A sermon preached at the closing of the Diocese of West Texas Silent Retreat, Mustang Island, TX.
The lectionary readings for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.
Have you been to a wedding lately? In our modern western world, bridesmaids don’t have a lot of responsibility except to party with the bride before hand and stand and look good at the ceremony. I don’t mean any disrespect, it’s tradition to have bridesmaids and it is the bride’s friends celebrating her marriage in a special way.
Weddings in 1st century Palestine were another matter. The bridesmaids actually had something important to do. After the ceremony, the bride and groom would make their way to the groom’s family home. The bride’s attendants would be waiting and watching for their arrival and announce that the feast could commence. It’s not like the bride and groom could call ahead to say “we’re leaving now”, there were no family tracking apps to see how far away they were, no gps apps to give an exact arrival time.
And so the bridesmaids waited. And waited. And waited. The wise were prepared, the others were not. But before we start thinking about people we know and attempting to do the sorting that isn’t ours to do, let’s just say that instead of two groups of people these 5 and 5 represent two sides of ourselves. Sometimes we are wiser than we are at other times. It’s a story to help us know who we are: humans who sometimes have it all together and sometimes not.
The people who heard Jesus tell this story in person would have heard the echo of the end of what we now call the sermon on the mount when Jesus says there will be those who say Lord, Lord, and I will say I never knew you. Following Jesus is about talking the talk AND walking the walk.
And then there’s the part where the wise women refuse to share their oil. What’s that all about? Aren’t they just being mean and stingy? No, they are being wise. And, just a side note about the word wise here – in his teachings, Jesus uses two words for wisdom, sophia which is divine wisdom and the word he uses here, phronimos which is a more practical type of wisdom, the ability to discern a situation and know what to do, the kind of wisdom that says a tomato may be a fruit but you don’t put it in a fruit salad.
These wise women understand that it’s just not possible to get to God through someone else’s good works. I can’t ride your coattails of goodness into the Kingdom. I have to receive the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness for myself. And if I try to let your relationship with God be mine, I miss out on the joy and celebration of knowing God and knowing I am a beloved child of God. As my very wise husband often says, “God has no grandchildren.”
When Jesus tells parables he’s tapping into the tradition of wisdom teaching. Parables aren’t to be taken as a literal narrative. They are intentionally quirky stories that are supposed to make us take note of the odd details and say, ‘wait, what?’ These stories help us ask the challenging questions – who would I be in this story, what would I do and why, and the most challenging of all – how is this intended to help shape us into who God created and calls us to be in our day and our time?
God is a god of relationship and transformation. God knows us and wants nothing more than for us to know God, for us to know who and Whose we are, and for us to be open to the transforming Kingdom life. We’re never too old to gain wisdom in this life, although sometimes we may be to stubborn or rigid, kind of like the foolish women in this story – they knew the wedding party would arrive at a certain time and they only prepared for a situation in which they would be ‘right’.
This wedding story is also an Advent story – don’t panic, we still have three weeks until the beginning of the Advent season – I’m talking about a different Advent. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of three advents: the coming of God in Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas, the Second coming of Jesus when God will set all things right in the new heaven and new earth, and the Advent of everyday: our own watching for Jesus to come to us in the ordinary moments of our everyday lives.
Waiting and watching for Jesus isn’t just ‘not sleeping’. It isn’t a simple ‘be prepared’ as if we were a holy scout troop. It’s intentionally preparing ourselves to encounter Jesus at any moment. It’s walking the walk and not just talking the talk. It’s tending to the needs of the ‘least of these’ and understanding that sometimes we are the one who needs others to tend to us. It’s seeking the greater good for everyone and not just ourselves. It’s looking for the image of God in every other human being we encounter. It’s letting the image of God in us shape and form all that we think, say, and do.
I grew up in a denomination that was obsessed with the second coming to the point that we didn’t spend much time talking about how we should live in the here and now.
In the Episcopal church, we don’t talk much at all about the second coming, the fulfillment of God’s purposes in Creation. But I don’t want you to be uninformed, my brothers and sisters. We live today as if that day has already come about AND in the sure and certain hope of God’s promise of a world where there is no hunger or pain or sorrow. And until that day arrives, we do all that we can with God’s help to alleviate the hunger and pain and sorrow caused by all of the ways we distort the image of God in ourselves and in others.
This parable is Jesus teaching us a distinctive way of being in this world – expectant and prepared, mindful, intentional, ready, and awake. We don’t always know when we will have the opportunity to shine God’s light into someone else’s darkness so we must keep our lamps trimmed and filled with oil.
We are to seek continuously to deepen our relationship with God and to be aware of the blessings of grace and forgiveness that we have received so that we can offer God’s love to everyone. We do the hard work of knowing who and Whose we are so that we can clearly reflect God’s life-giving, world changing love. We talk the language of love and walk the way of love as a living invitation to the abundant banquet of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 