When the Lights Go Out

Scripture Lessons: 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18 and Matthew 25: 1-13 Sermon Title: When the Lights Go Out Preached on November 8, 2020 I asked Lynne Sloop, a great leader in our congregation, how she and her husband Bob had weathered the tropical storm that went through Cobb County week before last. Lynne said they were fine, but she was humbled, as losing electricity always seems to show her that she’s a little less self-sufficient than she thought she was. I liked that response. I could relate to it, because the same was true for us. We were fine, but we were humbled, because that tropical storm forced us to recognize that our lives are little luxurious compared to how our ancestors lived. My grandfather was raised in a place called the Caw-Caw Swamp. That’s in the low-country of South Carolina. He was born at home in their cabin, premature, so without a NICU to rush him off to, his mother had to make do. She heated bricks in the fire, made a pallet for him on the floor, and stacked the warmed bricks around him, making her own incubator without a hospital or even electricity. On the other hand, Friday before last, when I woke up in a dark house because the power was out, our automatic coffee maker didn’t have my coffee waiting for me like usual. That was hard for me to deal with. It only takes a power-outage to show me that not all my wicks are trimmed and burning. There’s not oil in all my lamps. In fact, there weren’t even batteries in all my flashlights, because I wasn’t expecting a storm to come, and I wasn’t ready. Were you ready? Not everybody is, and that’s part of the point with this parable from the Gospel of Matthew: Then 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. It sounds like this is the parable of the Boy Scouts. The ones who lived by that motto: “Be prepared,” were ready. They were wise. The ones who weren’t expecting the bridegroom to take so long were left in the dark, for they didn’t bring enough oil with them. However, maybe we should cut them some slack. For one thing, he didn’t tell them when he would arrive. Through this parable he’s telling us, “I’m coming. Be ready, but you don’t know the time or the hour.” Not knowing when does make his arrival hard to prepare for, only life is full of these situations where we walk into the unexpected. When that happens, some wind up looking prepared and some are caught on their heels. It’s been that way during the pandemic. Kroger sold out of dried beans and yeast. That’s good for them. On the other hand, Jack’s New York Deli is closed. I walked past their store front last Thursday morning and it makes me sad to think about how I’ll never again taste their outlaw sandwich or their French fries. What’s happened during this epidemic has changed our economy, and it seems as though some were ready and some were not. I was talking with Tom Clarke who manages investments for a living. Who would have thought that there’d need to be a business that allows people to have meetings at home? I don’t know who knew we’d need Zoom, but I can tell you, they’re rich right now, because those who end up prepared for unforeseen circumstances profit. Five of the bridesmaids had oil reserves, and we ought to be happy for them. In fact, we ought to be happy too, for all the ways our church was prepared for what we’re going through right now. Consider the cameras, lights, and all the livestream technology we have in this room. Looking back to when we asked you to fund the capital campaign to pay for all this stuff, surely some of you thought, “We’ll never need all that. Church on the internet? That sounds crazy!” In a way, it did to me too, but when the quarantine hit back in March, my parent’s church up in Bryson City, North Carolina, was busy trying to figure out how to livestream a worship service for the very first time. My dad was buying an iPad to stream the service and their preacher was all frustrated by being recorded. Me, down here in this place, I was like Benny Hinn. We already had it all together, and when it comes to the worship service, we never really missed a beat. The unexpected came, but we were ready, kind of like the wise bridesmaids. Then the city schools asked us if we’d be willing to help them distribute milk and produce out of our parking lot. A group of ladies started sowing facemasks. More than 200,000 pounds of food and more than 2,000 masks later I knew that we had become a church in a virtual world, still changing lives with faith, hope and love, but it was the love part that had me worried. It still does. Our church motto is, “changing lives with faith, hope, and love,” but it’s hard to love your neighbor if you don’t really know your neighbor. In this world that’s already pretty isolating, and now under a pandemic that mandates isolation, I’ve been worried about how well we could love each other, because there are a whole bunch of us who barely know each other. We asked these folks to become neighborhood group leaders. Some of them said, “I emailed my group, but none of them wrote me back.” Another said, “I called all ten households in my neighborhood group, but the first three I called all said they’re going to a different church.” That makes it hard. Only, think about how important it is to have connections. When the power went out one family in our church called their neighborhood group leader, who invited them to come on over and put everything from their freezer in hers. When the power goes out, it because clear, that we need each other. But not everyone has someone they can call, so Home Depot has a run on generators, which is fine, so long as Home Depot’s open. This is what happened in the parable: As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out and 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 had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came. Here’s the question that this parable demands we ask: were they foolish because they didn’t bring enough oil, or were they foolish because they ran off to the store in the middle of the night? Were they foolish because they weren’t prepared, or were they foolish because they panicked? Were they foolish because they looked within themselves and said, “I don’t have enough,” or were they foolish because they thought they could find what they needed to fill up their lack at the corner store? I tell you: the Light of the World is coming. You’re not going to need your lamp. Just don’t run away. He can bring light to all our darkness. Just don’t panic. Let him come. I feel sure that this isn’t really a parable just about self-sufficiency, because if we could make it through this life by hording enough to keep the lights on than what did Christ die for? If all that was required of a disciple was being ready for anything, then we should shut this church down and turn it into a discount mart for end of the world preppers. My friends, he died for us because he loved us before we were worthy of his love. He died to save us before we were worth saving. We baptize little infants because that’s what God’s love is like. We are all helpless, unprepared, broken down, and lost in the darkness. So, I say they were foolish, not because they weren’t prepared, they were foolish because they were ashamed. They responded to Christ, not with faith, but anxiety. The light of the world was running late, and they thought he’d reject them because they’re wasn’t enough oil in their lamps, but what does the light of the world need with an oil lamp? We get in so much trouble preparing for a feast, putting our houses in order, trying to look ready, that we keep out the one who could make us clean. I was walking around the neighborhood on election night and I saw, because I’m nosey enough to look in people’s windows, that one of my neighbors already has her Christmas Tree up. It’s as though we’re all getting ready early so we can still have the perfect Christmas, but I tell you this, you can buy out Hobby Lobby to deck your every hall, you can pressure your parents into coming into your house even though they’re afraid, you can push right through the wall of every restriction put on us to be more prepared for Christmas than you’ve ever been, but what are all your preparations compared to the reality that the Son of God is born unto us? The foolish ones were worried about their oil, but the wise ones didn’t even need to use it, because this God of ours is at work among us, so stop trying so hard to make things perfect. You don’t have to. Stop trying so hard to make Thanksgiving special. It already is, so don’t miss out on the whole thing by running back and forth to Kroger. There are moments in life that we miss for trying to be completely prepared. Think about how hard people work to get ready for new babies. Every father spends so much time rushing back and forth to Baby’s Are Us, it seems like the baby could be walking before the nursery’s finished. I read a great article about thankfulness. The author confessed: In my house, as I am sure it is with many others, conversation, as well as anxiety and flat out worry, surrounds the questions about how are we going to reenact all of our Holiday traditions? Can we gather with family and friends? Will we all wear masks right up until the Thanksgiving Turkey is carved and then eat our dinner, keeping appropriate distance from one another? Will we be able to have Christmas Eve Worship without holding our lit candles while we sing Silent Night with our church family? And pretty quickly we find that we have a knot in our stomach that we can’t untie, and our frustrations and anxiety grow with every passing moment. We can’t be ready. We can’t be perfectly prepared, so just be present. God has this under control, so take a breath. Back to the storm: our power was out. It was on and off for a couple days. There was a great big tree leaning on our power line. However, there were so many other emergencies to deal with, it took two days for the truck to pull up and start working on it. First it was three of them walking down our road. I saw the tallest of the three, pointing up at the trees to the other two. It really looked like this guy knew what he was doing. After a while, I walked down there to watch, and that tall guy walks up to me, looking at me like he’s trying to place my face. “What do you do for a living?” he asked. I didn’t know why he was asking. Did he need more help? Did I look like I could handle a chainsaw, or was he ready for me to get out of the way? “I’m a preacher,” I told him. “At First Presbyterian church?” he asked. It turns out this man, who’s crew got our power back on goes to church with us every Sunday on Facebook. His name is Steve Graham. He’s married to Janet, who I met at a Civitan meeting with Elizabeth Manning, and there we were, standing in the street, face to face. I kept on thanking him for getting our power back on. Guess what he said, “You just keep preaching. You don’t know how much good that does me. I’m glad to repay the favor.” There is plenty of light out there in the world. So, stop trying so hard to make it perfect, don’t try to make this year just like last year, and don’t give up because it’s not how you imagined it would be. Instead, rest and wait as you are, and let him do what he does best. For when the lights go out, the light of the world shows up. Amen.