Spiritual Hiccups - Lamps Trimmed and Burning

There's an old African-American spiritual that is one of my favorite Advent anthems.  It's called "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning," and you can find it on YouTube performed by choirs, The White Stripes, and 1920s gospel/blues icon Blind Willie Johnson.  The piece comes from the parable Jesus tells in today's gospel.  He begins, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps."

Jesus' parable is about the pose of the faithful between the time of his resurrection and his return, but most times I've heard this passage preached or taught the readiness Jesus speaks of has been disconnected from the Kingdom.  It is no longer about Jesus or God's reign coming, but about our going.  "You never know when you might die, so you'd better be ready."

It seems somewhat odd to me that even though many Christians pray the Lord's Prayer on a regular basis (When I was growing up the sports teams I played on prayed it before every game.), the first petition of that prayer seems almost forgotten.  Our faith is not much about "Your kingdom come on earth" but rather, "God take us to heaven when we die."

Christmas is growing close, and soon we will be singing "Glory to the newborn King."  But king of what?  Ruler of what?  We will sing "Let earth receive her king," but we have done a pretty good job of locking Jesus up in heaven.  Lord's Prayer or not, we'd rather not have Jesus running our world, or even our lives.  He might tell us to give our wealth to the poor.  He might say that the prostitutes and sinners are in line ahead of us.  No thanks, Jesus.  We'll catch you later, after we die.

I wonder what all our preparation and getting ready for Christmas might look like if we actually entertained the possibility that Jesus could show up and take his place on the throne; if we thought he might suddenly become head of the banks and armies and governments... maybe even the Church.

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