Preparation

These days, you have to bring more with you than you did before.

I'm old enough to remember when you left the house with keys and a wallet.  That was it. You could bring more of course, cash, maybe a cheque so you could pay for things, but keys and a wallet were expected.  From 2000 until about 8 months ago, it was standard procedure to leave the house with your cell phone as well as your wallet and keys.  But these days, a new challenger has appeared, and that is a mask.  With more and more cities and communities moving to a mandatory mask policy, in order that everyone be kept safe, you have to leave the house with phone, wallet, keys, mask, that kind of thing.  And the reason that you leave the house with those things, is that they anticipate the four circumstances that you are likely to encounter - You may have to buy something while you are out, you will have to operate your car / let yourself back into your house, you will want to communicate with someone while you are out, and if you're going indoors basically anywhere, you'll need your mask.  You bring these things around with you to cover the likely eventualities, even if you're not sure you'll need them.  In reality, you may well need them or you may not, but you won't know until the opportunity presents itself.

Now, of course, if you could rewind time, you'd know exactly what equipment you'd need for the day, but at the time, stepping into a future as yet unknown, you don't have that kind of luxury.  And that's just for a standard day. That's not taking into account all the other possibilities that may or may not exist at any given moment.  If you could have known, you would have anticipated them.  If you would have known you'd need a screwdriver, or a #2 pencil, or a pocketknife, you would have brought them along, but without knowing exactly what you would need to cover an eventuality, you have to trust that you're as prepared as possible for what is most likely to occur.

But imagine, if you will, something being not a possibility, but a certainty.  If you lock your door on the way out, you're going to have to unlock it on the way back in.  That's not a maybe, that's a given.  Okay, good.  So when you're working out the importance of certain items, you have to work in that order, I suppose.  And we, as people who are living in these last days, are people who are thinking about encountering Jesus not as an if, but as a when.

That one's a certainty, and at this time of the year, we think more and more about it. The reality that we will, certainly, meet our God.  Either when we go and see Him, or when He comes to see us.  One of the two of those things will happen, for certain, and so we should be prepared for it.  The problem is that for most of the time, we get to put this sort of thing out of our heads, and not think too terribly much about it.  We can be distracted by a hundred thousand tiny things, Netflix, grilling, tobogganing, and songs by the campfire.  But meeting your Lord isn't a possibility, it's a certainty.

Every once in a while, we are rudely reminded of the fact that we will encounter God someday.  Right now, that reminder is a little spiky fella called COVID-19.  The virus that is making the rounds gave us all time to think, and to think about our own mortality.  You leave the house, you risk death at any moment.  Candy chutes, tongs and masks for Hallowe'en, zoom meetings for Thanksgiving and Christmas, to stay safe, you have to stay apart, but until very recently indeed we gave very little thought to staying safe.  After all, death is something that happens to old people, and old people are determined by being people ten years older than yourself.  

But this is the season, in the church year, of the apocalypse.  And we're thinking about that now.  Political upheaval, a circulating virus, absence from friends and family, hunkering down and being scared, all these things that we are doing now, and it feels apocalyptic now, doesn't it? If someone were to tell you that this is the end of days, you probably wouldn't even be that surprised.  Every time Jesus talks about wars, rumors of wars, famine, persecution, and then says that these things are all just the beginnings of the birth pains, we should take seriously the idea that there will be at some point an end to all of this.  It may not be this year, or in a thousand years, but it will be eventually.

So your job, not just as a Christian, but as a human being in the world, is to live as though the world could end tomorrow, and you would be ready for it.  Does that mean that you rob a bank, and hire prostitutes because you want to have those experiences?  Probably not, of course.  But what it does mean is that you don't want to leave anything important left unsaid, and that you don't want to leave anyone not knowing how you feel, and how much they mean to you.  So go and do that, of course.  Call your mom, your dad, your dear grandmama, and let them know that they're important to you and that they matter.  But it's not just that you're going to leave this world behind one day, everyone knows that, even the non-religious.  Rather, it's that you're going to meet God.  And do you want to do so standing confidently in your own righteousness?  Or do you want to do so standing in his righteousness instead?

What does the story of the scriptures come down to?  Frequently, people say it comes down to John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  How does that happen?  Christ takes your sins and nails them to the cross.  Your sins are forgiven, and you are embraced by God with the righteousness of Christ.  And that's a one-tool job.  If you knew for sure you were going to open a bottle of wine, you'd bring a corkscrew.  If you knew you were going to have to cut a tree down, you'd bring a saw. If you knew for sure you were going to pull out an ingrown hair, you'd bring real metal tweezers.  A swiss army knife is used because you don't know which eventuality is going to come up, so you're bringing some things that might be useful, but none of them are as useful as the one tool designed for the job at hand.  An actual saw is more useful than the three inch one that comes in your swiss army knife. A real pair of scissors is better than the tiny set that comes in your knife.  It'll do in a pinch, but you're better off to have the right tool for the job.  If you knew for sure that you were going to encounter the risen Lord,  not as a maybe, but as a certainty, then what would you do to prepare?  Confess your sins.  Read your Bible. Talk to God as often as possible.  Have your faith strengthened through the sacrament of the altar.  Then you're ready.  

The foolish virgins didn't bring any oil with them. They waited and waited, and their lamps eventually went out.  But they knew that the bridegroom was going to be there, and he was.  But when he arrived, they weren't ready. You need to be ready.  Whether you go to meet God, or he comes to meet you, you have to be ready in either circumstance.  This is not a maybe situation, this is a guarantee.  Instead of worrying about which eventuality might arise, think about the one that for sure will happen, equip yourself for that one, and then you can properly focus on the rest.