Matthew 25:1-13

Jesus said, “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. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But 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.’ And 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. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

---

This last week I was with a group of clergy in Northern Indiana. Given that all of us were preaching today, at lunch on Friday the conversation drifted into talking about the gospel for today, the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. We were trying to build ideas for sermons. As we went from topic to topic, the discussion finally centered on one question:

“What does the oil in Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids represent?”

Those of you that know me well know that this question would be like fingernails on chalkboard for me. That’s because even to ask it that way (“what does the oil in Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids represent?) is in my opinion to take what is essentially a poem and to try to turn it into a story in which each element “represents” some other thing. What this typically leads to is that the story becomes a vehicle to teach us all a moral lesson that, like another kind of oil from my past—cod liver oil—oil that is difficult to get down but others guarantee will be good for us.

I resist this way of coming at parables or stories from our gospel, because, for me, this kind of treatment of texts, while it may give us moral lessons, gives us little in the way of the transformation of our minds or our hearts and, therefore, has little chance in transforming how we respond to our lives and to the world we live in.

And so I did not contribute much to the discussion about what the oil or anything else in the parable “represents.” Which meant, of course, that I was pushed more powerfully into the question of: “Where is this parable alive in me—here and now? Where might this parable come alive in all of you here and now?” And these questions are always challenging questions.

And so let’s wade into the challenge, shall we? If we do, we might find out for ourselves not what the oil represents but where the oil is in us and how it might light our path to the feast.

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like this: it’s like the joyful celebration that begins when bride and groom come together in the dark of night. It is a celebration that cannot and does not happen without help from another place. It needs those with lamps in their hands and oil in their lamps, ready to light the way when the groom appears. And we can never know when the groom will appear.

And so for us who are seeking not just moral lessons but the transformation of our hearts, of our minds and of our lives, we ask:

Where in me is the joyful celebration of bride and bridegroom yearning to come into being? Where in me is there a God-inspired yearning for the consummation of complimentary but different energies? Where is there a push to union or wholeness? And then, of course, what in me will light the way for this to happen and what energy will need to be ready at any time to fuel that light?

Thinking about these questions reminded me of a training session I attended some years ago. I went there looking for more self awareness or integration. It was one of those intense training sessions in which participants are told to come into the training room with nothing—no papers or pencils in our hands and, significantly, no watches on our wrists. The training room was bare—chairs set up in rows, close together facing down front where only a stool for our trainer sat. Off to the side of that stool was an easel. On that easel was a large sign with one word printed on it. That word was “Notice.”

What we proceeded to do in the training session over the next three days was to hone our ability to notice, to use our energy on noticing—ourselves, the other people in the room, the stuff of our lives that presented itself like a bridegroom appearing late and in the night looking for his way.

We noticed things we had not admitted were there before—in ourselves, in our lives, in our responses to the world. The braver among us even shared out loud what they now noticed with the rest of us. I did it quietly, very quietly, feeling foolish at not having noticed some of these things in my life earlier, And yet together in the light of that room, I noticed them and at least some of my errant bridegrooms found their way to where they needed to go.

I speak of this training session not to recommend this method to all of you but to propose that at least part of what this parable might be describing and inviting us to consider is that without the energy within us for noticing and the light that such noticing sheds, the pieces inside us that are looking to come together in some kind of whole can’t find each other.

And I would also say that without the energy within us for noticing and the light that such energy sheds, that we cannot see the ways in which the pieces of our fragmented world might come together and be transformed into the marriage feast to which all are invited that is God’s kingdom.

Noticing and the energy for noticing,: the oil, if you will, that it takes: how will we ever have enough when there is so much to do in life that takes up our energy, our oil?

As a perpetually foolish bridesmaid, this is a huge question for me. I constantly think I’m not devoting enough time to replenishing or preserving my oil. I often wonder how many times the bridegroom has shown up and could not find his way to the feast on account of my unlit lamp.

This for me is where St. Paul’s comes in.

There are many things I could say to you here on our Stewardship Sunday about why it’s important to be generous when it comes to St. Paul’s. For me the value of this place it that it is a place where my oil is replenished and it is a place that gives me images of the feast that is both the kingdom of God and the table God sets for me in the center of my life. This image of the feast is itself oil.

And so in our worship this morning, in the silences, in our music, in the movement of your own body in prayer, let God replenish your oil—oil that once lit illumines your path to the feast And in our feast of the Mass let God remind you of the feast that both is and can be within you and let God remind you of the feast to which all are invited for it is the way that God yearns for the world to be.

“Notice”: the sign read in the training session. St. Paul’s as a place that helps us notice. “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” Matthew’s Jesus declares at the end of the parable of the foolish and wise bridesmaids.

I’ll end with a little piece of a poem from Spanish poet Antonio Machado on Jesus and the importance of noticing: 

I love Jesus, who said to us:
Heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Affection? Forgiveness?
All your words were
one word: Wakeup.

Works Cited or Consulted

Fourteen Poems Chosen From “Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs” from Times Alone
By Antonio Machado and Robert Bly

Back to Sermons