Nov 10 | “The Foolish Bridesmaid” (Sermon, November 9th)

Matthew 25:25-13

25‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ²Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. ⁶But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” ⁹But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” ¹⁰And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. ¹¹Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” ¹²But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” ¹³Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

This parable has holes, doesn’t it? A bridegroom, but no bride. A wedding feast – was there a wedding beforehand? Where are the bridesmaids supposed to get oil at midnight? What does the oil represent, and how can we make sure we have enough of it?

We know that in a parable everything has a hidden meaning. Historically, most interpretations see the wedding feast as the final restoration of all things that we hear about in Revelation, or that Mary celebrates in the Magnificat.

Well, I want to wonder something. I wonder if this feast was the reception after the wedding. And I wonder if the wedding was the Incarnation: Jesus coming among us, walking, talking, eating and drinking, telling stories, warning us about what was to come, telling us to prepare ourselves.

We’ve been to that wedding. We were born many years later but we were there. We don’t need to have seen Jesus face-to-face to have experienced it. We saw it at our baptism – the reaching out of God, and our reaching back, even if we weren’t conscious of it at the time, for the community’s reaching out on our behalf was enough. We also celebrate it every day. When we love another as we love ourselves we accept our invitation to the wedding. When we allow a vestigial or damaging piece of ourselves to die so that another may live more fully – whatever that looks like – we are present at that wedding of flesh and the infinite.

That’s good news.

But that’s not what this parable is about, is it? The ceremony is over. Now the reception can begin: the great celebration – if you’ll permit me, the wedding night when earth and heaven join together fully and forever at the end of the age.

Where are we now? Are we outside the door waiting for the bridegroom? Are we trimming our wicks and breathing a sigh of relief that we brought enough oil? Or are we scrambling down the alley trying to make our way back in time?

All of the bridesmaids fall asleep. The bridegroom is delayed. It takes a long time between the wedding and the feast.

I think it is easy during these darkening hours to forget the colour and pageantry of the wedding, easy to forget that a promise was made to return.

You can see warnings against forgetting all through Matthew’s Gospel, especially in the chapters before this one. Jesus tells us to beware of false Messiahs, and warns us that there will be great suffering. He was speaking in the context of the Roman Empire…but I think we still know what that means today. We might be tempted by people or things or movements that seem like the answer to all our problems, all our prayers – the latest toys, the slickest campaign ads – even though we know deep down they’re not.

And great suffering – well, we know suffering. Remembrance Day is this week – one hundred years since the beginning of World War I. After World War I church attendance plummeted. Too many of those who returned remembered being recruited from the pulpit. Too many came home having seen things that made them question whether there was any mercy in the world. And World War II, well – there’s people in this room that remember what that was like first hand. And even though my generation may not have known mass conscription or bombing drills, we came of age with the Columbine shooting and 9/11 on our TV screens, and we have organized protests that did not succeed in their mission. Violence continues to smoulder around the world.

All of the bridesmaids fell asleep. Some of the preachers of the early church said the sleep represented death. Maybe…but maybe it could have been despair.

We’ve all felt it – personally and communally.

Now if you look at the statistics, things are actually getting better. People are speaking out and doing great things – adults and children. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that looking at the news. I feel like in our parable, if we’re the bridesmaids, trying as hard as we can to stay awake, the media is like people passing by on the street who say, “Go home. He’s not coming.”

“He’s not coming.”

We all fall asleep – prepared and unprepared. Who knows what causes some to be prepared and some to not be? The parable doesn’t say.

We all fall asleep – and the cry goes up: “He’s coming!”

He doesn’t come with a big fanfare, like the Rapture in the Left Behind novels. Matthew’s Gospel says he comes like a thief in the night. Maybe that’s why we have to light our lamps. We’ll miss him otherwise.

What is the oil for a lamp of hope? Who can say? A better question is, “How are we supposed to get oil at midnight?” The parable doesn’t even say if the unprepared bridesmaids find any. It just says that by the time they got back it was too late.

I don’t know if there is a point at which it will be too late to light lamps of hope to join the feast, a point where we will miss the bridegroom for good.

What I do know is that there is oil for my lamp among this community right now, and maybe it’s oil for your lamp too, or it could be.

Maybe, if you and our brother Matthew will permit me, I can add an epilogue to the parable.

‘One of the foolish bridesmaids, locked outside, decided to write a letter to the bridegroom and slip it under the door. She set down her lamp, scavenged a discarded scrap of paper, and wrote:

“Beloved bridegroom,

I do not know when or if this will reach you. By the time you see it my hair may have turned grey and the hand which holds the lamp may be shaky. I will definitely be hungry and tired, for you can be certain that I will never sleep again.

I will be here, though.

At the wedding, there were so many to greet, and embrace, and bless, and welcome to the family. People came from all over just to see you resplendent in your robe of flesh, shining with the jewels of humankind’s best offerings – community, passion, faith, and love.

You, the bridegroom of my heart: brother, beloved, bone of my bone.

How were we supposed to believe you were really coming, after spending a years’ long night in this wicked city? People passing by laughed at us! “He’s not coming,” they said, and “What? Are you still here?”

But we would do it all again even if it took you twice as long. Except we’d bring some stupid oil.”

As she slides the letter under the door, she pauses to look at her pathetic lamp, dry as a bone and just as useful. The darkness is total now. The streets outside the banquet hall are silent. There is nothing left.

As she leans back against the bricks of the hall to look up at the sky, she is surprised at how warm they are. She can feel music from the feast pulsing against her back, and it makes her smile. She no longer feels hungry, and her eyelids are no longer heavy. She even recognizes the song and joins in – one voice, maybe half a beat behind, but the same song, the same story.

And suddenly, a grinding of wood on wood: someone is opening a window above her head. An amazing swath of light envelopes her. The sounds of the banquet become deafening; smells cascade upon her like a waterfall.

As she lifts her head, blinking into the light, she sees a shadow, gradually becoming clearer as her eyes adjust. Hands reach out – the hands she longed to kiss – and lower down a tray, and on the tray:

A fresh loaf of bread, and a glass of wine.’

Amen.

 

-Clarity