Tomorrow Just Won't Do
Texts: Joshua 24:14-15; Matthew 25:1-13
I was young, in love, and broke. But since I was young and in love, I didn’t let the “broke” part slow me down. I made a reservation at a romantic, but far-beyond-my-means, restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg, insisting on a table that overlooked a cascading, back-lit waterfall. I got dressed in my most debonair polyester plaid suit, picked up my beloved in my ’65 Chevy Chevelle Chariot, drove to the restaurant, pulled out the chair for her, and tried to act as if I were accustomed to such elegant surroundings.
The waiter took one quick look at this very young couple and nailed us. “These are a couple of poor college kids trying to act like they have money and that means I’ll get none tonight.” I had an elaborate plan for the evening, but our waiter’s plan was more effective. My plan was to spend a long, leisurely night, sitting at the corner table, sipping sweet iced tea (we weren’t twenty-one yet) and gazing into Jennell’s eyes. Our waiter’s plan was to serve us with lightening efficiency and to escort us out the door as quickly as possible.
From the moment we were seated, everything seemed to move at the speed of fast forward, like when the entrée arrived about 30 seconds after the appetizer. My elaborate romantic plan began to unravel seriously when the waiter started to wipe down the edges of our table after my second bite of chicken. He hovered about us like a hawk with his Windex and rag in hand and placed the bill on my lap when I took the last bite off my plate.
I’ve imagined a happier ending to this story ever since that night. But the truth is that I winced as I paid the bill and then we were rushed out of the restaurant as if we were on a fire drill. Years later, I still think of this spoiled romantic evening whenever I feel someone rushing me or pushing me to do something or be somewhere or change something right now. I will confess that my feelings and behavior are hardly consistent, because I have no trouble pushing and cajoling others, but I DO NOT like to be rushed.
So, this week when I re-read the parable from Jesus and the climactic ending to the book of Joshua, my first reaction was to think back on a potentially good evening spoiled. These two stories contain a sense of urgency against which I initially recoil. I’m tired of the “faux urgency” of watch and phone alarms, of overstuffed calendars, of being pushed here and there as if everything is so important that nothing is important any longer.
Part of my reaction to these two biblical texts is a bad memory of a not-so-romantic night, but part of it is genuine fatigue from living in a world where everything is URGENT. As the book of Joshua closes, this successor to Moses has led God’s chosen people into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey – AND OTHER PEOPLE! These new neighbors had their own menu of gods, gods for the harvest, for rain, for fertility, for political stability. You name it; they had a god for it.
Joshua tells his people: “You can live peaceably with your new neighbors, work with them, appreciate their culture, and even invite them over for supper, but you have to make a choice – their gods or your God.” You can’t live in both worlds, says Joshua, or live as if your fundamental allegiance doesn’t really matter. You have to choose and you have to choose now!
Joshua here reminds me of the Williamsburg waiter with his Windex and rag in hand. He wants to move things along and he doesn’t mind pushing. Unlike the waiter, though, Joshua is concerned about matters that really matter. He doesn’t care what people are planning for the high holidays or which hors d’oeuvres will be served before the Passover dinner. Joshua wants to know, and know now, to whom his people will pledge their lives.
The decision Joshua urges his people to make can’t be postponed another day; tomorrow just won’t do. So, standing in a new land, finding himself in a new and not entirely friendly neighborhood, at the crossroads of a new life with his people, Joshua gets the decision-making started himself. He declares to his community, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Before anyone is baptized in the Presbyterian Church that person or her parents are asked questions, momentous questions. And they are not the only ones asked momentous questions. At a baptism, each of us is asked a question with considerable urgency. It happened again today when Marilee asked us: “Will we be faithful to our calling as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, so that Robbie may grow in the knowledge and love of Christ and will we pray for her and her family?”
That is anything but a perfunctory question, though it can sometimes feel that way. Over the years, we may responded: “We will” when asked this question, thinking it just another snoozable moment in a sweet religious rite. If we did, God help us. There is nothing sweet about this baptismal question, but there is something serious, critically serious about it.
Did you notice how Joshua didn’t settle for a quick, “Oh sure, we choose the Lord God of Israel. Now, pass the matzah”? Joshua asks the people for a second time if they will choose the Lord God of Israel over all the local divines, if they will trust more in the sure provisions of God than in the fleeting provisions of the ruler du jour?
I often wonder if at every baptism, you and I ought to be asked for a second time? “Do you really mean it?” “Do you understand that every time you say, “I will,” you commit your life and your love, your time and your financial resources to the raising of this child and every child in Christ’s community of love?”
You see, there is a divine urgency about baptism, not the urgency of eternal destiny as though if the baptism didn’t happen then the infant’s destiny with God is forever in danger. No, it’s the urgency of a life’s direction, not just for the child or the adult being baptized, but for each of us making promises, urgent promises, hopefully, faithful promises that echo the declaration of Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Maybe the baptismal question that you and I have been asked over the years has been too subtle. Maybe we should be as direct as Joshua was with his community. Maybe as pastor, I should ask you, “Friends, do you promise to love Robbie, to get to know her by name, to give sacrificially of your hard-earned money so the can provide nothing but the most faithful worship, the best Christian education, and regular opportunities for this child and her family to learn the joy of serving others? Do you promise to be an advocate for all children even when others want them to be seen and not heard? And, will you do this even when you are single or a couple with no children or your children have long since left home?” “Will you be someone that these parents can count on, lean on, depend on as they carry out the awesome and often exhausting task of being parents?”
Joshua isn’t asking his people for a provisional commitment to God, some sort of religious workable compromise. “Look God, I’m a busy person and we’re a busy family, so we’ll see you when we see you” or “Be realistic, God, I’m up to my ears in financial commitments; I’ll give more later when I have more” or “Alright God, my parents had me baptized and now I’ve been confirmed, so don’t expect to see me hanging around here anymore. You got it God? Just chill out.”
Joshua isn’t asking for a workable compromise and neither is Jesus. Jesus didn’t tell the parable of the wise and foolish virgins as a casual suggestion that we just might want to pay some occasional attention to our faith in God when it doesn’t inconvenience us or our children.
There is nothing provisional or laid back or hesitant about declaring, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” To follow the Lord God with that kind of baptismal conviction means that you and I will not apportion out life, so that God gets us for part of an occasional Sunday and for grace before dinner and maybe some bedtime prayers, while during the rest of our life – our time, our attention, our money is spent on day to day affairs, as if God is not Lord of all our affairs.
To follow the Lord God and to be ready to follow wherever the Lord God calls us at whatever hour of the day or hour of our lives is to know at the very core of our being that “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
To follow the Lord God is to honor our baptismal vows as you and I join the wise ones in Jesus’ parable, the ones who knew that there is a blessed urgency in serving Christ every day. It is a blessed urgency that requires our hearts, our minds, our all right now; tomorrow just won’t do.
AMEN