2017-11-13
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Matthew 25:1-13
I have had countless delightful experiences leading weddings. Some of my favorite moments have occurred as I’ve watched the gleam in the couple’s eyes, and listened to the depth of emotion and commitment as they have pledged their lives to each other. Weddings are fantastic.
Except when they’re not. Sometimes weddings have unforeseen challenges, or, to be honest, they just go horribly wrong. At one wedding I led, the couple, or the best man, forgot the rings. So we improvised and used the pop top rings from the top of two soda pop cans. Pretty ingenious, I thought, and no wedding guest was the wiser!
At another wedding, the bride told me about ten minutes before the service that she didn’t know if she wanted to go through with it. She was extremely agitated, and deeply worried that she was making a terrible mistake. I had to go tell the groom of the bride’s reservations. And then I got them together and spoke gently about the bride’s struggle, and left the two of them alone together to talk it through—all while the congregation waited patiently and blissfully unaware. The couple finally decided to go through with it. And the service went pretty well, except that when it came time for the vows, I must have been just tense enough that I made the big faux pas of asking the bride, “Do you take Joe to be your wife?” The congregation got a good laugh. It was my generous contribution to lessening the tension! And the last I knew they were still married many years later. Whew!
Another time, at a hot summer wedding in an un-air-conditioned sanctuary in Vermont, I was in the middle of leading the service. As I spoke the familiar words of the liturgy, out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly noticed the groom moving slowly toward me. I wasn’t looking directly at him, as I was addressing the congregation, but I was aware of his slow approach. I thought he probably wanted to whisper something to me, or ask a question about what came next. But it wasn’t typical wedding behavior, and I was somewhat mystified. So I turned and looked at him and realized he was in a dead faint, falling right toward me. So I caught him like a football as the congregation let out a collective gasp, and several of us got him up and led him to the front pew where we got him some water and he had a chance to sit for ten minutes. We then resumed the service without incident. When I saw the bride after the service, though, she said with a bitter snarl, “That’s all anyone’s going to remember about this day!”
Yes, weddings can go horribly wrong. But I confess I have never officiated at a wedding in which the groom was twelve hours late, and half the bridesmaids were denied entry to the service. Jesus tells a parable about a wedding gone terribly awry, a story about wise and foolish bridesmaids, some with enough oil for their lamps to burn a long time, others with too little oil for their lamps to continue to burn. And the wise ones are rewarded, the foolish ones punished.
And we’re left scratching our heads, because the story is full of strange and confusing details. I counted at least nine oddities. One, no bride is ever mentioned in the story. Two, the groom, as we say, arrives incredibly late. Three, the groom is so late that all the attendants fall asleep. Four, rather than asking nicely for help, the foolish ones demand help from the wise ones. Five, the wise ones are patently selfish and unwilling to share. Six, the foolish ones show just how foolish they are by heading off to find more oil at midnight, in a ridiculous pipe dream that shops would somehow be open then. Seven, the wise ones don’t graciously say, “Let’s wait for our friends to get back” before going in to the wedding. Eight, the groom, who is clearly a God figure in the story, is unbelievably stern and unforgiving. And then nine, the summary line at the end commands everyone to “Keep awake,” as though the wise ones had stayed awake while the foolish ones slept. No! Even the wise ones in the story fall asleep. What a mess!
And what all of that does is pique our interest. This story doesn’t fit at all with the Jesus we think we know. The Jesus we treasure is kindly and forgiving. He’s all about welcoming everybody and patiently understanding people’s foibles and limits. The Jesus we think we know encourages nice behavior. He sets up a simple moral world in which good is rewarded, grace is given even to foolish people, and God’s love triumphs. And this is not the Jesus we see in today’s story. A major monkey wrench is thrown into the spiritual mix!
The odd and ultimately wonderful thing about Jesus is he never quite fits into the neat little boxes we like to put him in. He can be full of unexpected surprises. And the parables he tells are among the startling surprises. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus tells a total of 55 parables, some of which are in more than one gospel, and some of which are unique to a particular gospel. You might be interested to know that there are no parables in the gospel of John.
Parables can be grouped in all sorts of ways. And one of the distinctions is between parables of grace and parables of judgment. Both have a prominent place in the stories of Jesus. The most appealing parables are the parables of grace, with the parable of the prodigal son who is received and welcomed by his adoring father as the most beloved of all. And while the parables of grace may leave us with questions, they also leave us with a warm feeling, because they declare God’s abundant love of us. These are the comforting parables.
They’re not the only parables, though. There are numerous parables of judgment, as well, parables that put discipleship in stark and intense terms, parables that set forth the expectations that go with being a follower of Jesus. Over the next three Sundays, we will look at three of Jesus’ stories that convey these expectations bluntly and graphically. These are the last three stories Jesus tells in the gospel of Matthew before the story of his death begins. And because of their placement at the very end of his ministry, they have a compelling power in Matthew’s narrative.
As gracious and lenient as God most certainly is, these stories seem to say, there are also expectations that go with being a child of God. Next week we’ll look at the parable of the talents, and in two weeks we’ll explore the story of the last judgment, the story of the sheep and the goats. And today we are confronted with the bizarre imagery of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. And all three of these stories put before us something of the demand that goes with following Jesus.
As we encounter a story such as today’s, it’s vital to remember that the early Christian church wrestled with an ongoing and gnawing question. They expected the Messiah to return soon to consummate history and make all things complete. They waited for such a day. And they waited. And it didn’t come about. And they had to try to make sense of the delay, and of how to live in the meantime.
As time stretched on with no returning Messiah, the early church gradually developed a sense for how to live in the interim. They focused on living in the moment, and living with an ongoing attentiveness to, and awareness of, the presence of God. If there wasn’t going to be a dramatic reappearance of the Messiah, at least they could live with an ongoing sense of Jesus’ more subtle presence. Remember that, in Matthew’s gospel, one of Jesus’ names, “Emmanuel,” means literally, “God is with us” (1:23). And his final promise in that gospel is one that rings in our ears even now: “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (28:20). The shimmering gleam of Christ’s holiness radiates throughout the landscape of our lives. Our first job is to be aware.
So at the heart of everything is the enveloping presence of Christ. And as we continually realize that, what’s asked of us in our enchanted world is lives and habits that mesh with the grace we have been given. Which is where the expectation part of faith comes in: if God is paying attention to us, doesn’t it make all the sense in the world that we should pay attention to God?
The heart of the story Jesus tells is that some people have prepared themselves for the urgency of life; and those who are prepared let their light shine before them. If we heed this story, what we hear, I think, is this: a life that’s filled full will have a kind of urgency about it; and such a life will be a bearer of light. Urgency and light mark discipleship.
Life’s urgency shows itself in a variety of ways and has a certain shape to it. When we’re really attuned, we recognize that certain matters cannot or should not be put off. Is there someone you’ve been meaning to thank—a teacher, perhaps, a grandparent, parent, loyal friend, church buddy? Thank them. Maybe there’s a task that awaits you, one that you’ve been putting off. I heard someone say once that if cleaning out a closet seems overwhelming to you, start with something small. On the first day, just open the closet door. That’s it. And maybe the second day you pick out one shirt and one pair of shoes to give away. Maybe you’ve neglected paying off some bills, or planning for your retirement. Can you, today, start with something small in repaying a debt or opening an IRA? Have you lost touch with a child of yours? Can you today write a short note or leave a gracious voice mail message or send a modest care package? Some of you may be in jobs that just are not you. You suffer under their weight; your life is diminished in the doing. So as not to crush your soul, can you make a step toward a change? I think of that riveting line of the poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (“The Summer Day”). Life is wild and precious. How are we going to fully enjoy its richness? The wedding is starting. Do we have sufficient oil? Are we ready? It’s an urgent matter. Do it. Do it.
Jesus’ parable reminds us not to let life slide by without paying sufficient attention to the things that need to be done. Urgency is at its heart. So also is that image of shining the light. The wise guests are the ones who have enough oil to let their lights keep shining. When we look at the world around us, we see a brutal church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas; we see the exposure recently of countless cases of sexual harassment and assault; we see the coarsening and cheapening of public discourse we see families torn apart by innumerable activities, job demands, and the near-complete absence of quiet, reflective time. Dis-ease sears our common life, and rends the fabric of our days. None of this is any surprise to you.
So having enough oil and holding onto the light has a great deal to do with saying no to all those destructive forces. It has to do with not being sucked into the maelstrom of bitterness and mean-spiritedness. It has to do, instead, with saying yes to quiet time with God, saying yes to common respect, saying yes to advocacy for justice, saying yes to deeds of mercy, saying yes to the willingness to forgive each other. This is what it is to have enough oil, and to let our light shine.
Osheta Moore is a blogger and podcaster in Los Angeles. She and some friends have formed a group called “Shalom Sistas,” a group dedicated to living out some of this urgency, this oil of love: “Let us be champions of kindness, ambassadors of goodness, and heroes with humility”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4qyxYi4318). She and her compatriots have developed a kind of manifesto as to what they’re to be about. They strive to see beauty in each other; both to work and also to take adequate time for rest; to build bridges not walls; to be peacemakers.
One thing in particular that they’ve said has stuck with me. “We will tell better stories about those whose choices hurt us” (The Christian Century, November 8, 2017, p. 11). These women are acutely aware of how easily we demonize each other, how readily we judge people who are different from us, how facilely we dismiss those we dislike. “She’s cold and judgmental,” we think; “he’s a lying scumbag;” “my neighbors will do anything to make themselves look good.”
Osheta Moore and her friends seek to tell better stories about these people they’ve judged and dismissed. Yu Darvish is one who has done what they’re suggesting: he has told a better story about someone who has hurt him. Darvish pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers. During the recently-completed World Series, his team faced the Houston Astros. One of the Astros hit a home run off Darvish in game three, and as he rounded the bases, he mocked Darvish, who is Japanese, by stretching the skin around his eyes. It was a juvenile and racist taunt. Darvish, though, responded to the taunt by telling a better story about the perpetrator. This was the statement Darvish made afterward: “No one is perfect. That includes both you and [me]. What he had done today isn’t right, but I believe we should put our effort into learning rather than to accuse him. If we can take something from this, this is a giant step for [hu]mankind. Since we are living in such a wonderful world, let’s stay positive and move forward instead of focusing on anger. I’m counting on everyone’s big love” (quoted by Phillip Morris, The Plain Dealer, Nov. 1, 2017, p. E2).
Counting on everyone’s big love. That’s what Jesus is doing. While we all wait together, Yu Darvish has plenty of oil in his lamp. As we receive new members today, may we, too, know the urgency of each moment, and fill our lamps with such love.