He'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain, for St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, Aurora, CO, by Rev Steven R Mitchell

He’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
Guest Speaker at St Paul’s Presbyterian Church, Aurora, CO
Based on Matthew 25:1-13 & Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16

One of the first songs that I can recall learning in grade school was a song about some woman coming around a mountain, driving a bunch of horses, then when she arrives someone is going to cook up a pot of chicken and noodles. Growing up on the Plaines of Kansas, at the age of six, I had no concept of what a mountain was, I saw horses as huge animals that snort at you and potentially dangerous should they step on me, and why did that rooster have to be killed? In short, I had no clue as to what the song meant other than “she” would be coming and in pink pajamas no less, yet it had a catchy tune and I enjoyed singing it. Only years later did I learn that the woman was an actual person, Mary Harris Jones, a union organizer going to promote formation of labor unions in the Appalachian coal mining camps.
The tune of this song was taken from a Negro Spiritual titled: When the Chariot Comes. This song refers to the second coming of Christ and subsequent rapture. The “she” refers to the chariot that Christ would be arriving in. The words to this song are:
O, who will drive the chariot, when she comes?
King Jesus, he'll be driver when she comes, when she comes…
She'll be loaded with bright Angels, when she comes…
She will take us to the portals, when she comes!
In this morning’s Gospel, Matthew is sharing with us a part of a discussion that Jesus is having with his Disciples. Jesus has already made his grand entry into Jerusalem, creating a major disturbance in the temple by turning over the tables of the money changers, and created a number of enemies with the religious community and knows he is nearing the end of his life. It is only two days before the celebration of Passover and Jesus’ mind is thinking about the possibility of being killed.
Jesus began his ministry speaking to a large crowd with what we now call, The Sermon on the Mount, speaking of how blessed are those who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on. Now at the end of his ministry he is having a private dialogue with his disciples about the end times, starting in chapter 24 talking about such things as:“signs of the close of the age”, of the “destruction of Jerusalem” and of the “coming of the son of man.” Then at the beginning of chapter 25 we read, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this, ‘the bridegroom was delayed’.”
This parable is one of those that seem to go against what we who would like to be a part of the “blessed for we hunger and thirst to do social justice and help those in need”. How can justice, and mercy for that matter, coincide with Jesus using an example of some of the bridesmaids who have extra oil not sharing it with those bridesmaids who are running low? Even more perplexing at the end, the doors are shut, not allowing the five bridesmaids entrance upon their return and the bridegroom (which represents Christ) turning them away, saying he doesn’t know them? The main battle cry within the United Church of Christ states without hesitation: “Jesus never turned anyone away and neither do we.”
I really didn’t want to deal with this parable, because on the surface this story goes against my sensibility as to how I understand what the ministry of Jesus was about. How do I reconcile the unwillingness to share what I have with those in need? How can I turn away people who are standing outside of my door? What was Jesus thinking when he told this story? Why did Matthew include a story that seems so opposite to Christ like behavior?
I have to remember that the purpose of a parable is not to give a factual account of a story, but rather is a story designed to make me think, and has multiple layers. The story is very bold in stating the concept of “being prepared”, but being prepared for what? This Gospel was written many years after Jesus had been crucified and the early church had been anticipating Christ’s return. Matthew then was writing to a church that had to come to grips with the reality that Jesus had not yet returned as they had envisioned and that their mission was to wait expectantly and in the meantime live faithfully, courageously, and in hopefulness. It has been two thousand years and the church is still awaiting Christ’s return. We have lived this year alone through two predictions of the end of the world and are awaiting another date of doom in December 2012 as the Mayan calendar ends. Yet Jesus states that no one will know the time or place.
The parable appears to speak about being prepared for Christ's coming, but what the parable speaks to being prepared for Christ’s delay? Would this not possibly change our behavior, change how we prepare? During Jesus’ ministry, he constantly told us that the “kingdom of God is among us, here and now”. But how can God’s kingdom be among us with so much suffering, neediness, loneliness, hatred, and dispare?
Rev Rob Bell, in his newest book, “Love Wins”, proposes that part of the confusion with our concept of ‘heaven’ as used in scripture comes with our not understanding that the writers substituted the word ‘God’ with the word ‘heaven’ because to use the word ‘God’ was forbidden. Rev Bell further states: sometimes when Jesus spoke of heaven, he was referring to the future coming together of heaven and earth in what he and his contemporaries called life in the age to come. Jesus also talked about heaven, as our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life. For Jesus, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life lived now in connection to God. Love Wins, pg 58-59
A second issue that I have with this story is why didn’t the five bridesmaids with extra oil not share with the other’s who didn’t? If we think of the oil as the metaphor for virtues such as faith, good works, practices and spiritual reserves, these are personal attributes that cannot be given away to someone else. I as a person can present to you advice on a topic but I cannot physically transfer my experience to you. You have to create that actual experience for yourself. How I experience God is something that I cannot give to anyone, I can however, share how I have experienced God with you, but you will not experience God, except through your own actions.
Finally, comes the “closing of the door” part of the text. How do I, who doesn’t want to see anyone excluded understand this? The reality is, there is a time when opportunity closes its door. When we chose to put off today for tomorrow, we can run the risk of not having the opportunity to do what we put off.
As I grew into my teenage years, the relationship between my father and me deteriorated to a point that as a young man with a family I had stopped communicating with my dad. His behavior toward me had been extremely abusive, which came from his disease of alcoholism. I therefore shut the door to that abuse by not communicating with him, always praying that some day he would sober up and come and make amends with me. Over time, he did go through treatment and achieved sobriety, but he never came to make amends. I realized that he did not have the tools that he needed in order to start the rebuilding of our broken relationship. Through my educational journey, I had developed those needed skills and decided to be the one to approach the repairing of our relationship. We had only two years of working on this, as my father suddenly died, due to years of abuse to his body by alcohol.
I use this story to tie together, my understanding of this parable with the message to the church. We should expect Christ to be delayed. He hasn’t come in the past two thousand years, and the odds are, he won’t come back anytime soon. This parable asks us to live in hope for what has been promised and what will be but hasn't yet happened. It reminds us that knowledge, faith, and love are tools for living in this time, before eternity comes. The temptation for ‘waiting’ for Christ’s eminent return is to not be actively living Jesus’ teachings, ministering to a world that has forgotten the love and promise of hope that God gives us all. “He’ll be coming around the mountain”, there’s no question about that. The question will be, “how will we be waiting? Are we preparing for Christ’s return or for his delay? Amen