Matthew 25:1-13
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 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.’ 10 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. 11 Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 13 Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
You know what I really love…
Waiting. There’s nothing like ordering something online and having to wait multiple days, sometimes a week or more for the item to arrive. What a rush! I grew up in New Jersey and learned to drive there so I really love traffic and waiting for it to move.
The reality is that I have a hard time waiting. Maybe you are somewhat like me. I’ve conditioned myself to get what I want when I want it. Maybe you’ve had this experience, sometimes if I’m in a doctor’s waiting room, I look around and think about how different this experience would be if we didn’t have smartphones. We have decided that waiting is not really an enjoyable experience and so we will pretend like waiting doesn’t exist by entertaining ourselves when we have to wait.A few weeks ago, one of my good friends got married and it was a little bit like our text this morning. Things were not going according to plan. There was an absolute deluge of rain (like, an actual hurricane amount of rain) coming down. This moved the ceremony inside and with that much rain, we needed a new plan to transfer folks a couple hundred yards to the reception space. One of the vehicles, the bride’s father’s car, that was planned to be a transfer vehicle, got stuck in the mud. On top of that, the rain had caused lots of traffic on the highway delaying the hair and make-up team by over 2 hours. And while I was trying to help out by heating up some lunch, I managed to burn my neck (it’s a long story!) leaving a nice welt. The bride was stressed to say the least. She was in a room getting ready for this big moment surrounded by her bridal party and her parents, her closest friends and family, and she couldn’t be present. This should have been such a wonderful time together – nearly all of her favorite people gathered together for the first and potentially only time ever. But instead, she was waiting. Waiting for the next thing to go wrong. Waiting for the hair and makeup team. Waiting to find out whether the ceremony would happen. Waiting to see how everyone would get to the reception. And in that waiting, she was missing the very thing she had been looking forward to. In the end, the hair and makeup people arrived and had plenty of time to complete their work. The rest of the day went on with a wonderful celebration. But looking back I wondered why waiting is so hard for us. Why is it that we struggle so much with the uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming next? And perhaps more importantly, what do we miss when we spend all of our time waiting for something else to happen?
And yet, the Christian life is one of waiting. We have what theologians call eschatological hope. That’s a theological term for the hope we have in God’s promised future. We live in what is often described as the already, but not yet. God’s kingdom has already come to us through Jesus Christ. We have experienced glimpses of God’s love, grace, justice, and peace. We have seen the ways God is at work in our world. And yet, we know that the kingdom has not been fully realized. There is still suffering. There is still injustice. There is still hatred, violence, and division. There are still people who go hungry, people who are lonely, and people who are desperately searching for hope. We know what God has promised, but we are still waiting to see that promise fully realized.
And our parable this morning touches on that very idea. Jesus tells a story about ten young women who are waiting for a bridegroom. Five are wise, and five are foolish. They each take their lamps and go out to meet him. The ancient wedding culture is not something we often discuss, but the flow of these traditions are helpful in understanding this parable. First century weddings followed a particular set of rituals. Marriages were arranged and thought of as more of an alliance for survival than based in romantic love. The engagement or betrothal period was often about a year while the groom prepared a place for his bride, typically at his father’s home. They would often build an additional space onto the home for them to live in. The bride’s responsibilities were to prepare the wedding garments and lamps. At around the one year mark of the betrothal, the groom would go to collect his bride with much fanfare. The bride and the bridal party would join the groom and it would be a parade of sorts back to their home for the ceremony and celebration. The celebration that followed was huge and lasted over days, sometimes over a week. What’s important for our understanding is that the groom’s timing was expected but not known. They didn’t have first century invitations or wedding websites that expected you to be in our seats for the unplugged ceremony by 4pm sharp. And this is part of what Jesus’ parable is about. The bridesmaids don’t know what time the groom will arrive and clearly, based on what Jesus is saying, it took longer than expected. I mean, they all fell asleep waiting for the groom! All ten. The wise and the foolish. The prepared and the unprepared. They all get tired. They all fall asleep. And Jesus doesn’t shame them for it.
This is important because sometimes we can interpret this passage as a call to be constantly alert, constantly working, and constantly doing something to prove that we’re ready for God’s arrival. The title of this sermon being “Keeping Awake,” might feel like you can’t stop. But that’s not what Jesus or I am saying. Rest is not the problem. Being human is not the problem. Getting tired while waiting is not the problem. The problem is that some of the bridesmaids thought they had brought enough oil. They assumed they knew how long the wait would be.They had prepared for the possibility that the bridegroom might arrive on time, but they hadn’t prepared for the possibility that he might be delayed. They thought they had it figured out.
And I wonder how often we do the same thing. We make plans. We establish timelines. We create expectations about how things are supposed to happen. We tell ourselves that we’ll have more time next year. We’ll get involved when things slow down. We’ll pay more attention to our faith when life becomes less busy. We’ll make that phone call when we have a little more time. We’ll serve when the timing is better. We make all kinds of assumptions about what the future will look like.
But the reality is that we don’t know. And the kingdom of God doesn’t always operate according to our timelines. Sometimes God’s work takes longer than we expect. Sometimes the answers to our prayers don’t come when we want them to. Sometimes the things we thought would happen never happen, and sometimes God shows up in ways we never could have imagined. That’s where the distinction between the wise and foolish bridesmaids becomes so important and this part is somewhat uncomfortable because Jesus says the wise bridesmaids don’t share the extra oil they have. And it can feel like this is antithetical to Jesus’ message to care for those without. I don’t think that’s the point he is trying to make. I think Jesus is saying that a life of faith, a life of hope, a life of waiting for God’s kingdom can’t be done for you. We cannot live out someone else’s faith. We cannot decide for someone else whether they will pay attention to God’s presence in their lives. We cannot make someone else recognize the opportunities God places before them. At some point, each of us has to respond to God’s invitation.
Because readiness isn’t about knowing the future. It’s about how we live in the present. It’s about cultivating a life that is attentive to God. It’s about keeping our lamps burning even when the waiting takes longer than we expected. It’s about continuing to practice love when the world seems determined to choose hatred. It’s about continuing to work for justice when progress feels painfully slow. It’s about continuing to show compassion when it would be easier to look the other way. It’s about continuing to offer hope when the world gives us every reason to be discouraged. That’s what it means to be prepared. Jesus isn’t asking us to spend our lives anxiously watching the clock, wondering when God is going to show up. Jesus is preparing his disciples for a time when they will not have him physically present with them. They will have to continue living out his teachings without knowing exactly when everything will come to completion. It’s about being ready for God’s coming kingdom and keeping awake to the ways God is moving here and now.
The season of Advent is coming soon. It is a season intended to be one of waiting. In our commercialized world, we have made ourselves too busy to wait. From getting the right Christmas jammies for the whole family, to the presents wrapped for Christmas morning, to the parties we should be attending, we can leave ourselves without any time to wait. We can be so focused on what is coming that we fail to be present to the true gift of the season. We can fail to let ourselves be surprised by this incredible story that God takes on human flesh to abide with us. And that’s the invitation of the season of Advent. Not simply to count down the days until Christmas, but to slow down enough to notice the ways God is already present in our lives. To make room for wonder. To make room for hope. To make room for the possibility that God might show up in a way we weren’t expecting.Because God is not simply waiting for us somewhere in the distant future. God is already at work in our midst.
In this current season, your nominating committee is working hard to see where God is calling. They are making literal calls to ask people to say yes to what God is doing in their lives and asking them to serve as deacons or elders. My prayer is that if one of the calls comes to you that you will seriously consider it. I know that there are plenty of reasons to say no.I want to encourage you to spend the time thinking about how God might be able to use you to further God’s own kingdom on earth here and now, not all the reasons you can’t serve right now. The foolish bridegrooms miss the opportunity to be a part of the banquet, not because they fell asleep but because they thought they already knew the answers. They thought they had it all figured out. They stopped being willing to be surprised. Don’t fall into that foolishness. Let God surprise you because God is at work in this world and if we become so preoccupied with waiting for God to act we can miss the ways God is already acting in our midst.
So, maybe the invitation of this parable is not simply to be ready for some distant future. Maybe it is an invitation to live every day with our eyes open, our hearts attentive, and our lamps burning. Because God’s kingdom is breaking in when we least expect it. God’s kingdom is breaking in through acts of compassion, through movements for justice, through people choosing love in the face of hatred, and through communities that refuse to give up hope. And if we aren’t paying attention, we might just miss it. So may we be people who do not simply wait for God’s kingdom to come, but who remain vigilant enough to recognize it when it breaks into our midst. May our lamps remain burning, our hearts remain open, and our eyes remain fixed on the places where God is already at work. For the kingdom is coming. And, in Christ, the kingdom is already here.
Amen.