They were called "e-cavers."  Two people, a young man and a young woman, put up in separate apartments in New York City by ABC's Good Morning America show this past week.  The apartments were totally unfurnished and the only things each of the e-cavers was given was a computer and a credit card. They were not allowed to leave their apartments for the week and were responsible for providing for themselves everything they needed by ordering it over the Internet and having it delivered to their doorstep.  It was hardly a gripping drama.  But, it was an interesting demonstration of how it is possible to conduct nearly all of the affairs of basic living these days by doing not much more than a little clicking on a computer keyboard.   Beyond acquiring basic necessities like food, clothing and home furnishings, one of the e-cavers was able to arrange an in-home massage and the other was able to get his teeth cleaned by a house-calling dentist.  But, when it was all said and done, it was just an experiment.  At the end of the week, each of the e-cavers emerged from their artificial world to return to their real lives with nothing lost or gained.  No consequences good or bad for any of the choices they made.  Just two people spending someone else's money like there was no tomorrow and the bill would never come.  In some ways, they lived for one week like some people live their whole lives.  And, Jesus devoted no small amount of His preaching time warning against living like that.

The text we read this morning contains one of a set of five parables Matthew recorded in which Jesus warns us that life is not an experiment.   All of us have been provided with whatever God saw fit to give and how we appropriate and use it is of ultimate moral and spiritual consequence.  So, Jesus is saying, this world is moving toward a moral and spiritual conclusion.  And, second, Jesus said, the God who created this world will bring it to that conclusion in act of judgment in which we will face the moral and spiritual consequence of our choices.  Specifically, to face the consequence of our choice to respond or not respond in faith to what we knew of the God who created us and revealed Himself to us in the person of Christ.

To say the least, this end-of-time conversation is gaining a lot of steam right now.  Only forty-seven days away from the beginning of the new millennium, some people are not behaving much better than our much less well educated and informed forefathers of 1,000 years ago by actually connecting the days on the calendar with the purposes of God.   So called Christian videos and books that do nothing more than play on people's fears about the end of the world are selling like hotcakes.  Almost certainly, someone somewhere has already preached a sermon this morning connecting the second coming of Jesus with the earthquake in Turkey this past week.  So, let me state clearly what I believe Jesus was trying to teach us.  Jesus was saying, in this parable and throughout the New Testament record we have of what else He said, that God's timing with regard to what we call the end of time has to do exclusively with His moral purpose in creation and redemption and not our chronological measurement of history.

In the context of this specific parable, Jesus was further warning us about the responsibility we bear because we know that.  The first thing He really says in this parable is that there is never a good time not to be ready to face God.  Jesus' word, not mine, for those who live as though there is no moral or spiritual consequence is "foolish."

It's difficult for us to appreciate the emotional intensity of a first-century Palestinian wedding the likes of which forms the background for Jesus' parable.  Suffice it to say, in Jewish culture in that day, there was hardly a higher moment than a wedding.   People were excused from work and even from their normal religious duties.  It somewhat reminds me of the way in which a little rural community in which I was once a pastor responded to the death of one of its citizens.  No matter whether the person was Baptist or Methodist or nothing, everything came to a halt during the funeral.  You couldn't buy a gallon of gas or a gallon of milk during the services because the funeral was a community affair.  So it was in Jesus' day with weddings.  There was, however, a major difference between weddings then and now.

In modern weddings, everything revolves around the entrance of bride.   Nothing happens until she comes down the aisle.  I don't know how things got so confused like that, but, there you have it.  The groom enters with the few friends he could find who were loyal enough to rent a tux at their cost and everyone just keeps their seat.   His presence only announces that someone really special is about to enter.  And, when she does, everyone stands and turns to give her their undivided attention.  In Jesus' day, it was the other way around.  Nothing happened until the groom appeared and took the bride from her father's home to his.  But, when, at his leisure, he did appear, everything happened.  "'Look, here is the bridegroom, come out to meet him,'" someone announces.  And, Jesus likens the coming of God in judgment to that moment in a Jewish wedding.

At a time unknown even to Him, Jesus claimed in Matthew 24:36, God's purposes for creation as we know it will have been accomplished and He will bring it to the spiritual conclusion for which it was destined from the first.  And, because it is a time known only to God, there is no time known to man that is a good time not to be ready.  "Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour," Jesus warns.  The standard by which Jesus defines the difference between wisdom and foolishness is the degree to which a person accepts his or her responsibility for being ready to meet God as though He would appear any minute.  So, a simple way to hone the practical edge of this parable to a fine point is to reflect in this direction.  If you are living this moment as though at midnight tonight or at any minute between now and then you would meet God then, according to Jesus, you are a wise person.  If, however, you are living this moment as though you would have even one more in which to alter the course of your life, then, according to Jesus, you are, in the truest sense of the word, a fool.

Sometimes life can get to feeling like one big junk drawer full of unfinished projects.  We no sooner get one thing done than another presents itself as most urgent.  About the time you figure out how to raise a ten-year-old you find yourself dealing with someone who is thirteen now and not ten anymore and you don't know how to do thirteen yet.  Just about the time you finally get over your sixteen-year-old driving for the first time you have to watch her pulling away from the chapel with that ugly thing she fell in love with and who promised you nothing more than grandkids.  And, just about the time you finally figure out how to make money it's time to retire.   It never ends.  Or, so it seems.

Jesus said it does end.  And, when it does, whether any of these projects, large or small, with which you've occupied the days of your life is accomplished, the only thing that will matter is whether you are ready to meet God.  If you are ready to meet God at any point along the line then, despite how miserable you may feel you are at raising kids or making money or getting ready for retirement, you have discovered the essence of true wisdom.  And, if you are not ready to meet God this very moment, then no matter how well vested your 401K is, you are, in the truest sense of the word, bankrupt.

But, what really focuses the meaning of this parable for me is what seems almost like a footnote in it.  When the bridegroom's coming is announced the five foolish virgins go to their wiser friends and beg for relief from their foolishness.  Having pleaded, "'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out,'" they only hear words of rejection that must have felt like icicles of fear, "No . . . go . . . and buy some for yourselves."  Jesus wasn't putting those words in that parable just for filler.  He was making a point.  And, His point was that wise people not only factor their responsibility for being ready to meet God at any moment into every day they live, they also know that they alone are responsible for that responsibility.  Jesus used the dilemma of the five foolish virgins to make the point that there is no such thing as borrowed integrity.

You can borrow a lot of things.  You can borrow sugar and you can borrow money.  And, you can borrow more than that.  When you have to, you can borrow courage for a while.  I once asked a friend how he had survived years ago when his little boy died of congenital heart disease.  His one word response was, "friends."   When tragic loss had sucked everything that meant anything out of his life his friends came to his aide and, for a while, he lived off of their hope until his hope came back.  You can do that, sometimes, for a while.  But, one thing you cannot borrow, even for one moment, is the responsibility you singularly bear for your own relationship with God.

I heard this past week of a family that won a judgment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars against a golf course.  It turns out that they had knowingly built their house on the course but grew weary of all the golf balls that kept dropping in unannounced and ruining their privacy.  What does one do with such a terrible dilemma?  Make someone else pay, of course!  Despite the fact that they had to know that, when one builds his house where people swing clubs at little white balls, one is, of course, occasionally going to veer off course, they found a judge and jury that agreed that they weren't responsible for being irresponsible in their choice of places to live.  What is this world coming to when even golf courses can be held responsible for someone else's stupidity?

It happens at church, too.  One of the reasons for the current increase in popularity of preachers who reduce complex truth to simple black and white terms couched almost exclusively in fundamentalist theology with timelines drawn on chart boards to show when God is going to do what is because people like to try to borrow faith they don't have.   In a world that is appearing to fall apart more than it ever has in the history of man if you can at least go to church where the preacher has it all figured out then, for one hour a week, you can feel better by vicariously titling at windmills through him without ever actually altering the course of your life.  Even if your life is a spiritual train wreck, it somehow makes you feel better if you at least subscribe to and endorse the wisdom of another who is good at pretending he's never even seen a wreck much less been in one.  If for example, marriages are falling apart faster than ever, well, let's just get back to the good old days and keep those women submissive!

Wise people carry their own Bible to church, listen to the preacher and then make responsible choices for what they will believe in light of what the Holy Spirit reveals to them through the gathered community of faith called the church.  Wise people know that no one else is ultimately responsible for what they choose to believe.  Wise people know that no one else can live their lives for them or be held be responsible when they fail to live as they should.  Not their parents.  Not their friends.  Not even their preacher.  Not even God.

So, here is the responsibility factor.  You are being responsible when you are so ready to meet God He could have called you to judgment ten minutes ago and it wouldn't have been too soon.  And, you are being responsible when you stop expecting anything of anyone else before you choose to be responsible.

Now, answering the question of what it means to get ready to meet God is probably the most intensely personal issue you'll ever face.  In some ways, it means different things to different people.  "Trimming your lamp" may involve some unfinished business.  Like offering some forgiveness to someone who has hurt you.  Or, it may involve unconfessed sin.  We all have some things in our spiritual junk drawer that ought to be cleaned out.  But, for all of us, getting ready to meet God has to do with knowing the answer to this question, "Does God know you?"  Too often we define salvation exclusively in terms of whether we know God or not.  This parable makes us look at it the other way.  Does God know you?  If He doesn't, you're not ready to meet Him.

This past week in El Paso I ran into an old friend I had not seen in over ten years but who knew Cliff Temple's history.  He was telling me a story about something J. Earl Mead once said, as best I could gather, to a group of ministers.  Dr. Mead said that what tends to happen when a man goes to a church is that, at first, he loves everyone and his circle of acceptance is big.  But, then, someone offends him and he sets them outside his circle and draws it tighter.  Then, someone else offends and he sets them outside his circle and draws it tighter.  Before long, his circle is so small it only includes him and he has to move.  Then, Dr. Mead moved in for the kill with these words, "Keep the circle big, boys."

As I see it, God has drawn His circle big.  Big enough for the whole world.  It includes everyone.  Too often we think of judgment as being when God sets people outside His circle.  In fact, no matter who you are or what you've done, God's circle still includes you.  However, according to the parable Jesus has told us, it is possible for someone to choose to set themselves outside God's circle.  You can do that.  God has drawn His circle big enough to include you.  But, whether you choose to be in His circle is your responsibility and no one else's.

What in the world will you do about that?