebrates Advent in this cantata, the joy that is not merely that of the bride. It is also the joyful anticipation of the groom. Drawing on images from the Song of Solomon, Bach uses the longing of the groom for his bride as a metaphor to point toward Christ's longing for a fulfilling relationship with his bride – the church, the community of faith, the fellowship of grace.

The season of Advent is a time of preparation, but not the kind of preparation that is done in dread and fear, but in joy and hope. Advent is the time for us joyfully to prepare for the wedding made in heaven, the wedding of God's grace with persons of faith, the wedding of Christ with the people.

In Jesus' day, part of the joy and playfulness of wedding celebrations was the groom trying to surprise the bride and her friends. The bride knew the groom was coming to claim her for his wife, but she did not know the exact day or hour. And sometimes the groom took great delight in trying to catch her and her friends off guard by even coming in the middle of the night. No one knew the day or hour of his coming.

So it is with the coming of the kingdom, the coming of God's reign in our lives. The Christ comes into our lives in surprising ways, at surprising times. It is for us to prepare, to be on the alert, ever ready to respond to the surprising grace of God, the coming of Christ, the coming of God's reign, the coming of the kingdom.

The Cantata, part I

Part 2 of the sermon

What is it like when Christ comes? For what are we preparing?

There is a double meaning in the promise that Christ will come again. There is the promise of Christ coming at the end of time. and there is the more personal promise of Christ coming into our lives and not just once but again and again. Part of what both meanings have in common is, we do not control God's timetable. Just as we do not know when the end of time and final judgment will be, we do not know just when Christ will meet us in our daily living.

From what Matthew tells us later in chapter 25, we learn we do not always recognize him, and that is probably because usually we are looking for Christ to come only to give us what we are asking for, but often, perhaps most of the time, the way God's grace comes into our lives is in the form of one who needs us.

This is not what we were expecting, but God's grace is often surprising in the way it comes. In responding to need with compassion we experience a special blessing. And even in the bad times, the painful times Christ comes offering what we need, not always what we want, but always what we need.

I suspect your experience has been like mine, and in times of trial, experienced the presence of Christ as never before. In the midst of sorrow and pain, people of faith often learn as never before what the scriptures are talking about when they refer to a peace that is beyond the world's understanding. And as people of faith discover that unique peace, they begin to experience the special joy the Gospel proclaims.

Recently in our Wednesday morning conversation we talked about some persons in this congregation who in the midst of hardship -- some of them dealing with physical pain and facing death -- live with a sense of joyful humility that refreshes and nourishes all who come near them. Whether they are aware of it or not, they are reflections of grace, revealing the joy of faithful living. The oil of faith, hope and love burn brightly in the lamps of their lives. They truly are the light of world, and the light they have to share is the light of the Gospel.

They are at the feast of heaven, whether they are aware of it or not. And I suspect some of these would be as surprised as those Jesus mentions later in chapter 25. “When was Christ present in our lives? When did our living reveal the Christ?” And we say to them: “When in the midst of all you are going through you still somehow, someway reached out in compassion to me.”

When the compassion revealed in Christ so invades the pain in our living that our self pity is overwhelmed and transformed into compassion for others. we experience the fruits of God's Spirit and joy is ours.

This is the way it is when our lives are truly wed with Christ --when we live under God's reign, when we live in the kingdom of God. This is when we sing the songs of joy, and our living is the dance of faith.

The Cantata, part 2

Pastoral prayer:
God, in this season of Advent, enable us to prepare ourselves for the various and surprising ways Christ comes among us. Forgive us when the chatter insider our heads make us deaf to the Word made flesh and dwelling in our midst. Forgive us when we are blinded by our fears and resentments and unable to see your grace at work all around us. Forgive us when we are so focused on what we want, we are unable to discern what you are trying to teach us. In this special season of preparation, open our eyes so that we see what must be done in our living for us to become the persons you intend us to be. Help us make the changes you see we need to make. This we pray in the name of the one who came, who comes and who will come, the one who taught us to pray: “Our Father ....

The Daily Study Bible, GOSPEL OF MATTHEW Volume 2 by William Barclay, Saint Andrew Press, 1965, pages 352-353.