The closer Browning Ware got to his own death three weeks ago, the more curiosity seekers wanted to know what he saw.  This is what he wrote in response to their inquiries as he peered around what he called “life’s last limiting corner.”  “I don't observe as much detail as some of my friends would prefer.  I have no magic vision of my future beyond death.  I trust my traveling companion, Jesus.  He promised to be with me.  He is enough.  But, my friends return and press their questions:  What do you want your best, your last thoughts to be?  This is my answer:  I want to be present, as fully present as is possible, to what is happening around me and within me.  I desire no special exemptions, but simply the pleasure of answering ‘Present’ when my name is called.  (Some) want to die suddenly in an accident or to die quietly in their sleep.  I want to be there when it happens!”  (Keith Herron, “Remembering Browning Ware:  The Gaze from Death’s Door,” EthicsDaily.com, November 8, 2002)

The closer Jesus got to the end of his first coming, the more curiosity seekers wanted to know what he saw.  Earlier, his disciples asked him exactly what the end of time would look like and when it might be.  In response to their inquires, he told a series of parables.  If you put all that Jesus said together you still can’t put a date on the calendar or even know a great deal of detail about what that day will look like.  In the end, Jesus basically said, “Don’t spend any energy trying to learn what you can’t know, like when that day will be.  Give your attention instead to making certain that you are there whenever it is, that you are able to answer ‘Present’ when your name is called.”

That’s what I hear Jesus saying in this parable as he associates the end of time as we now know it with his second coming.  Too often we tend to think of the end of time in ominous ways; Jesus describes it here in terms of a wedding banquet, a party, a time of celebration and hope.  He comes to the end of it all to drive home this point.  The only way to make certain you don’t miss the party is to spend your energy living in this moment.  “‘Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.’”  Here is a simple formula for living in anticipation of Jesus’ second coming.  No matter when that moment we can’t yet know does arrive, if we are living in the only moment we can know, if we are living in this moment each and every moment, we won’t miss it no matter when it is.

We are preparing, even now, to celebrate Jesus’ coming.  Just this week, I was walking out of a mall and there, at the exit, sat the Salvation Army bell ringer.  There is only one time of year I hear that bell.  Its distinct ring reminds me of the season and that it’s time to get ready.  I remarked to Nancy that I’ve never seen the bell ringer this soon before Christmas.  She said, “If he waits any longer, it will be too late.”  Is it too early, today, to begin thinking about Jesus’ coming?  This text asks us to think about whether we are ready.  Over the next few weeks, as we are preparing to celebrate Jesus’ first coming, I’d like for us to spend some time thinking about what it means to get ready for Jesus, whenever he comes, by living in this moment. 

Jesus told this parable to remind us that too many of us are like the foolish bridesmaids.  The wise bridesmaids were the ones who were so ready for the bridegroom’s coming that, even when they were awakened from a dead sleep, they were ready.  The foolish bridesmaids are those who live as though they’ll always have another moment than the one they’re living in right now, to get ready for Jesus, whenever he comes.  This is not about the foolishness of procrastination as much as it is about the tragedy of living in any other moment than the only one we have.  Why do we do that?  How do we do that?  That’s what I’d like to spend the next few weeks exploring with you.

What is it that keeps us from living in this moment?  Is it guilt over some long ago sin?  Is it fear of what might happen down the road, some other day?  The simple answer is, yes.  It’s those and more.  Anxiety, greed, fear and even wishful anticipation of better days, all can be distractions from living in this moment, the only moment we have.  Some people have no memory of Christmas being a happy time.  They remember sitting under the Christmas tree opening their presents to the background noise of their parents fighting in another room over who spent too much buying their toys.  Or, they remember last Christmas all too well because they’re still paying for it.  Out of fear, they bought the people they love more they could afford.  Either way, they keep missing Christmas each year because they can’t escape memories of Christmases past.  Or, they walk through a mall fantasizing the day when they’ll finally make enough money to be able to buy anything they want, nothing held back.  Remembering what once was or dreaming of what might yet still be, they do anything but live in the only moment they have, and miss the party while it’s happening. 

Speaking of parties, let’s cut to the chase in this parable.  In spite of all the ways Jesus could have used, he asks us to think of him like a bridegroom.  It’s not the only time we’re asked to think of Jesus in those terms in scripture.  What do bridegrooms bring to weddings?  A ring?  A commitment?  A passionate desire to be with the one they love more than themselves forever?  Is that how Jesus is asking us to think of him?  What do you think Jesus is saying?  Is it possible that Jesus is saying that, when he comes a second time, he won’t be bringing anything different than what he brought the first time? 

We are promised about Jesus’ first coming, “‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (John 3:17).’”  Has anything changed?  Is the bridegroom coming to bring, at his second coming, something different than he came to bring at his first?  Every Wednesday at noon our senior adults meet for Bible study.  Lately, we’ve been working through this marvelous text.  “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.  And, he has committed to us the message of reconciliation . . ..  God made him who knew no sin be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17-19, 21, NIV).”

Recently, I was visiting with a person who apologized for not coming to me sooner, as his pastor, with his problems.  I told him he owed me nothing, much less an apology, and that I understood perfectly well.  Too often, the last people on the planet we want to know about how well our lives aren’t going are the people at church, especially “the preacher.”  This is the place we’re supposed to be good, isn’t it?  This is the place we come to listen to “the preacher” preach to us about how bad it is to be bad and how to be good, right?  Hear the good news!  Ours is the message of reconciliation, the message that God was in Christ, not keeping score.  Do you know what that means?

When I was at Hardin-Simmons University I made a very bad grade one semester in a class I should have aced, considering my major.  It was a really bad grade.  If you think I’m going to tell you what it was, think again.  It wasn’t just a bad grade during the semester.  It was the final grade that went on the transcript for all to ever see who might ever care to look, like future churches who might want to call me as “the preacher” so I could tell everyone every Sunday how bad it is to make bad grades in life and leave them for all to see, you see?  If you knew how to access my personal records at HSU, you could see the bad grade I made.  It’s there forever.  The day someone is reading the 23^rd Psalm over my casket, that grade will still be there.  I have a record.  It’s permanent. 

But, according to scripture, if someone knew how to access my record of sin in that great big filing room in the sky somewhere, what they would find is that there is no record.  It’s gone, forever!  I’ve spent my whole life trying to be good or make up for not being good enough.  I’ve taken more than I can ever pay back, broken more than I can ever fix, hurt more than I can ever heal and they’re aren’t enough ways of saying “I’m sorry.”  And, that’s where I’d be forever stuck, with a transcript full of all the bad grades I’ve made, were it not for what God has done, is doing, in Christ.  What God was doing when he sent Jesus the first time, by faith, becomes the present tense power for living in this moment.  He is still doing it. 

God made Jesus who knew no sin to be my sin for me.  That means, with God, I have no record and never will.  I’m feeling like Martin Luther King standing in front of the Lincoln memorial, the one human being who did more than anyone to set black Americans free.  I’m standing at the foot of the cross, singing, shouting and celebrating, I’m free at last, free at last!  Thank God almighty, through Jesus, I’m free at last! 

Jesus didn’t come to tell us how to be good and to condemn us for failing to do so.  He came, first, and he’ll come again, to tell us how much we are loved.  That’s what bridegrooms do at weddings.  They come to announce their love and to commit their love forever.  If the primary thing God was telling us in Christ was, “Be good,” we’d have to spend all our days hiding from our past and hiding from each other for fear of being found out or dreaming of a day when we might finally be good enough.  The truth is, our only hope of living in this moment now or of ever being good is on the other side of discovering that we are loved, whether we’re ever good enough or not. 

My friend couldn’t come to me when his life fell apart because he thought my job was to shame him for being bad and to tell him to be good.  You know the song.  “You better watch out.  You better not cry.  You better not pout, I’m telling you why.  The preacher sees when you are sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”  That’s my job isn’t it?  To tell you that every Sunday, one way or another, be good!  That’s my job, right?  Wrong! 

My first job, my primary job, according to Holy Scripture, is not to tell you to be good but to tell you first, and last, that you are loved!  That, in Christ, you are forgiven.  Past tense, present tense, future tense.  “Christ . . . suffered for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18),” the only One who is truly good.  Once is all takes.  One Father through One child for all His children for all sin for all time. 

The bridegroom is coming.  The party’s about to begin.  As a matter of fact, it already has! 

Care to join us?