Creekside Church Sermon of November 10, 2002 "Ready and Waiting or Going With the Flow?" Matthew 25:1-13	Rev. David Bibbee
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On the big day, a storm snows Punxsutawney in. The schools are closed. Murray wakes at 6:00 a.m. to the clock radio playing "I Got You, Babe" by Sonny and Cher. He goes downstairs for breakfast in the quaint old hotel, chats with the owner, and spends the rest of the day covering the festivities. At days end, he is exhausted and returns to the hotel and crashes for the night. He wakes at 6:00 a.m. to Sonny and Cher singing the same song. He has the same conversation with the owner and has the same breakfast as the day before. He runs into the same people in the same places and has verbatim conversations with them as he did twenty-four hours earlier.

It had to be a dream or something, but he woke the next morning at 6:00 a.m. to Sonny and Cher's same wake up call. Day three is a repeat of days one and two. And on and on it goes, day after day, the same day. He tries things each day to stop the cycle, but the new people he meets are drawn into it. His life becomes a dreadfully monotonous re-run. Having exhausted all the options, he decides to end it all, but he can't do that either because no matter what scheme he devises, he wakes at 6:00 a.m. to, "I Got You, Babe."

How would you respond if a single day of your life was on rewind…nothing to distinguish one day from another? The same place. The same people. The same conversations. The same experiences. Oatmeal for breakfast and meatloaf for supper, every single day? If we didn't have routine rhythms, and rituals, life would be a colossal bore. That being said, let's consider the numbing sameness of the days we live in.

One of the nice things about traveling around the country used to be the interesting differences from one community to another. Each had its own distinctive, unique character. But uniqueness is disappearing. We are becoming homogenized. The only way to tell one community from another is the sign at the corporation limit. If you have seen one mall you have seen them all. Everywhere you go there's a Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Lowe's, Home Depot, Ruby Tuesdays and TGI Friday's, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, Holiday Inn Express, Motel 6, and Super 8. We are exporting it overseas. From the Eiffel Tower you can see a Burger King. Next to the Pyramids, Golden Arches. Last Sunday, Bertha Rosales was telling me about the region in Mexico her family is from. "And by the way," she said, "There are Wal-Marts, McDonald's and KFC's."

"Nothing will be the same again," was a quote we heard often in the days following 9/11. One result of the horrendous attacks was greater church attendance. People knew that the answers and the resources necessary to cope with such a disaster was outside themselves. Churches in New York City were packed. But that was then. Things are getting back to normal. The churches are back to one-third full.

We are under an anesthetic. Life has a sameness to it that turns us into creatures of mass habit. We know what to expect. There will always be a next time…we think. As Christians we should know better. The present arrangements are not permanent. Life is fragile. Someone's car slips over the center line and a family is gone. You don't know if the morning kiss will be your last. We don't know what terrorists are scheming. We don't know when God will call our number and we will have to give an off-the-cuff accounting for the life we lived. "Today is gone. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one," I used to read to my then little children from Dr. Seuss, But is it so?

Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to ten maidens who took lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five were foolish. Five were wise. The foolish girls didn't bring extra oil. The wise girls did. The marriage custom of that day was for the bridegroom to come take his bride from her parent's home and escort her to his home. There was no honeymoon as we know it. They didn't go to Niagra Falls or the Bahamas. They remained in the groom's home for a week-long party during which the couple was treated like royalty.

The bridegroom's arrival was a dramatic moment. Everyone from six to sixty was to greet him and process to the bride's home. No written invitations were sent giving the exact time of his arrival. He would come whenever he pleased. Typical man. Rumor spread that he was coming, so the maidens went out to meet him, but he was delayed. Probably got lost. Typical man. They waited and waited, and dozed off. Then at the stroke of midnight he arrived and the procession began. But the lamps of the foolish maidens were flickering and fading. "Let us siphon some of your oil for our lamps." The wise maidens replied, "There's not enough. Get your own." The foolish girls looked all over for a place that was open. By the time they refueled the party was in full swing and the doors were closed. Now the bridegroom is addressed as Lord…"Lord, we're here! Open up!" they cried. But a voice inside replied, "Sorry, no latecomers. No exceptions."

"Watch, therefore," Jesus said, "For you know neither the day or the hour." The first Christians were ready. They were watching and waiting for what "they thought" was the swift return of Jesus. But the years turned to decades, and still no Jesus. The first generation Christians began to pass away. The it was the next generation of Christians who took their turn watching and waiting and waiting. There are limits to how long people can enthusiastically wait. Before you know it, two thousand years have come and gone. We don't watch or wait for midnight incursions of Jesus, the bridegroom, or anyone else. We don't have extra oil. Most of us don't even have lamps! One day just blurs into another, and the forecast for tomorrow is the same as today.

Life is so short, which makes life so urgent. We have precious little time to waste precious time. We have opportunities to say "Yes" to God. We have opportunities to add depth to our lives, opportunities to give and live for the sake of others. We have opportunities to experience the presence of Jesus in intimate ways. Opportunity knocks, but not all opportunities will keep knocking. Some knock just once and never again.

I heard a pastor tell of a man in his congregation who was elated at the birth of his son. It was such a moving experience that he stayed up late that night writing his son a letter describing the depth of awe and the love he felt. He wrote about their future, the wisdom that he had gleaned over the years of his life and would pass on to his son, the challenges that lay ahead and the promise to stand by his son's side, no matter what. He wrote about the love which would grow stronger as the years went by. He shared his faith in God and the hope that his son would one day embrace faith in Christ as the foundation of his life. He sealed the letter in an envelope marked, "To Michael on His Eighteenth Birthday," and stashed it in a safe place. The years flew by like a weaver's shuttle and on the eve of Michael's eighteenth birthday, his father retrieved the letter to give to Michael the next morning. That night, Michael was killed in an auto accident. The opportunity was gone.

John Greenleaf Whittier once wrote, "For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these-it could have been." Coulda', woulda', shoulda'. The job you coulda' taken, but didn't. The decision you woulda' made if it hadn't been so risky. The words you shoulda' spoken but couldn't bring yourself to say. The opportunities we have to allow Christ to be at work within us to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think (Ephesians 3: 20). We don't have all our lives to make up our minds. Don't believe Frank Sinatra in his song "My Way" where he sings, "Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention." Who's he kidding? Our problem isn't having too few regrets to mention, but having more than we can count!

The wise maidens were prepared. They didn't know when the bridegroom would come. Whether it was soon or late didn't matter. They had extra oil, and they refused to give it to the others, not because the wise were cruel, but because they couldn't. Some things can't be given away. The wise can't hand over their wisdom. There is no such thing as instant wisdom. The foolish maidens had nowhere to put it and wouldn't know what to do with it. Wisdom and spiritual insight come over time with experience and commitment and effort. No one can hand it to us. We can't live off the spiritual capital of others.

Do we mean it when we say we want God in our lives? Will we be prepared when God comes? Will we go with the flow, fail to recognize our opportunities and miss out on the party we could have attended?

I learned that years ago there was a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest. Unbeknownst to some of Charlie's best friends who were judges, Charley had secretly entered the contest. When the judging was completed, Charlie Chaplin came in third.

Hemmed in by Wal-Mart and McDonald's and lumped into the American majority, it's easy to go with the flow of conformity and fail to see whaqt is really real.

Bruce Larson tells of a little girl who walked through the midway of a county fair on its final day. She saw a grizzled guy selling birds. There were still some birds left in the cage. "What will you do with these birds after the fair?" she asked. In a callous tone he replied, "I guess I'll kill 'em. They ain't good for nothin', anyhow." His cruel plan gave her a saving idea. "What if I give you all the money in my piggy bank...can I have 'em?" "Depends," he said, "How much you got?" She hurried home and ran back with a sack full of coins. The man counted the quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies and said, "This is enough. I'll even throw in the cage."

The next morning the girl carried the birds to the edge of town into a field. She sat the cage on the ground and opened the door. "You're free! Fly away!" The birds looked at her and just sat clutching their perch. Captivity was all they had known. The door was wide open but they didn't know what to do with freedom. She shook the cage. The birds sat. She thumped it on the ground. They sat. She grew so frustrated that she kicked the cage and it went tumbling like a football fumbled by a Notre Dame running back. When it came to rest, the birds flew out the door in every direction…their first taste of freedom.

We could use a good cage rattling to wake us from our conformity and captivity, and instead, grasp the freedom of Christ which sets us free. It's our calling to rattle the world's cage and witness to the fact that there is more to life than people let on. There's more to life than the same old thing. God is builging a Kingsom. It's coming. We don't know when. All we know for sure is we must be prepared to watch, wait, and work for Christ because we know neither the hour or the day.

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