Matthew 25:1-13
“The Waiting Place…”

One of my favorite children’s books is “Oh, the Places you’ll go!” by Dr. Seuss. The Book starts with these words, “Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!” For a child, these are words of great excitement, promises and many possibilities. Dr. Seuss goes on to write about just how you can do this and do that with your brains, legs, hands, will so on and so forth. But somewhere right in the middle of the book he gets to the reality of the adult world, put very plainly as “The Waiting Place……for people just waiting.” I like the way he uses the most mundane aspects of our lives to tell the story of our deep anxiety and confusion in “The Waiting Place..” He writes,

…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.”

And just as the child reading the book might become a little burdened by the picture of reality, he writes, “NO! That’s not for you! Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing.”

We have been hearing the glorious message of God’s Kingdom come within and amongst us. The message of the Kingdom of heaven with all its excitement and promises, where the impossible is the norm, is what Jesus came preaching 2000 years ago. Yes indeed! and we have been reading and hearing in the last few weeks about that great Kingdom where there will be a fair and living wage for all; Where tenants live and take responsibility as partners with the landowner; where healing is not just superficial but transformational; where broken-ness becomes incubators of God’s presence and glory; where the oppressed and the outcast find empowerment and acceptance; where there is peace, joy, love and true justice; and above all where everyone will recognize and embrace the other as ones’ own brother or sister because we have understood the meaning of being God’s own sons and daughters. But like the reality in Dr. Suess’ book, before we get to where the Boom Bands are playing, there is The Waiting Place. We are in that waiting place in our pilgrimage toward God, our Father and our Lord. Waiting for prayers to be answered, waiting for wounds to heal, waiting for an ear to listen to us, waiting for a pair of arms to embrace us, waiting for a pair of eyes to recognize us, waiting for our church to grow, waiting for giving and involvement to increase in our church, waiting for the so called right vision, waiting for the so called right leader, waiting to hear and see God. Waiting is the unavoidable truth about our spiritual journey with God. However, the waiting that God calls us to is not one of inaction, rather it is a waiting characterized by preparation. It is more like the waiting we experience when we are expecting someone important to come.

There were ten bridesmaids given the same instructions, given the same invitation and the same vision. But five of them decided to ignore the most obvious resource needed to keep the lamps burning and ready for the wedding feast. Their foolishness and ultimately their inability to join the wedding lay not in them having gone to sleep, but in their flippant attitude toward that very important responsibility of being called to be bridesmaids.

To be the needed light for the bridegroom’s coming was the one single responsibility given to these ten young girls. But, only half of them chose to take it seriously enough to be prepared and ready for the time whenever they would be called to join the wedding. The wise ones knew they must have enough oil to keep the lamps burning for as long as they were needed to do so, not only in the waiting room, but also enough to shine at the wedding feast.

Taking for granted that just because we are Christians assures our place with God in His Kingdom is a foolish and maybe even a dangerous thing. While we wait for the time when we shall see God face to face, He has give us one very important task, and that task is to be the light in the waiting room. We may have to be in the waiting room for a long time, and so there is all the more reason to take that flask of extra oil to make sure we keep the light shining. Our oil for the lamp is our prayers, our faith, our involvement in the suffering of others, our hospitality toward strangers and the destitute, it is our fellowship with those who are lonely and rejected, and it is our witness of the Savior who has given us a spirit of love and joy.

Today we welcome Xiangmin as one of our members, but he is first and foremost marked as God’s redeemed child as he publicly confesses and shows us in this baptism that he indeed believes that Christ is his Savior into a new and transformed life. Xiangmin, as you begin your new life with Christ, your life will be marked with plenty of waiting, my prayer for you today is for that waiting to be defined by faith in a God full of love, a God who is faithful, a God who calls you and all of us to be a light for others in the long waiting halls of our life. Amen.