Sermon Notes for Nov. 12-I Thes. 4, Mt. 25:1-13

Nov. 12-Josh 24  abad= worship and serve-reaffirm recommit

Grief -death-as we close the church year, our readings move toward  as the end-end times-close of the story-

I Thes 4:13 Herron-two thousand years later, we continue to look for signs that can assure us that God has not forgotten us, that we will not be 'left behind', that we will not be separated forever from those who have already died.  perhaps all we really need is simply the assurance that the power and the promise described by that scenario is real. How do we know this is real, real enough to offer us the hope we need to get by each day?

Lewis- the union of those who have died with those who mourn their passing, hama which means "at the same time" or "together" and the preposition syn ("with"), recalls verse 14, "God will bring with him those who have died," and will be used again at the end of the verse, "and so we will be with the Lord forever." All will be "snatched up" ("seize," "carry off") toward a meeting with the Lord in the air. This is about comfort (parakaleō), , what the Lord provides and will provide even in his absence, the function of apocalyptic,- vision of consolation, he locates the act of consolation within the community as an ongoing (present imperative) expression of hope.-.Through these small things, lived day by day, the power and presence of God becomes real, as real as Christ coming down out of the sky, and offers me hope to face each new day with courage.

Mt 25:1-Saunders With whom do we identify in a story? The girls’ pleas for entrance are met with a stone cold rebuke from the groom: “I don’t know you.” The door stays shut. Sometimes, we shut the door ourselves and never notice that we can enter into god’s realm. As we have nodded and laughed at the foolish maidens, we too became fools.We forget about God. We are no more ready for this ending than the girls. We realize that, like them, we are vulnerable, out of touch with the time, sleeping through life, busy, busy, busy, thinking everything is okay. We may have identified with the wise maidens, but now we know that we, too, are on the other side of the door.This is what the kingdom of heaven is like?

Yes. The point of the parable is not to confirm our comfortable sense of insiders and outsiders, righteous and unrighteous, wise and foolish, but to move us to a place where we have the possibility of discovering once again our common humanity.Wise and foolish reside in each one of us. More than this, God’s coming can never be timed (Matthew 24:42-44, 50). God, in fact, is always coming to us, but never on our terms, according to our calendar, or in line with our expectations.

They are merely the first to stumble and sleep their way through the advent of God’s reign. But at the end of this Gospel, Jesus promises to be with them, with us, nonetheless. The crucified and risen Lord of all creation is already here with us -- always with us -- but we greet him by  weeks-Readers today may find themselves secretly sympathetic to the foolish maidens.  To live in vigilance means for the disciples to do the tasks that they have been appointed to do in preparation for the Master's coming. In Matthew's Gospel, those tasks include being prepared so we can be welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned (25:31-46), and making disciples in all the world (28:19-20).