New Land without a Sunday [Trinity 27; St. Matthew 25:1-13]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

So, Jesus speaks to us today in His Ultimate Gospel and says,

“And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.”

As we conclude our “Land without a Sunday” theme, this final Sunday of the Church Year, we first reflect on what we have discovered. That the world wants churches to be silent and to not be able to ring bells, or speak, or gather. We discovered that our “Sunday” is none other than the Lord’s Day, celebrated daily in the Bible.

We must also remember that the Lord’s Day is something old, not new. The Christians were not ashamed of this new Day of Resurrection; that they had to celebrate it AND the Sabbath side by side. They were respectful of both and learned that the Lord’s Day is the actual right way to celebrate the Sabbath, ending Sabbath Day observance.

Neither were Christians afraid of the world, when they offered the Divine Service in houses, instead of church buildings. They desired peace with God and man. They did not wish for evil upon those who persecuted them, neither did they want to disturb the “peace of the empire” on purpose. They wanted a quiet life, filled with the Word and Sacraments.

So once Rome went away and Christianity became free to assemble publicly, the Lord’s Day grew by leaps and bounds into the Church Year we celebrate today, replete with culture-relevant observances and festivities. During this time period, we get our daily lectionary, prayer books, Advent Wreaths, and every other family and village activity associated with the Church year.

Almost every culture had some sort of Christian aspect to its yearly celebrations, even if that culture was secular. From spring dances to harvest festivals, the life of the faithful was replete with physical manifestations of faith in action. And the church bells rang out everywhere.

Until they were silenced by the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which produced such wonderful inventions as the gulag and the guillotine. However, though we just celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, have the bells really begun to ring again or have they stopped in the USA?

In our super-saturated American, “Christian” buffet-table, where we can not turn around without running into a “church”, we are turning into another “Land without a Sunday”.

In fact, we are surrounded by bells that are not church bells. We have school bells, ESPN app bells, Wall Street bells, and silver bells. Even though all of these are ringing, constantly ringing, they do nothing for faith and teach us nothing of Christ.

Even the church bells in America that do ring, ring for churches that do not believe that the Lord comes to commune with His baptized people. In a cosmic, devilish twist, this land of Liberty Bells has become a Land without a Sunday.

Since the silencing of church bells didn’t work before, now we will let any and all bells ring as much as they want in order that instead of silence, the deafening, endless noise would drown out all music but its own. The noisy gongs and clanging cymbals of 1 Cor. 13, ring in vanity and corruption and have drawn the people away from Christ to the church of popular opinion.

In this new land without a Sunday, the Bridegroom is delayed and our lamps are going out. As true religion shrinks daily in the US, we who believe become drowsy and fall asleep at the wheel just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We are lulled into a deep hypnotic sleep by the endless, demonic noise, thinking that we are secure and our lamps are the best.

But Jesus lets peal a new bell. A cry, the sound of a trumpet fires off and sets everyone on edge. And what is this new bell? Is it like the thunder that accompanied Noah’s Flood? Is it the constant blasts on the shofar that signaled Divine Service in the OT Temple?

The significance of a church bell is more than just a call to prayer or an opportunity to play a hymn over a loudspeaker. Its importance and significance is to announce the presence of God in a certain area at a certain time.

Noah’s thunder announced God’s presence as He opened the floodgates of earth and heaven. The Temple’s shofars, jewish horns, signified the approach of God to the Divine Service there at the Temple. The trumpets of the Last Day of all things will do the very same thing: announce the Second Coming of Jesus in the flesh.

Church bells are no different, or they should be no different. In that they are to proclaim to the world, within hearing distance, that God is showing up on the scene. That something incredible is about to happen at this place and this time. That the kingdom of heaven is about to make another breach in the wall of this evil world and preach victory again and again.

All this should be going through your head as you hear a church bell, just as the same thoughts were racing through the 10 virgin’s heads when the bell rang in the Gospel.  At this ringing, they woke from their deep sleep.

Maybe your applications or text messages wake you up too. Maybe you also feel the need to get prepared, whether its your alarm for work or your phone going off and you need to mentally prepare for that conversation.

You must be able to make the distinction, because 5 of the virgins thought they had just received a regular alert on their iPhones and the other 5 heard a true Church bell ringing, announcing that the Bridegroom was going to be there and they better be, too.

What was that cry? “Here is the Bridegroom!” Here. Right here. Not in your lamps, not in your oil, not at the dealers. On this Last Day, you will not find Jesus in your neighbor, or in your life-long ambition, or anywhere else. For He will be in His own Body. But you already knew this, because this is the primary lesson the Divine Service teaches you.

Since the creation of Adam, God has been saying that He is going to take a Body for Himself and there is nothing else in the Bible that God has been so focused on teaching. There is no greater Word of God and no greater representation of the Gospel than the true Body of Christ.

So when the wise virgins hear the cry, they believe a body will show up that will be in this place one second and a different place in another second. The foolish virgins have no regard for this body that God has and instead focus on their own bodies and appetites.

Then the Bridegroom appears in His Body, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, and one minute He is outside the marriage feast and the next, He is behind locked doors.

And what are we to take from this, we who are now living in a new land without a Sunday?

We are to take and eat, believing that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Sunday. And in so believing, come to know that Sunday does not depend on us or our ability to ring a church bell, but it depends on Christ and His coming. For Jesus is the giver of lamp and light and oil, and He is the one to give Faith which trusts the Word of God.

Church bells are no different. Even our organs are the same as bells when they represent and mimic the singing Church; the Church that cries out to God and confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 Jn. 4:2). This is why our Hymn of the Day tells us, the watchmen are “singing” their announcement; the only way to get the Church’s message out.

And the announcement is that the Lord of all Creation has come in the flesh to save His people from their sins and bring an end to the heavens and the earth in fire. Not only this though, He has also promised that those standing firm in the faith are to go into the Wedding Feast with Him.

In this hope then, we face the Land Without a Sunday. We continue to gather on the Lord’s Day, continue to devote ourselves to the Apostle’s Doctrine, the fellowship, the breaking of the Bread, and the Prayers (Acts 2:42). Nothing done in the Name of Jesus is a waste. It is exactly this tradition that is now radical in the world’s eyes; this Divine Service which is rebellion.

Because it is this Church which the Lord has saved and purified and it is this Church that has the watchmen singing still, and it is this Church, baptized and fed, which Jesus Himself will bring to the Feast to be with Him forever, free from silence and noisy gongs; full of innocence and blessedness.