Lectionary Readings
Grant us patience, O Lord, that we might be ready to receive you when you come in glory ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Just as Dorothy takes in her surroundings and declares “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” it might seem that this liturgical space isn’t what it was just a week ago. Our Collect prays about Jesus coming into the world to destroy the works of the devil, about us purifying ourselves, and alludes to his coming again in power and great glory. And this theme of Jesus’ coming again runs throughout the Gospel text, a parable that is introduced with “Then the Kingdom of heaven will be like this.” The hymns – “Lo, he comes” and “Sleepers, wake!” also are disorienting, as we tend to think of those as Advent hymns. And, to be clear, I had nothing to do with choosing those hymns – that was Matt’s wisdom, not my affinity for “Lo, he comes.”
And,
in a sense, we are entering into Advent. In the Church of England, today is not
the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost. No, it’s the 3rd Sunday
before Advent. When I teach about the liturgical calendar, one metaphor that I
use is that Christmas and Easter are the two giants in the solar system,
something like Saturn and Jupiter. Well, we’re a comet that travels through
this system and we’ve now that we’ve passed All Saints, we are close enough to
Christmas that we are starting to get pulled into its orbit. So the readings,
prayers, and tone are starting to pull us into that great Feast of Christmas.
And the closer we get, the further we go into Advent.
Advent,
as you’ll recall, is a season that is primarily focused on preparation. Not
preparations like gift buying or tree decorating, but preparations for having
Jesus come again, just as he came as the child of Mary some 2,000 years ago.
Advent is about the Second Coming of Jesus and this is what we hold in mind as
we consider the parables in Matthew 25. This week we have the Parable of the
Ten Bridesmaids. Next week is the Parable of the Talents. And in two weeks we
have the Parable of the Sheep and Goats. These are parables of coming of the
King and of judgment and Jesus makes it pretty clear – judgment and action are
inseparably connected.
Today’s
parable is fairly straightforward –ten bridesmaids are waiting for the groom to
arrive so that the wedding banquet can begin. For some reason, we aren’t told
why because it isn’t information that Jesus thinks we need to know or speculate
about, the groom is delayed. Understandably, the bridesmaids all get tired and
drift off to sleep. Then, as we heard in the hymn, “Midnight’s peace their cry
has broken, their urgent summons clearly spoken: ‘The time has come, O maidens
wise! Rise up, and give us light; the Bridegroom is in sight. Alleluia! Your
lamps prepare and hasten there, that you the wedding feast may share.’”
But
there’s a problem, apparently, five of the bridesmaids weren’t anticipating
this delay and hadn’t brought a supply of lamp oil with them. Again, why they
didn’t bring the oil, we can speculate, but if Jesus wanted us to have that
detail, I think he would have given it to us. The point is that they’re out of
oil. So they ask the other five bridesmaids, who did bring extra oil with them,
if they can borrow some. They are told, “No.” And, again, we don’t know why
they refused. Perhaps it was because the lamps had already been refilled and
relit and getting oil out of an already burning lamp would be difficult. Maybe
it’s that they didn’t want to run out of oil themselves if they gave too much
away. We don’t know why they said “no.”
And at this point, we can get tripped up in the parable by focusing on the wrong
things. While it’s true that Jesus says “Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you” back in Matthew 7, this is not a parable about sharing. If it
were, the judgment would come down against those with extra oil. But that’s not
how this plays out. And it’s also true that back in Matthew 6, Jesus told his
disciples to “Consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air” with
the exhortation to “not worry about what you will eat, or what you will wear.”
Well, apparently, we are supposed to worry about oil, which seems confusing.
And we know that Jesus is a great and gracious provider – after all, when 5,000
people come out to hear him teach and get hungry, we call it the miracle of the
feeding of the 5,000, not “the story about the 5,000 hungry people who forgot
to pack a lunch.” Jesus has told us to “ask, and it will be given you.” But
that doesn’t seem to be working here.
And
these sorts of things can make us focus on the wrong part of the parable. The
issue at hand isn’t sharing with others. Yes, we should absolutely share out of
our resources with those who need it. But that’s not what this is a parable
about. It’s a parable of judgment – the admonition by Jesus to “Keep awake”
makes that clear. And the simple, even if inconvenient, truth is that some
things cannot be shared. You cannot share generosity, and make up for those who
are not generous. You can forgive all the people you want, but that doesn’t
make up for those who do not forgive others. You can work on your marriage with
every fiber of your being, but if your spouse does not, then the marriage will
be in trouble. If you did not study for the exam, you cannot borrow studying
time that others put in. If you worked long hours throughout your career, you
cannot get back the time you did not spend coming to church or with your
children. And what Jesus is really driving at here – you cannot lean on the
faith of others when you are asked for an accounting of the faith in you.
There’s no getting around the fact that this is a tough message – it’s why this
is considered a parable of judgment. Sometimes in judgment, we are found
lacking.
So
those bridesmaids that were found lacking in oil went out in search of oil. I’m
not sure it was a prudent decision to try to find an open store in the middle
of the night. Maybe they had some friends in that city and were going to their
house to borrow some oil from them. But isn’t this a truth we all know –
sometimes when we are stressed and anxious, we make bad decisions, like running
out when the bridegroom is in sight to try to find a 24 hour convenience store
a few thousand years before those had been invented. In this sense, the parable
is a cautionary tale. Sometimes it’s simply too late. If you’ve been a
demanding boss your whole life, that’s likely how you will be remembered. At
the final hour, and this is a parable about the final hour, things are pretty
much decided.
The
way the parable unfolds is that, presumably, these bridesmaids found the oil –
maybe they did actually know right where to find it after all, or maybe they
got lucky – and then they come back to join the party. But when they arrive,
they are told “I don’t know who you are” and they remain shut out from the
party. They don’t call it a parable of judgment for nothing. One difference
between the wise and the foolish here isn’t their access to oil – both ended up
with it – but rather whether or not they carried the oil with them, which
allowed them to have their lights shining when the bridegroom arrived.
Earlier
in Matthew, Jesus has told us, “You are the light of the world… Let your light
shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to
God.” The light of Christ was shining brightly from them. What mattered wasn’t
so much that they knew where to find the oil or how to light a lamp – the
foolish figured that out. What made the wise wise is that they were living for
this moment of the bridegroom’s arrival. Though he was very late, they ordered
their lives around his return. A lot of people probably thought the wise were
actually foolish – “It’s the middle of the day, why are you carrying around so
much oil with you?” Why do you give your money to the church instead of just
spending it on yourself? Why do you bother loving your enemies, it’s a lot
easier to hate them? Given all that’s going on in the world, why don’t you just
give in to bitterness, it’s a lot more fun and satisfying than being gracious?
Why do you bother saying prayers or watching church, you’re just telling
yourself a fairy tale?
We
are people who wait for the party. We are people who anticipate the coming of
Jesus. And so that might make us look foolish, carrying around our oil in the
form of faith, hope, and love. But as we know from St. Paul’s writing, “For the
message about the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us
who are being saved it is the power of God... God’s foolishness is wiser than
human wisdom.” This is a parable that gives us encouragement to endure and be
patient, for, indeed, there is a great party coming.
At
the end of the day though, have we really figured out what the difference
between the wise and the foolish bridesmaids is? Yes, the wise were ready to
light their lamps because they had their oil with them instead of having to go
get it at the last minute. But the foolish actually managed to do that – they
went out and got the oil and lit their lamps. What this ending suggests to us
is that it was never about the oil. The bridegroom didn’t care who had oil and
who did not.
The
difference between the wise and the foolish is which side of the door they were
on. In this parable, the door is shut, and everyone is on the side of the door
that they put themselves on. The wise, because they had oil, were there to
welcome the bridegroom upon his arrival. The foolish, because they had no oil
and went to get some, ended up on the other side of the door. But what would
have happened if the foolish had stayed inside and trusted in the mercy of the
bridegroom to either give them some oil, or maybe not even care about whether
or not they had any? Nowhere in this parable does the bridegroom congratulate
the wise for having oil. Instead, he greets those who were awaiting his arrival
and goes into the wedding banquet with them.
As
much as this is not a parable about the virtues of preparedness, it is not a
parable about the importance of self-sufficiency. What makes the foolish
foolish is not that they didn’t have oil with them, it’s that they went out and
tried to get it, effectively locking themselves out. They were pursuing things that did not matter in the end. While it is true that some
things can’t be borrowed and sometimes it is too late to fix our mistakes, when
it comes to this Bridegroom, there is always abundant grace. When the
bridegroom comes, there’s going to be a party. The question the bridegroom asks
is not “How bright is your lamp?,” “How long as it been shining,” or “How much
oil do you have?” No, the question the bridegroom will ask is “Are you ready to
party?”
