Waiting for Jesus

[AI translation] All the congregations of our Budapest-South Diocese are gathering today in three different places for a day of silence to reflect on the great Advent expectation of Christianity, the expectation of the Lord Jesus coming again in judgment. The congregations on the Buda side are holding this silent day here in our church, where we, too, will now turn to the returning Christ, according to the same programme, and spend the day studying the revelations of our Bible that reveal the great mysteries and knowledge of Jesus' second coming. That is why this sermon already deals with the detailed problem of the great Advent hope of what it means to wait for Jesus! The other problems will be dealt with in other sermons.In this parable, Jesus compares His church, the Christian church, to a company of ten bridesmaids who "took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom". The essence of this image is that the Christian way of life is a way of life in a state of waiting. It is part of the very essence of the Christian church, the whole character of Christian behaviour, that it is filled with a certain expectation, a kind of expectation that is stretched within it. And a joyful expectation! An expectation of something good. Do you know what a great thing it is, what a good thing it is? We understand it when we think of the opposite: how tragic it is when someone no longer has anything to look forward to! He waits for nothing, he waits for no one! A person does not usually collapse under the weight of the burden that is put on him, but under the fact that he cannot imagine that it could be better. You know what hopelessness is? It is that you can no longer expect the best! He who has nothing to look forward to no longer knows why he is alive. Well, Christianity has hope! The Christian man is a man living in the excitement of great, joyful expectation!
But what are we waiting for? What good can we expect? What can we expect? What is in store for us?It would be interesting to see what expectations live in the minds of mankind today. The most vivid images could be drawn before us: from an all-destroying nuclear war to an all-levelling, happy golden age, or from nothingness, from nothingness to a perfect paradise on earth. So what will happen? Who can say? Who can even predict what we will wake up to tomorrow? Well, the Bible teaches us to ask the question differently, not what is coming, but who is coming? Not what can we expect, but who can we expect? And so we have a different perspective on the "we".
Who are we waiting for? Jesus! The Christian Church is a community of people who are desperately, joyfully, gladly waiting for their Lord. They are waiting for the moment when Jesus will come out of the incognito in which He has been during His earthly sojourn and reveal to all that which His brethren have believed but not seen: that it is He to whom all power in heaven and earth has been given! Our hope, then, is to meet the Lord Himself! Today we walk by faith, not by sight. And the One in whom we now believe without seeing will be seen at the great meeting. Yes, the church that praises Jesus thus, "He came down from heaven to call and betroth Him, Redeeming by His precious blood the redeemed." (Cant. 392 v. 1.) This church now lives in the expectation that "Till his vision once gloriously fulfilled, And the victorious church shall be united with the Lord." (Cant. 392 v. 4) This we expect. This is our Advent expectation. But is it realistic enough?
I once heard of a Dutch woman whose husband had not returned from the sea, from fishing. The woman refused to believe that her husband was lost. Every morning she would go out to the beach, spying the distance, waiting for her life partner to return. For years... When people saw her, they spread out their hands in pity, saying, "Poor woman, she's not normal anymore! Are we not also waiting for Someone who has long since died? Yes! We are waiting for Someone! But the One who died long ago, there on Calvary, has risen from the dead, and is alive now! We are waiting for someone so real, so concrete, who has already come once, who has been here, in whom God Himself has come among us on this lost planet, in this derailed history. And then, on that first Christmas, when He first came: something new began in this world. So Jesus has come once before. He comes in His Word and in His Holy Spirit. He comes where human hearts open themselves to Him in trust, give themselves to Him in obedience and pray to Him in faith. He comes again and again today where a church gathers around His Word and Sacrament. This is the Jesus we are waiting for - the One who came, the One who is here in the Spirit even now. This Jesus will come with power and glory. One thing is certain: God will not let this world, and His children in it, fall into the open jaws of ultimate despair, the ultimate abyss! God will not leave us alone with our sin, our fears, our misery, our death... He has sacrificed too much for us, we are too much for Him, He will not stop what He has begun! He comes again, He comes with His consolation, He comes with His peace, with the fullness of His salvation. He comes with the triumph of His love and the judgment of His righteousness! The future is his! Towards His outstretched arm time is flowing, history is moving: Jesus is coming! And even if the world tells us that we are mad, that we have gone mad, we are still waiting for Him, because He said that His followers are like the ten virgins who "took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom".
But are we, as believers in Christ today, truly like those ten virgins? Is waiting for Jesus really what defines our whole Christian way of life? Or has this too become an empty phrase, behind which all substance has long since disappeared? Is this not what we lack most of all, this spirit of waiting? And is it not this lack of the spirit of expectation that has made us, as Christians today, so desolate, colourless, tasteless, featureless, like the world? The church of Jesus is always as strong and as alive as the church that truly waits for Jesus, as much as it can truly wait for its Lord! Once I looked back from the top of the slope of Mount Liberty, where we live, and I noticed how beautiful everything is. Down below you can't even see how beautiful it is when you walk through the ordinary, familiar houses, except from up here. Well, the man who waits for Christ looks at life from such a higher perspective, from the perspective of the stars, from the perspective of eternity, and therefore always sees it as beautiful, always sees the beauty in it. This expectation also lifts us above human pettiness and makes us free and generous. For look: he who knows that Jesus, the Eternal Judge, is coming and will pay to each according to his deeds, is freed from a lot of unnecessary wasted energy: he does not keep account of offences, of angry, resentful tempers, he can always be reconciled with his enemies, he can forgive anyone. Indeed, a great deal of energy is released in one's soul for good when one can entrust judgment to the Lord. Furthermore, the expectation of Christ lifts me above irresponsibility, above frivolity - because this expectation keeps me awake to the obligation of accountability. If I know that Jesus is coming back to meet me, then I cannot treat people as I like, spend my time as I like, do my work as I like, because I will have to give an account of it all one day. Do you already feel what a power, what a gift it is to wait for Jesus?
I have already indicated how this waiting should be done. Because there are many ways of waiting. Our waiting for Advent is not an idle waiting, like the bear waiting for spring to awaken, deep in hibernation. Nor is it an annoying wait, like standing in line for potatoes during wartime, waiting to see if there would be any left for us. Nor the uncertain waiting of the lottery-holder waiting for the result of the draw, but something quite different. What was it? For that, we need to understand the symbolism of the parable of the ten virgins. Here we read. Five of them were fools, and when they took out their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took oil with their lamps in their vessels. The question of oil revolves around whether one is rightly or wrongly expecting Jesus. Oil in the Bible is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. So the main question is, do you have the Spirit of Jesus in you? Paul is very clear in the letter to the Romans, "But he who does not have the Spirit of Christ is not his." (Rom 8:9) So then, he who does not have the Spirit of Christ is not really His, but only in appearance, only outwardly. So one can be there in the army of Christ-expectants and not really be Christ's! He may have a Christian upbringing, have a Bible, not shy of sacrifice, be a member of the church outwardly, be preparing for the wedding, have the lamp in his hand - so he is not cynical, not unbelieving, not blasphemous, and in appearance he is a member of the people of God - and yet one day, at the great meeting, it turns out that he is not Christ's! Something is missing. He has not the Spirit of Christ! Let me put it this way: the Jesuit spirit, that is to say, the Christian thought, feeling, emotion, speech and action that come from experiencing the reality of salvation. So you can examine for yourself, by your actions, by your daily life, by the way you walk in the world, by the way events affect you, by the emotions and desires that fill your soul, by your behaviour with your partner, your children, your parents, you can examine for yourself whether you have the oil: the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Christ! If someone is cheating, if someone is deceiving people, if someone is lying to his spouse, if someone is not doing his work in the world to the best of his ability, if someone is quarreling, bickering, and so on, it is obviously not the Spirit of Jesus shining in him. It is like the foolish virgins who, although they were also waiting for the Bridegroom, missed the wedding!
In fact, in the parable it is not even oil, but oil. The five foolish virgins had oil, but not oil. Let no one be deceived, then, by the occasional flash of heavenly light, or by the shining forth of a holy ray from the lamp of some good deed or word in a moment of devotion, or in the excitement of a festive mood - not enough is the flash, the promising beginning! The Bridegroom is delayed, and in the meantime it grows dark - all those waiting for Christ fall asleep, we all fall asleep one day... And then out of sleep the cry will wake us: behold the bridegroom is coming! Come to meet him! And then there'll be no time to make up for lost time. What one has not done before "falling asleep" can never be made up! If your heart was not on fire for Christ before you fell asleep, you will be scrambling in vain when you wake up! The time until you fall asleep must be used "wisely", i.e. to prepare, to get oil! Because you can still get oil today! There is oil for you too! But not for me or anyone else! We can't borrow from each other! This is what Jesus warns us in this parable! The foolish virgins tried to borrow from the wise, but to no avail! You can borrow anything: money, clothes, thoughts, but not this oil! No one can go to the Bridegroom with religion borrowed from his religious ancestors! Even if your son or father or partner is a believer, they cannot help you! That oil must be in your heart! You must ask the Lord for it directly! How good it is that the Scriptures are full of encouragement to just "Ask and it will be given to you" (Mt 7,7) Ask for the Holy Spirit and it will be given to you! You too will have forgiveness of sins, a new heart, peace, joy, victory, a pure life, salvation: oil, the Holy Spirit, the Christian spirit. Do you need it?
Well, well:
If thou wilt set before the Lord the humility of thy heart,
He will not wait for you in vain, He will come in and bless you.
Pride of the flesh is death! But if thou repent thy sin,
His Holy Spirit will abound, And the heart will find salvation.
Oh, Jesus, your poor soul is asking, waiting, longing for you:
Thou preparest it: for thee this heart shall be thy home.
Come then into my faithful heart. Though this lodging be poor,
But ever grateful, so blessed is Christ.
(Canto 312, verses 3-4)
Amen.
Date: 4 December 1960.