St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
November 9, 2008
Matthew 25:1-13
The Rev. Dr. Joel Huffstetler

If I had asked the ushers to give you a blank sheet of paper as you walked in this morning, and then asked you to write down your favorite New Testament passage, I am willing to bet that none of you would have picked this Gospel lesson. Am I right? I am not surprised. Just ever so often, not often at all, but occasionally, somebody will say to me, “That parable of the bridesmaids, I just don’t understand that.” And I will say, “I understand, it takes a little working at.” So I would like to do a teaching sermon today. You tell me you like those from time to time. So let’s do one today. Let’s actually look at this Gospel passage in some detail. Follow along in your bulletin, or the Bible in the pew, if you want to read along, Matthew 25:1-13.

Notice the first verse. “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this.” Notice the future tense. Jesus is laying the foundation to teach about the end of time, when the kingdom comes in its fullness. This is a prophecy. This is a parable that is teaching about the end of time. This passage occurs in Matthew’s Gospel in an apocalyptic section of Matthew. Matthew, at this point, is showing us Jesus’ teachings regarding the kingdom of God coming in its fullness at the end of time. That is what this parable is going to be about. Notice the future tense here. “The kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.” Every culture has its own wedding customs. Some of you are from different parts of the country than here. If you think back to the wedding customs in your area, they are different than here. A Catholic wedding in the northeastern part of the United States is very different from a Baptist wedding in Tennessee for example. Every region has its own culture, its own traditions. At this time in history, it was the tradition for the bridesmaids to go out and meet the bridegroom. They weren’t all getting their picture taken two thousand years ago! A very different culture from now. This is a tradition that people could relate to. The bridesmaids would go to welcome the bridegroom to the ceremony. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. This is a dichotomy that would be familiar to people familiar with Jewish wisdom literature, and Jesus’ audience would have been at least somewhat familiar with books like Proverbs. Proverbs uses the dichotomy between the wise and the foolish. And, of course, you want to be one of the wise. Jesus uses that set-up here, the wise and the foolish. “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.’”

What we are building up to here is a story about being prepared. What is going to happen is that five of the bridesmaids are going to be prepared, and five are not. And Jesus is going to use this example to make a very profound teaching. The bridegroom has been delayed. These things happen at weddings, don’t they? I have done more than one wedding where, when the bell rang; somebody wasn’t where they were supposed to be. These things happen on wedding days. So that is the story here. The bridegroom has been delayed. Much later than expected, suddenly he appears. Let’s see what happens.

Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. What that means is they wanted to trim the wick so that when it is lit it will have a much brighter flame. We do that with candles. You trim the wick so that it won’t melt in its own wax, and will burn more brightly. That is what they wanted to do here. “The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’” Here is the issue of preparedness. Some of these bridesmaids didn’t bring any extra oil with them, and now they want some help from those who did. “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.’

We are familiar with the Gospels when we are taught to share with one another, when we are taught to come to someone else’s aid in their time of need. So this doesn’t square with that. But Jesus is teaching something different here. This is a lesson about being prepared. There are consequences for not being prepared. The foolish bridesmaids are learning that. The bridesmaids with oil say, “We can’t give you some of our oil, and still have enough. You need to go to town 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.”

You may remember from other parables a wedding banquet, or a banquet, is a familiar image in the Gospels for the kingdom of heaven. The banquet here represents the kingdom of heaven in its fullest. “Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’” Here is the key final point. “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” What in the world is all this about? This image of bridesmaids, and some have extra oil and some don’t. Then the poor ones who don’t end up being shut out. What is being taught here? Let me humbly submit an idea for you. It is clear from Matthew’s Gospel that people were quizzing Jesus relentlessly about the end of time. “When will you come back? What will that look like? What will it be like?’ It is absolutely clear from the context that Jesus’ followers wanted answers that weren’t really theirs to have. You remember at another point in the Gospels, people are asking specifically about the date and the time. Jesus says, “This is not for you to know. But it is for you to be ready.” That is what Jesus is trying to teach here. There are things that we will never understand as human beings. The precise details of the end of time, as we know time, are not for us to comprehend. It is beyond our grasp as children of God. To spend our time worrying and anxiously trying to predict what will happen and when is not for us to do. It is not our place to spend so much time and energy trying to figure out exactly when the end of time will occur. But Jesus is trying to teach his hearers what is up to us to do is to be prepared. We are to live each day to the fullest. We are to live each day as if it were the day that our Lord would appear.

There is a wonderful bumper sticker you can see from time to time. I love looking at bumper stickers. I always read them. And, I always read church signs as I go by. There is a bumper sticker you may have seen. It says, “Jesus is coming soon. Look busy.” That is meant to be funny, and I take it in the spirit it is intended. There is a point being made at the same time. One of these days we are going to have to give an account. One of these days, we will meet our Lord face to face. Looking busy may, or may, not help. That is not the point of the sermon today. Here is the point I think Jesus was making, and it is a point for us to understand two thousand years later. We can’t control the future. We cannot control things that are beyond our understanding. What we have access to though is today. Today’s living. Today’s actions. Today’s thoughts. That we can control.

I want to remind you of this wonderful Psalm. It may be a favorite of yours. This is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I can send your heads shaking. You know this Psalm. It is very important. It is a foundational understanding. I submit to you that what Jesus is trying to teach here is to get his hearers to understand, “Why would you spend your time being anxious trying to figure out something so far in the future, when what you can control is today. This is the day that the Lord has made. This is the day that we have. This is the day to be prepared to meet our Lord if he were to come. Think about this for just a moment with me. And we will stop with this. Being right with God is not a matter of moral perfection. None of us will ever have that in this life. Being in right relationship with God isn’t about being perfect. It is about being forgiven. Being in right relationship with God means to honestly confess our sins, and to receive forgiveness. That is the great promise of the Gospel. Forgiveness. Grace. That is the good news.