Church of the Good Shepherd

November 9, 2008

The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 781-7; I Thessalonians 4:13-18;

Matthew 25:1=13

The gospel parable this morning is one that raises more questions for me than it gives answers.  As one of my favorite young parishioners said of the wise virgins at one time, “ Aren’t we supposed to share?”  Well, aren’t we?

And, if we compare this parable to the parable of the prodigal son who squandered his entire inheritance with dissolute living and was treated to the fatted calf while the older brother, who was “the good one,” was made to look like Scrooge for his whiny self-righteousness, why was it naughty for him to be a good and faithful albeit selfish servant while the faithful but also selfish lamp virgins are exalted?  Why was the prodigal given a grace filled homecoming while the foolish virgins who fell asleep late at night and their oil all burned up are totally denied entrance to the bridegroom’s party?

And there you have the problem with parables.  They are not meant to be taken literally nor are they meant to contain the whole truth.  They are supposed to tell part of the truth, not a truth out of context with other truths, nor a truth that seems to say the opposite from some other parable that tells the truth in a way that is easier to hear.  All of us would rather be the forgiven prodigal (if we can admit that we have need of God’s grace – but, then, that is a whole other set of problems, isn’t it?) than be one of the five foolish virgins who ran out of oil because, well, because we simply didn’t plan far enough ahead and are denied entrance to the party.

But taking these parables and the stories that we will get in the next couple of weeks as we prepare for the coming of Advent, we need to think about something I don’t like to think much about and most Episcopalians don’t think about: judgment.  These little stories and parables – and certainly the other readings for today – all have an element of judgment in them.  They seem to indicate that indeed we can do things so terrible that they can separate us from the love of God and from the possibility of eternal relationship with God in the life that follows this one.  Like most Episcopalians I scour the bible for passages that would deny that possibility, for I hope, as we all do, that God is really like the father of the prodigal.  That God is really like the manager who pays the same wages to those who come last as to those who come first.  That God is really like Jesus who forgave even those who tormented him and hung him on a cross to die.  I live in that hope and define my faith by it, not because I am righteous but because I am so utterly much more likely to be one who forgets the oil (or just puts off to the last minute the getting of it) or who feels more like the prodigal than the older son most of the time.

So how can we make sense of this parable that seems to say here is a final answer and it can be no?  It is hard to reconcile when we celebrate year after year the reality that the bridegroom, Jesus, comes again, and again.  We celebrate that there is no final answer because God will come again, and we know that we will be given another opportunity to greet the bridegroom.  We humans live more in a reality like the poor guy on groundhog day – do you remember the movie?  He woke up to the same day over and over again and then lived the day over and over again until he got it right! – That is my experience of God.  God keeps at me until I get it, and often I don’t like the answers God gives me, especially the first time, and maybe the second and third and twentieth, but God keeps at me until I get it.  And I am not alone in that.  God keeps at all of us.  Haven’t you had that experience too?

So how can we make any sense of this parable?  Maybe it’s by going back in time, to a wedding feast in first century Palestine?  The virgins, or unmarried girls and young women wait outside the bridegroom’s door for him to return with his bride whom he has picked up at her father’s home and brings back to his home to spend the first night of their marriage with him in his home.  All of the village, the friends, families of both bride and groom wait there for him to return with the bride and his entourage of groomsmen and male siblings from both families.  The oil lamp holders, unmarried women, wait to escort the whole party into the house.  Now you would think they would set a time, but travel was not the thing of schedules that it is today.  And so if the bride was from another village, the exact hour likely could not be determined – but, even so, one would likely have a pretty good idea of when the bridal party would arrive.

This, of course, begs the possibility that the foolish virgins were not so foolish.  They planned for the expected hour of the bridegroom – and perhaps were New England thrifty and only had as much oil as they would need.

But something could have happened, a mishap on the road, one too many cups of thick black coffee for the road, a meal that took too long to eat, bad weather, a timid bride perhaps unwilling to leave home – any number of things and the arrival is delayed way beyond the expected hour.

If we think about this in terms of those first century Palestinians, we would know that they expected Jesus to come again immediately.  They expected that Jesus would come again for the faithful before they died and that there would be an enormous apocalyptic overturning of the earthly powers that were and all the faithful would be identified and saved.  So those virgins who were waiting for Jesus would have expected him momentarily.

But time had passed, and Jesus had been gone a long time.  Many that were considered faithful had indeed died.  And so the faithful who were there were wondering, “What does this mean?  Is Jesus coming or not?  How do we keep prepared?  For how long?  What do we do in the mean time?”  

So, how do we make any sense of all this?  The arrival time of Jesus is delayed, and the answer of who is foolish and who is wise has not yet to this day been answered because we just haven’t gotten there yet.  We are, as they were when this gospel was written two thousand years ago, in the in-between time, the time of waiting, of not knowing and still knowing.  That is where we all live . . .

And so the point of this parable is not to determine who is wise and who is foolish by who shares or doesn’t share the oil, it’s not about oil at all, but rather how to wait.  This parable teaches us that we are to wait as though “this is the hour” every single day, the hour that Jesus is coming, that it is now!  There is tension in living that way of course, not because it may be a long time but because we also live in the reality that Jesus is already here.  We have a relationship with a living God here and now, and yet we are alert to the living God who will return and complete the story in ways we really can’t even imagine. 

We can’t even imagine!  Remember, for instance, how you felt before something really important happened in your life, like a wedding or a graduation or a test you had to take, or the arrival of a friend or a baby or a grandchild, or a trip you really looked forward to taking.  The anticipation of it was wonderful – or dreadful – depending upon what we are talking about.  Anticipation for a test is different from anticipation for a party for instance!  But even in your imagination you could not know exactly what either would be like, and the reality was different no matter how carefully you planned for the event.

What I think this parable invites us to do is to live in the anticipation, not so we are judged “prepared” or “doomed,” but so that we can recognize the bridegroom and the grace he will bring to us; not because God wants to or will judge us unwise or unacceptable, but because God will and does find us so wonderfully irresistible.

We will get glimpses of God’s adoration of us just as we are tired and hungry and holding a partially burned out lamp along the way because Jesus is here.  And those glimpses might even delude us into believing we know what is coming – but we haven’t a clue really.

I believe we are invited by this parable to live in such tingling anticipation for the joy of it, for the promise of grace, and for the promised fun of being at the party with Jesus.  Live in anticipation not so you can be judged wise enough to save enough oil, or share all you have, or to have done everything perfectly on your life, said the right faith words, gone to the right church, said the right prayers, tithed enough money, loved the right people, did enough good deeds – NO!  Not for that kind of human dependent action or evaluation or judgment at all!  But live in anticipation with a robust abundance of shared grace and forgiveness so that you will recognize the bridegroom when he comes and be willing to join in, be able to accept God’s unbounded love, and bask in it, relish it, join the party, and live in the eternal light.  Live in anticipation because as God’s beloved we can.  Keep your lamps full of the oil of God’s love.  And none of us can go wrong.

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris

Church of the Good Shepherd