Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, chose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

It’s a cute little light, isn’t it?

But of course it is no match for the powerful flashlights of the world, but it is mine.

And so I look after it, it sits on the top of the refrigerator so that I can find in the power outages.

The parable that Jesus told is about taking care of your light, making sure that you’ve got a little extra oil or a few spare batteries. Which is to say that it is about taking care of your faith, looking after that unique and intimate relationship that you have with God, that particular combination of experiences, education, vocation, family, friendships, talents, personality, intellect and emotions that are yours and yours alone and discovering where all of that, all of you meshes into the heart of God.

Which takes a lot of work!

It means dipping deep into your own history, as I did last month when I gathered with my HS classmates for our 40 year reunion and trading stories and memories. Here is what everyone discovers by the time you are 40 years out: everyone likes you more than you thought they did and everyone is surprised at how well liked they are and HS, as it is interpreted, was far more wonderful than it probably ever was and that is good. In those classic journalistic words from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend”.

But it also means peering far into your future, as I did the other day when I spent the afternoon, one-on-one, with the world’s most perfect granddaughter and told her stories about what a wonderful world she has been born into! I told her about the joys of the ocean on a warm day and of a nation that was capable of such moral growth that it could elect a man President a mere four decades after others like him were denied access to a classroom or a restroom in parts of the country and I told her that she will see wonders in her lifetime that I would call impossible as God takes her and her Church and her nation to new and holier places. And that is hard and holy work, all of that looking back and looking ahead, but it is what it takes to be able to look around today and to see the beauty of the people around us today, to see beyond the pain of any immediate circumstance to recognize the sacredness that surrounds us. Memory and vision are what allow us to see today clearly, to care for our own lights so that we can brighten the way for ourselves and for others.

It is an unusual parable that Jesus told. We don’t find the normal advice on how to live as good and generous people, we aren’t told to share with those in need, in fact the wise women in this parable refuse to share. We don’t find mercy abounding to those who were foolish, we don’t find acceptance for those who are on the outside looking in, we don’t find any of the justice and forgiveness themes that run through most of the parables.

And what do we make of that?

Does it mean that we are not to share?

Does it mean that we are not to forgive those who are foolish?

Does it mean that we are not to open our doors and our hearts to those who have been marginalized?

Are justice and forgiveness not the values of God?

Well, you know what the answers are to those question as well as I do, of course not. It doesn’t mean any of those things. Vernon Kooy, New Testament professor at NBTS during my student days and pastor of this Church during the 1940’s used to remind us that a parable of Jesus had a single point to make and that we would get ourselves in trouble when we tried to stretch the parable to be more than it was. If other truths emerged, so be it, but he never wanted us to lose sight of the single, central point.

So it is with this parable, it is a parable about being ready.

That’s it.

You be ready, prepare yourself and don’t worry about how others are preparing themselves.

Ready for what?

Be ready for the presence of God in your life.

Nobody else can do that for you and you can’t do it for anyone else.

You see, as much as I believe in the sacredness of relationships, as much as I believe in the value and power of the covenant community, this parable always reminds me that faith is built upon personal responsibility, of looking after the light within you, the light that is uniquely yours.

That’s why it couldn’t be shared in the parable.

You’ve probably had this experience, how many times have you sat with people who have not tended their light, not prepared themselves spiritually for the harshness that life can deliver. When it happens I have wished and prayed that I could take some of the faith and joy and courage that are mine and just transplant it into them. But I can’t, you can’t, we can just stand by them and assure them that those who seek faith and joy and courage receive them, all that they need and then some, and just at the right time.

And I have been on the other side of that one, there have been times when I have been shattered and I have wished that I could steal a little faith and joy and courage from some of you and I couldn’t, I had to find it within me.

Now I understand that this tending the light business is often tedious, boring. It involves the regimen of regular prayer and worship and service that our modern world fails to value. But when the sorrows come, and they come to the faithful and the unfaithful alike, when the sorrows come it is the faithful who meet them and conquer them. And when the joys come, and they come to the faithful and the unfaithful alike, when the joys come it is the faithful who know how to savor them and cherish them.

The faithful are those who live in the moment, knowing that God is there with them.

That’s what Joshua was trying to say in the OT lesson.

The people of Israel were approaching a pivotal moment in their history. Joshua who had led them into the promised land has called them all together one last time, before his death, to remind them of all that God had done for them.

And he offered them one final challenge: chose this day whom you will serve.

And the choices sound, to our ears, fairly strange. We don’t know about other gods, but in that age it was presumed that there were many gods to choose from but only one Lord, only one who sought a relationship, only one who entered into a covenant. But when we listen a little closer we begin to realize that the “other gods” of Joshua’s time are still with us.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, chose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river

They were the gods of the past, the gods of history and heritage and even tradition, the Egyptian gods of slavery.

I know I struggle with this at times, it is an occupational hazard for old history teachers and I can linger on the wisdom of Jefferson and Lincoln and King a little too long and I can wallow in the personal memories of Pompton Lakes and the other places I have called home too much, until I wake up and realize that I don’t live there any more. Those memories are only of value as they help me understand and live my life in Clover Hill, 2008.

Churches often have trouble with this. We tend to worship the gods of our past. Next year as we celebrate our 175 year journey, we will tell stories, but if those stories don’t help us live faithfully in 2009, they will be of little value. There are a lot of things we will do, but we will not somehow become the church of 1834, we can’t do that and we shouldn’t do that, that’s not going to help us in 2009.

We can’t turn the clock back and live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore, not when our God is waiting for us to serve him today. chose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river nostalgia won’t light our faith or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; we can’t go chasing after the latest fads, the popular trends.

That’s what the gods of the Amorites were, they were new and exciting and popular and false and shallow and empty.

I know that it is always a temptation to want to fit in to the culture we live in, to grab on to the newest and latest things, and our faith is not immune to any of that. Now don’t get me wrong, fads are fun, I once twirled a hula hoop, I wore penny loafers, I won a twist contest in 8th grade, I wore bell bottoms and long hair, and there that unfortunate fashion incident involving a blue leisure suit and all of that was great – except perhaps the leisure suit – I enjoyed them all. Clothing and music and hobbies are all ways that we can connect with our neighbors, but God is God not a fad.

And if we sacrifice what we know is a question of faith to the pop culture, if we expect popularity polls to tell us what is right and what is wrong, we will never find the answers that will bring us any sense of peace or joy or meaning in our daily lives. The gods of the culture are all gods of what we don’t have: more money, thinner waistlines, better jobs, darker hair, and they are always driving us to want more and more and more, pushing us to a tomorrow that never comes.

Meanwhile the Lord God is the God of what we have today: family and friends and faith and each other, today.

And the only place where we can meet and serve God is today.

And that is a decision that gets made in each heart and each home.

So light your light in the small corners of your life, care for it today and let it show you, not so much the glories of where God was nor the visions of where God will be, but let it show you where God is today.