MT 25:31-46 

 Matthew in the margins…Reign of Christ / Christ the King…Revised 2017

No matter how we expect the Cosmic Son of Humanity to come in His glory as King we have to hold our expectation in tension with the Earthed Son of Humanity glorified by being named & crowned King on the cross. (JN makes this point strongly.)

But there’s more! There’s yet another tension. This self-same Incarnate, yet Cosmic, King has never left us (as He promised!) Physically, maybe, yes; but in the Person & Power of His Spirit, the Spirit of God, He’s always present tense among us. As He is, too, in the Person of those who say, Eucharist by Eucharist, “We are the Body of Christ” & get on with the job of being that Body in the world at large. Apocalyptic aspects of Christ’s reign may appeal. But lose sight of the crucified, glorified, Christ earthed in & among us by His Spirit & His people, & we lose the plot of God's agenda for Planet Earth - for humanity plus. 

Praying, as we do, “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” means embracing the Crucified King, serving the Raised Everyday King, & expecting the Apocalyptic King. It’s a package deal, or no deal at all! Many international folk tales, not necessarily from a Christian background pick up on the thrust of Jesus’ allegory Jesus; the Unknown who comes among the simplest of folk unrecognised & is either provided for or rejected.

The great attractiveness of the Kingship of Christ for me is the inclusiveness of His Rule. By God’s grace there is room in Christ’s Kingdom for a lot of people who might be thought unlikely candidates for finding a place at Christ’s right hand. Me for starters! The way we treat others especially those at the bottom of life’s pile, not least the persecuted, the poor, refugees & asylum seekers, & how we serve them, is a litmus test of the kind of Christ the King we believe in & serve. If we’re choosing the wrong kinds of leaders, & serving those same wrong leaders in wrong ways, we’re simply fulfilling Jesus’ teaching by proving ourselves to be more goats than sheep! Choose, at all costs, Christ as King above any other would-be contender. 

Though He speaks of judgment, Jesus makes clear we choose our own present & future state & fate. Christ reigns through us being little Jesuses to others or He doesn’t rule at all! More, when we feed the hungry Jesuses, give drink to the thirsty ones, welcome those who present as strangers, clothe the naked ones, minister to those who are sick, visit the ones imprisoned then we’re speaking Jesus’ language by doing it; for all who are marginalised. God's Rule always includes looking out for & looking after God's 'little ones'. Again, not to do that is to place ourselves at Jesus’ left hand rather than His right! Goat stuff! 

Is ‘everlasting punishment' anything other than choosing to live without the King of the Cosmos by choosing to live without the Crucified, Raised, Earthed One here & now? Who needs hell-fire & damnation (if that's your line) when such a fate looms? Speaking of looming, Christ the King’s Passion looms in the very next verses!

MT 25: 14-30 

Matthew in the Margins …24th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

The sums involved in today’s story are huge. Beyond the dreams of Jesus’ hearers & most of us, too. Like all good teachers, & Jesus is the best, He wants us to work out for ourselves what this story’s all about - just like the rest of His tales. A useful way to think of & explore parables is to discern them as being about the Kingdom, the Rule, of God. About how God’s Authority is respected & His Rule applied ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Let’s not go down the path of a ‘stewardship’ sermon; not in a monetary sense, anyhow! What we might call ‘Kingdom Stewardship’ takes us back to the fundamental nature of our human relationship with God. Every day of our lives needs to be a Stewardship Day in which we audit how well we’re using YHWH’s provision of life & love for us & make any modifications that show up as necessary.

It’s easy to lose our way in this process. We once had a neighbour selling up & moving lamenting he’d once buried a stash of money in his backyard, but now can’t find it! (He never did!) Is that what we sometimes do with the life God’s entrusted to us? Trust lies at the heart of this story; but for that kind of trust to work, it has to be a two-way love affair. What does God have to show for His trust in us? (Why not ask, also, What do we have to show for our trust in God?) Let’s not bury our hearts in our backyard sand & not be able to find them when we really need to dig them up!

The greatest gift God gives us is God-self; made inescapably & confrontingly human in the person of Jesus. Who spends His life, & indeed his death, loving & serving. As he still does by His Spirit. Does our spiritual audit reveal us walking in Jesus’ steps that far?

Many of us are good enough at managing physical assets of one kind or another. But how good are we at managing our spiritual assets? Whatever earthly interest we may have earned during our lifetime, the only interest that will count on ‘That Day’ is the spiritual interest on the love God’s invested in us & we in others. 

MT 25:1-13

Matthew in the Margins…23rd S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017    

Jesus is a great storyteller. The greatest. Life is a collection of stories. God’s & ours. After reading / hearing any story, in this case His story of the wise & unwise brides-maids, the question is, ‘But what happens next’? For the participants in the story, the answer lies within the story; all’s well that ends well for some, & poorly is as poorly does for others. The acid test of a Jesus story is always, ‘Where & how do we take it on from where He leaves off?’ 

Not long before, Jesus has been warning of the coming destruction of the Jerusalem temple & the inauguration of God's Rule consequent upon this. Eschatology, though, if not interpreted well enough can all too easily lead to faith becoming ‘pie in the sky in the sweet bye & bye’! Jesus Himself, though has already given us the necessary perspective when He tells us to pray for God’s Rule, God’s Authority with a Capital A, to be implemented ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The bridegroom is always present. Always inviting us to celebrate with Him now, not one day. We don’t have to wait for Him or anyone else to arrive in ‘the middle of the night’.

Jesus is careful to point out that all the bridesmaids trim their wicks. The foolish ones, however,  fail to see trimming a bit here & bit there can’t make up for the fact they’re out of oil. There’s a lesson for our spiritual life today here!

Think of our lives today being our ‘lamps’. Are we living them full of God’s Spirit, ’oil’, ready for anyone & everyone we need to be there for? Looking out for, looking after? There’s no such thing as being ‘half-full’ of Holy Spirit! When God fills, God fills! There are no half measures with God, nor does God settle for any half-measures on our part. If I’m right in exploring ‘oil’ as representing Holy Spirit, Jesus reminds us being half-full of Holy Spirit is a no-go! No use to anyone. Not just five unwise bridesmaids. If the five wise bridesmaids were to share their oil with the unwise ones, we’d end up with the whole ten bridesmaids with half-full lamps running out of oil. Their lamps would all be useless, leaving the bridal party, the community in total darkness. What kind of darknesses are our community living through today as a result of us or anyone else running low on, or running out of, the ‘good oil’, the God oil? 

Holy Spirit isn’t a commodity we can top up at our local church, or ‘revival centre’. The ‘good oil’, HolySpirit, is God’s own life He’s always sharing with those of us who know we need Him; with those ready & prepared to receive Him totally into the lamps of our lives to keep them filled.

Celebrating God’s being married to us all the hours of every day & every night is God’s wedding present to us; God’s own way of keeping our lamps alight & burning brightly for Him & each other.