THE TIME IS NOW
Author: Fr. J. Michael Byron
November 08, 2020
At the moment, I have two different warning lights that
appear every time I start up my car. They both lit up about a month ago.
One of them says, “Maintenance required”, which I’ve come to
believe means I need an oil change after 5000 miles.
The other one is simply an exclamation point, which could
mean anything. In the past I think I’ve
figured out that it has to do with tire pressure, and it lights up a couple of
times a year when the seasons change. But I can’t be certain about that.
And almost every day, I drive directly past the shop where I
have my car serviced, and I don’t bother to take the hour or so that would be
required to make those warning lights disappear. I’ll get to it someday, just not now.
And every day that I drive around with that exclamation
point glaring at me from the dashboard I am aware that something needs to be
done- that I am vulnerable to a malfunction of my car. There’s a certain low-grade anxiety about
that.
I’ve been warned. I
continue to be warned. But I am very
slow to respond. And the reason is that
I’ve owned the car for more than ten years now, and I’ve repeatedly driven it
around with the warning lights on, and nothing bad ever happens. It’s an attitude of “yes, yes, we’ll attend
to it someday, but I’m busy now”. Someday, that someday is going to come back to hurt me, and to prevent
my being able to get around. I’m vaguely
aware of that, but not yet to the point of being very reactive about it. I’d call it a kind of presumption on my part,
a sort of sluggishness.
And that is precisely what Jesus’s parable today in
the gospel of Matthew is alerting us to. There is a danger in being inattentive to what we’re being told about
the condition of our vehicles- and more importantly, about the condition of our
lives.
We should know that today’s second reading of St. Paul to
the Thessalonians and Matthew’s gospel were written decades apart from one
another, under very different circumstances in the young Christian churches.
Paul’s letter was written much earlier, when the general
expectation among believers was that Jesus would return to earth tomorrow or
next week, and there was widespread worry when it turned out that it didn’t
happen. People were dying, including the
1st Apostles and Christians wondered out loud whether there was any
hope for them.
Paul writes to reassure those troubled souls that the
faithful dead will rise again-in fact they will be the first to rise and to
join those who are still living, in an eternity of bliss with God.
By the time of Matthew’s gospel, though, the situation was
completely the opposite. It had become
clear to the Christians that Jesus’s final return was going to be long delayed,
and so the temptation was to believe that it didn’t matter so much how people
went about their daily lives & commitments- there would always be time.
Kind of like driving around town with an exclamation point
in front of you, but not really giving it too much attention. There will always be time enough, right?
Well, actually, No, there won’t be. And that’s the point. It’s why the warning light is glowing in the
first place, and why Jesus preaches as he does today.
He speaks about the ten virgins who are awaiting the
bridegroom in the night. Five of them
believe that there is some sort of urgency about their waiting, that they have
to be sure they are ready for what they can’t completely plan for.
They notice the exclamation point and make their decision
accordingly. They bring oil for their
laps.
And then there are those other five who don’t seem to be
very convinced that the warning lights matter. Maybe they have just been watching them for so long that they cease to
matter very much. There will always be
time to change, right?
But there won’t always be time to change. That time is now, and the place is here.
The Master, the Bridegroom, is going to return-and we can
either prepare ourselves for that great day or night by the decisions we make
each day about trimming our lamps and bringing along our oils, or not. Staying alert, or not. Being ready, or not.
As a practical matter, that means a daily dedication to
living the way that Jesus told us to do-or not. By paying attention to the suffering and vulnerable, the alien and the
orphan, the poor and the sick and the grieving. Or not.
Jesus in his parable today describes those unfortunate
virgins as “foolish” because they knew who and what was coming-sooner or later-
and they decided that it just didn’t matter, or that they knew better. They didn’t. And by the time they figured it out it was too late.
We-All of us are living in this precious time of “figuring
it out”. This is our moment to decide
for what we are to live-for ourselves, or for the gospel.
We’ve had a lot of deaths and funerals here at Pax in the
past couple of weeks. In some cases, it
has been a sudden end of life, and in others it has been a more gradual
movement in to eternity.
But in every case the cause of our hope has been the
decisions that these new saints made during the course of their lives. Here. Now. Among Us.
It’s been their “Yes” to God and to their loved ones that
has held our faith firm.
No, we didn’t save ourselves by our own good behavior, but
we certainly encourage one another by our virtue, our good example, our wisdom,
and by our trust in God.
Right now is our time. The Gospel of Jesus tells us that we have the option-today- to be wise
or to be foolish about how we prepare for the coming of the Lord.
We can notice the exclamation point in front of us every
day, or not. And we can choose to order
our lives around that, or not.
This is our challenge, and this is our call.
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