{"id":969,"date":"2014-10-12T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=969"},"modified":"2019-11-05T11:55:39","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T16:55:39","slug":"the-long-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/10\/12\/the-long-wait\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Wait"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew 25:1-13<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only<\/a><\/p>\n

Trimmed Lamps<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dilemma of today\u2019s parable is the dilemma of our very lives.\u00a0 Much of life is a long wait.<\/p>\n

Our gospel has made use of a story known elsewhere in antiquity (Bultmann, HST, loc.cit).\u00a0 The power of the wedding, as you know from other parts of Holy Scripture, stood at the very pinnacle of experience and religious teaching, in antiquity.\u00a0\u00a0 Here the gospel writer has appended a (very noble) encouragement to watchfulness, to a parable re-arranged near the end of the first century of the common era.<\/p>\n

Our more trustworthy manuscripts include the bride, too, \u2018ten maidens\u2026went to meet the bridegroom and the bride\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0In fact, nowhere in antiquity do maidens await the bridegroom.\u00a0 They await the bride.\u00a0 That is why we call them bridesmaids.\u00a0 They attend the bride, and especially in the great exultation of the translation from home to home, from parents to spouse, like the sun rising from the eastern heavens, daily, the bridegroom with the bride runs the course with joy.<\/p>\n

So, why has the writer eliminated the bride?\u00a0 He does so to make the parable fit the church\u2019s biggest spiritual disappointment, keenly and painfully suffered by 90ad.\u00a0 Christ was risen from the dead which must mean the end of time which must mean his return in power and glory which must mean the soon and very soon parousia, the coming of the Lord.\u00a0 But 30ad became 50ad and 50ad became 70ad and 70ad became 90ad.\u00a0 And the bridegroom (here shorn of bride clearly a figure of Christ) delays.<\/p>\n

The original parable is not about awaiting the return of Christ, more about this later in the great and glorious gospel of John, but about living through a long wait. The maidens, the bridesmaids, some prepared and some not, all have to wait.\u00a0 And it is a long wait.\u00a0 And that is just the point.<\/p>\n

You may think of a woman waiting to give birth.\u00a0 You may think of a population, long enslaved, waiting for justice to roll down like waters.\u00a0 You may think of a war torn region, the setting for endless decades of mayhem and war and violence, waiting for the dawn of peace.\u00a0\u00a0 You may think of a doctoral student waiting for that final report, the dissertation is finished.\u00a0 You may think of a denomination waiting the wisdom to affirm the full humanity of gay people now recognized across nearly three dozen states.\u00a0 You may think of those afflicted and infected with a deadly virus awaiting a vaccine for healing.\u00a0 You may think of a man hoping for a job and daily awaiting a letter.\u00a0 You may think of a physician attending a patient suffering from a mental illness, hoping against hope for a delayed cure.\u00a0 You may think of a lonely woman, a tithing Christian, waiting for a pastor to leave off further libraries and degrees and come to her church, and come to her house, and make a visit, and say a prayer.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the full range of doctrine and teaching in Christianity convinces you, surely, at least at this point, you would admit its congruence with your experience.\u00a0 Faith and life both are a long wait.<\/p>\n

How shall we trim our lamps for the wait?\u00a0 The parable moves quickly to the importance of preparation.\u00a0 A little patience?\u00a0 A little persistence?\u00a0 Oil for the lamps during the long wait.<\/p>\n

Patience and Persistence<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Patience.\u00a0 The patience of Job.\u00a0 Patience is a virtue. Love, joy, peace, patience.\u00a0 Patient in suffering.<\/p>\n

Persistence.\u00a0 Persistent prayer.\u00a0 Persistence as insistence.\u00a0 To exist is to persist. Labor omnia vincit.\u00a0 The persistence of Paul.<\/p>\n

The life of faith, the spiritual life, carries us down into the caverns of experience.\u00a0 Our steadiness in faith, our reliance on faith, are most clear to us when everything else is murky, misty, dark and dank.\u00a0 Faith is only faith when it is all you have left.<\/p>\n

Two registers of the spiritual life, the life of faith, down in the declivities and caves of time, are patience and persistence.\u00a0\u00a0 Over the course of a week, or a year, or a lifetime, one needs both.\u00a0 You need both.\u00a0 You need both the passive receptivity of patience and the active resistance of persistence.<\/p>\n

One is the brake pedal.\u00a0 That is patience.\u00a0 You are careening down hill.\u00a0 Your plan, your work, your friendship, your marriage, your profession are going south.\u00a0 You need a way to put a foot on the brakes, to slow the decline, to ease the demise.\u00a0 Patience can help you to do that.\u00a0 One day at a time.\u00a0 Sleep on it.\u00a0 Things will look better in the morning.\u00a0 Patience is your way of managing the rolling ride down hill.<\/p>\n

The other is the accelerator, the gas peddle.\u00a0 That is persistence.\u00a0 You are looking uphill.\u00a0 The climb is before you and the incline daunting.\u00a0 Your plan, your work, your friendship, your marriage, your profession are all in the balance, nothing is for sure, nothing is taken for granted.\u00a0 You can rest, but later.\u00a0 Now you need to put the peddle to the metal and climb the hill.\u00a0 Slow and steady wins the day.\u00a0 Keep on keeping on.\u00a0 One step at a time.\u00a0 Persistence is your way of empowering the grinding ride up hill.<\/p>\n

Both patience and persistence are underrated virtues.\u00a0 They shy away from the lime light.\u00a0 They don\u2019t do well in the bright light.\u00a0 But for your faith to quicken and to continue, you will need both patience and persistence.\u00a0 For sustenance, energy, endurance in the long wait, you and I need both.<\/p>\n

Some of you are more naturally patient.\u00a0 Make sure you practice persistence too.\u00a0 Some of you are more naturally persistent.\u00a0 Make sure you practice patience too.<\/p>\n

The care of children requires and elicits endless patience.\u00a0 Patience to rock. \u00a0Patience to feed.\u00a0 Patience to listen.\u00a0 Patience to play.\u00a0 Patience to teach.\u00a0 Patience to watch.\u00a0 Patience to repeat.\u00a0 Patience simply to live alongside a slowly developing person, personality, personhood.\u00a0 Someone let you grow up, after all.\u00a0 The patience you received will need to become a part of the patience you conceive and retrieve and give.\u00a0 A part of our fast forward work culture can use the brake peddle, the quiet pause, the important lack of doing, that is the patience of the cure of souls in general, and the care of children in particular.\u00a0\u00a0 Honor, celebrate the hours and stamina given to breakfast cleanup, to snack and nap time, to bathing, to the settling of squabbles, the cleanup of messes, the endurance of crying, the midnight coddling\u2014all and so much more that require the patience of parenting.<\/p>\n

Learning any language, at any time, is a demanding enterprise.\u00a0 The language of faith\u2014the grammar of trust, the syntax of belief, the spelling of practice\u2014is no different.\u00a0 Children blessed in patient care to learn to speak, and then also to learn to speak in a language of faith, are given the gift of life.\u00a0 To know from childhood the power of love.\u00a0 To know from childhood the example of forgiveness.\u00a0 To know from childhood the posture of hope.\u00a0 To know from childhood the virtue of patience.\u00a0 If you learn the language early, taking it as your mother tongue, and imbibing it with your mother\u2019s milk, you have it all your life.\u00a0 A hymn to hum.\u00a0 A verse to remember.\u00a0 A prayer to use.\u00a0 A psalm to recite.\u00a0 A story to tell.<\/p>\n

You certainly learn to speak another language in mid-life.\u00a0 People do so all the time.\u00a0 That too requires patience, both for listener and for speaker.\u00a0 It may involve a difference in pronunciation, an accent.<\/p>\n

In the summer we cared for four of our five grandchildren over several days.\u00a0 The older three one afternoon went with their grandmother, the fourth having been left for a nap with her grandfather.\u00a0 She awoke after a couple of hours, not overly pleased to find out who had been assigned as her temporary guardian, or captor.\u00a0 But she allowed herself to be held, to be given the chance slowly to wake up, to see the blue in sky and lake, and to let the breeze of mid summer caress face and hands, hair and skin.\u00a0 She could sit, and wait.\u00a0 She only needed a patience, a patient presence.<\/p>\n

Sometimes though, in the life of faith, in the spiritual life, you need more gas and less brake, more persistence than patience.<\/p>\n

We will offer one immediate example, literally present to Marsh Chapel today, and figuratively present in many, many settings.<\/p>\n

Dr. Doug Reeves, in his blog CHANGELEADERS, has something to offer you, first for those finishing a PhD, and second, more broadly, for all.\u00a0 His particular advice applies, well and broadly.\u00a0\u00a0 Patience is a virtue.\u00a0 But so is persistence.\u00a0 He offers the wisdom of persistence, in five forms:<\/p>\n

(Top Five Tips for Finishing Your Dissertation by Doug Reeves)<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 Call your advisor.\u00a0 The top reason that doctoral students are stuck is neither their overwhelming literature review nor their complex research methodologies.\u00a0 It\u2019s failure to communicate with their advisor.\u00a0 Pick up the phone, drop by the office, or as a last resort, e-mail<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 Make personal contact with the person who will most influence your ability to finish your doctorate\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 Read exemplary dissertations.\u00a0 Although this is your first dissertation, your committee has been through this exercise many times.\u00a0 Ask them to give you the title and author of the best dissertation they have ever seen.\u00a0 It may be their own, and it\u2019s never a bad idea to read the publications of your advisor and committee members<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 Exemplary dissertations give you the clearest possible idea of the substance and style that your committee expects of you.<\/i><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 Create a cohort.\u00a0 Boston College dramatically increased the completion rate of their doctoral program when they created small groups of four or five students who meet regularly with one another, sharing research, emotional support, and intellectual engagement.\u00a0 If your university does not provide such a cohort, then create your own<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 Find like-minded colleagues who are committed to walking across the stage on the same date as you will, commit to weekly meetings, and share a one-page summary of just one article or book that you have reviewed that week.\u00a0 Ideally, the group will have complementary strengths \u2013 perhaps one with expertise in quantitative methods and another with a focus on qualitative methods.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

4)\u00a0 Forget perfection.\u00a0 There is a technical academic term for the perfect dissertation \u2013 it is called \u201cunfinished.\u201d\u00a0 You are doing important work, and while you should not tolerate sloppy research, you must forgive yourself for imperfections.\u00a0<\/i><\/b> You will think of many reasons that your research could be better.\u00a0 You could have a larger sample size; you could use a more contemporary analytical technique; you could add fifty more citations to your literature review.\u00a0 The list never ends.\u00a0 As my advisor told me many years ago, \u201cthis is not your last piece of research, it\u2019s your first piece of research, so get it finished.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

5)\u00a0 The 45-minute rule.\u00a0 Don\u2019t wait for the sabbatical, vacation, weekend, or free day.\u00a0 The vast majority of dissertation writers are working professionals who have many demands on their time, so the key to finishing is not waiting for the illusory gift of free time, but rather the work-a-day chore of finishing a paragraph, an article, or a quick synthesis \u2013 something that you can do in 45 minutes<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 One of the best ways to give yourself 45 minutes of uninterrupted time is to turn off e-mail \u2013 not forever, not even for a full day, but for just 45 minutes.\u00a0 You will be amazed at what just 45 minutes of focused energy will provide for you.<\/i><\/p>\n

How remarkably, with just a little here again there again revision, these points about persistence may fit your own and very long wait!<\/p>\n

Invitation<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dilemma of today\u2019s parable is the dilemma of our very lives.\u00a0 Much of life, as in the story, is simply a long wait.\u00a0 It is a long wait, and that is just the point.\u00a0\u00a0 The primitive Christian church endured such a lengthy wait through nearly seven decades , prior to the Gospel of John and the new commandment, to love, the new gift, of spirit, the new hope, of truth making free, the new gospel dimension, really, of an hour coming that, somehow, now, is.<\/p>\n

Here is an invitation.<\/p>\n

You may benefit, should you seek patience and persistence, from consort with a community born in patience (that is, suffering) and persistence (that is, endurance.\u00a0 Suffering produces endurance, and endurance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint us.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because of the Love of God that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.<\/p>\n

You may of course sally forth on your own.\u00a0 Many do.\u00a0 Most do, it may be.\u00a0 But how are you going to know the power of persistence without immersion in a persistent community of faith?\u00a0 How are you going to gain the capacity of patience without involvement in a patient community of faith?\u00a0 How are you going to go up the hills and down the hills of life without some, genuine, comraderie along the trail, some consanguinity on the hike, some compassion amid the passion of the heat of the day?\u00a0 Life is hard enough, the wait is long enough, without some church family to love and some church home to enjoy and some church community of faith with whom to keep faith.\u00a0 Especially for children as they grow.\u00a0 Especially for adults trying to ferret out some meaning in life.\u00a0 Especially for the more elderly, wise but lonely, having much to offer but not much mobility with which to offer it.\u00a0 It gladdens me when one or another, elsewhere or here, finds a seat in the community of patient persistence, of persistent patience.<\/p>\n

Need we even pause to add that such a fellowship, of faith working through love, could never have given itself birth, and could never have sustained itself by merely inventive imaginative activity, and could never have conjoured for itself the sustainable energies uphill and downhill, patience and persistence?\u00a0 Such fellowship, sustenance, and energy come from the divine presence, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Love of God, the transcript in time of God in eternity, whose own lasting love through the long wait, marked on the cross, is, finally, all we have, and all we need.<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hil, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew 25:1-13 Click here to hear the full service Click here to hear the sermon only Trimmed Lamps \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dilemma of today\u2019s parable is the dilemma of our very lives.\u00a0 Much of life is a long wait. Our gospel has made use of a story known elsewhere in antiquity (Bultmann, HST, loc.cit).\u00a0 The power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}