Commitment

 Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25; Matthew 25:1-13

Did anybody else find yourself anxious, impatient, or exhausted, this past week?

As the waiting and the vote counting went on and on. And on. And…well, we fell asleep waiting for Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and others, more than once.

Waiting for a bridegroom to come and waiting for a President to be elected are different, but it’s pretty easy for me – and maybe for you – to feel a connection this morning to the women with their lamps in Jesus’ story: waiting, and waiting, and waiting….. 

Matthew’s community – like other early Christians – would have recognized that feeling, too. They were waiting, of course, for Jesus to come back. Soon, he said, right? 

And, like us, many of them were anxious about the results. What will happen to the world? Will my family and friends be okay? 

It’s hard to live in waiting, whether it’s about an election, a pandemic, a transition in your family or career, or anything else. Yet Jesus insists that suspense and uncertainty are part of the coming of the kingdom of heaven; part of the fulfillment of God’s plan and promise, so we’d better be prepared for just that, and fuel up.

Long waiting would have been familiar to the people of Israel, too. Waiting through a long generation of wanderings in the wilderness, and more generations of oppression in Egypt, waiting and working to claim a home in a new land God had led them to.

All that long, uncertain waiting is in the background of the story we heard today, when Joshua gathers the people to celebrate a moment of celebration, remembering what God has done to create a people, and bring them to a new home, to a place of both refuge and abundance.

In that celebration, Joshua invites – no, challenges – the people to “serve the Lord,” to worship God above all else, and honestly and faithfully follow God’s commandments.

“Of course we will! God’s done a lot for us, we’re God’s!” the people respond. 

That’s not enough, though. Joshua presses them, because this is a big commitment: You can’t serve God unless you’re absolutely not going to turn away; not going to give up when the going gets tough or you get a seemingly better offer. 

Our choice to serve God starts in gratitude and celebration, but even more it’s about what we want to do, and who we want to be, whatever the future holds.

The people of Israel say yes again, they commit to God and affirm it with a promise to hold themselves accountable and a formal covenant ceremony.

That’s like what we do today, when we mark Consecration Sunday on the church’s calendar. We make and renew our commitment to God in gratitude that God has sought us out, chooses us, protects us, brings us into relationships of love, and works with and through us to create a place where we can thrive in God’s promise. 

We’re individually at different places in that story, we experience it in different ways, but as we worship together today, we are all part of that story of God’s good gifts to us.

Like the people of Israel, we make our commitments to God today out of gratitude, and also to affirm what we want to do, and who we want to be, in everything the future brings. 

Beyond the church, we regularly make commitments to help us do what is essential to our values, but might not do automatically: like sustainability pledges to reduce our use of the earth’s resources. 

\We make promises and commitments to help us actually carry out the actions that make us into who we want to be – the Girl Scout promise spells out ways to help me be a person who lives for others; a commitment to serve meals at a soup kitchen might have helped make you into a person who regularly shows up and cares for our neighbors.

That’s why I make a financial commitment to the church, too. In the packet of Consecration Sunday materials we sent out, I told you the story of how I was first inspired to work toward tithing because I wanted to be more like a priest whose faith and love I admired.  These days, I make a financial commitment that will stretch me, just a little, every year, because I want my weekly budget to be a way to keep my attention fixed on God: what God is up to in my life and yours, the love God is inviting me to share.

And over the years that commitment has indeed helped me depend on God with deeper trust, not just about money, but in all of life. I hope that has made me more like the saints I admire.

Making a commitment that stretches me also makes me stretch my vision, and look more actively for what God is doing among us, at Trinity. So I see things I might have overlooked: not just our worship – together even in separation – and the food that comes into and goes out of Leslie’s pantry, but also a friendship that formed from the need to check on one another when the coronavirus first separated us; people who’ve never been through our doors, but feel connected to God through our online worship; and teachers who move heaven and earth to help their students connect to God and one another in spite of Zoom fatigue and COVID distance.

And every time I write my pledge check, I’m reminded of the gratitude for all God has already done that led me to make this commitment in the first place.  

Keeping this commitment to God has become an anchor to hope and love and a sense of God’s commitment to us – to me – that carries me through ordinary days and the extraordinary really-no-one-asked-for-any-of-this stresses of 2020. 

This isn’t just about money, of course. The same thing happens with other commitments we make to God’s work. Like being fully present in worship, even when it’s not easy to be here every Sunday, or to open my prayer book every morning. 

Keeping that commitment makes it easier for me to experience God’s commitment to showing up for us, for me. There have been days and long months of my life when the only evidence I had that God was listening was the fact that I had somehow showed up to pray one more day in spite of doubt and depression.

And a commitment to love my neighbor keeps pulling me into conversations and places where God is creating miracles, love, and abundant life – often places I just don’t want to go: hospital emergency rooms, political arguments, city streets, even some glittering parties.
For you, those places might be different – like finance meetings or homeless shelters – but we all need a nudge or commitment to get us out of our safe zone to meet God in new places and ways.

I believe that Joshua challenges the people of Israel to make their commitment to serve God not once, but three times in a row, because a strong and unbreakable commitment will prepare them for a future where there will be times of anxious stress, times where God seems distant or absent, and where the abundance that God has given us may not feel like enough. There may also be times when we’re too comfortable to get excited about serving God. Occasionally, in those times of both comfort and stress, our commitment to God is the only evidence we - or others - have of God’s presence. 

And that’s how it fuels us for the waiting, for the periods when there’s no active evidence God’s looking out for us. When the virus goes on and on and gets worse; when electoral suspense drags, or the results aren’t what we hoped for, and public divisions get worse, our commitment can protect us from giving up. A commitment can anchor us when we are lonely, or hungry for change, thirsty for justice and compassion, or far from home. 

It also protects us against losing touch with God when we’re perfectly satisfied with life, and don’t feel any need, and don’t look for God at work, day to day.

Our commitment to God is the oil we need to keep our lamps lit when the waiting runs long, and longer still. It’s the fuel that makes us ready to meet the celebration when God arrives in our midst. The day by day keeping of our commitments to God’s work and purpose, the promises that help us carry out God’s love for the world, these are the fuel that lights the way, for us and for others, into the joy and fulfillment as God’s kingdom comes.