Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Lamps Lit” Matthew 25:1-13
We don’t like to wait. It can make us feel grouchy, frustrated, annoyed, and bored. Americans spend an average of thirty-two minutes waiting at the doctor’s office, twenty-eight minutes waiting at airport security, and twenty-one minutes waiting for our significant other to get ready to go out. All that waiting adds up. As a nation, Americans spend thirty-seven billion hours waiting in line each year. The bad news is that New York state has the longest waiting times in the country. A survey of twenty-five New York communities found that our average wait time in stores is six minutes and fifty-one seconds. That sounds about right. The worse news is that our patience is growing shorter as digital technology, like smart phones and on-demand streaming services, lead us to expect instant gratification. The average person grows frustrated after waiting sixteen seconds for a webpage to load or twenty-five seconds for a traffic signal to change. Does any of this sound familiar?
Our gospel reading today reveals that the struggle to wait isn’t limited to twenty-first century New York. Jesus told this parable of the Ten Bridesmaids to his disciples as they gathered one evening on the Mt. of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem. It was the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. Powerful enemies in Jerusalem were conspiring to bring about his arrest and execution. Jesus knew what awaited him at the end of the week, even if his friends were unwilling to accept it. And so, he told a story of a wedding banquet too long in coming and bridesmaids who missed out on the celebration.
In Jesus’s day, when a young girl reached marriageable age, her parents would seek an appropriate bridegroom. First, a contract, stating terms of the dowry, would be agreed upon. Then, at the end of a year-long engagement, the bridegroom would collect his bride, paying her parents the bride price and bringing his new wife home to the house of his father. On the blessed night of the wedding, bridesmaids waited at the father’s house. With lamps lit, they would go forth singing and rejoicing, leading the couple to the marriage tent, where their wedding vows would be consecrated. After the wedding, a festive weeklong party began.
In Jesus’ story, the wedding party didn’t go according to plan. The groom was delayed. As the long hours dragged on after dark and the bridesmaids waited, they fell asleep and their lamps burned low. When the shout at last went up, “The bridegroom is near!”, the maids rose to tend their flames, but only half the girls had anticipated the wait and brought extra oil. While five maids went out with glowing lamps to rejoice with the wedding party, the others ran off to bang on the door of the local oil merchant. When they returned to the father’s house, it was too late. The door was closed and there would be no late entries.
This is not my favorite parable. For one thing, it takes a lot of explaining. For another, I’d like to soften its sharp edges. Let there be a super-abundance of oil to share. Let the bridegroom throw open the doors and welcome the latecomers to the party. But Jesus knew that his story required sharp and uncomfortable edges to get our attention. We can bet that every disciple who listened to Jesus on the Mt. of Olives sat up straight and opened their ears.
In Jesus’ day, the wedding feast was a common metaphor for the beautiful feast of the Kingdom of God that would come at the end times. Jesus’s friends knew Jesus was the bridegroom, the Messiah, sent to usher in a new age of righteousness and holy living. But there would be no wedding feast that week. Instead of a wedding procession of joyful bridesmaids with lamps aglow, there would be a funeral procession. Jesus, beaten, bloody, and broken, would be paraded through the streets to his brutal execution.
Jesus hoped that his friends would live with a sense of urgent patience, even after he would be taken from them. God’s Kingdom would come, even after long delay. Jesus hoped his friends would live like those five wise bridesmaids, well-equipped and ready to serve, even if the shout went up at midnight. The disciples, who listened to Jesus and looked out across the Kidron Valley to the holy city, glowing with the light of thousands of household lamps, would have heard Jesus’ story as a bold exhortation to wait with patience and vigilance through the long years to come.
One of the great challenges of preaching this parable is that people like us don’t have a sense of expectant urgency when it comes to Judgment Day. We leave that to the evangelicals, and even they don’t do it very well. We don’t wake up each morning, wondering if this is it, if the Lord will come in glory. We struggle to have a teaching like this feel relevant and useful for faithful living. We don’t like to wait six minutes and fifty-one seconds at the grocery. We can’t be bothered to waste our time looking at the apocalyptic clock, waiting for it to strike midnight.
But what if this parable isn’t just about Judgment Day? After all, in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus begins his ministry with the warning that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. Professor Dirk Lange, who serves as assistant general secretary at the Lutheran World Federation, teaches that Jesus’s return is a “now” event. Let me explain. The appearance of the risen Lord on the Emmaus Road was a true experience of Christ’s return. Our monthly celebration of the Lord’s Supper is an ongoing wedding banquet with Jesus at the table. The vulnerable people whom we encounter—Jesus called them the least of these, his little brothers and sisters—they are an ongoing revelation of the Jesus who walks among us, inviting our compassion and help. Perhaps the question for our faithful waiting isn’t, “Is this the Day of Judgement?” Our question is better phrased, “How will I see Jesus today? Will I be ready to serve him? Will my lamp be lit?”
I’m going to suggest three ways that we can keep our lamps lit in this waiting time. Are you ready?
We begin by spending daily time with Jesus. We place him at the center of our lives with a faithful pattern of prayer and devotion. We deepen our understanding through reading scripture and spiritual writing. We praise him through worship and song. Those daily attentions in this waiting time assure us that the Lord is always with us, if only we will attend.
We can also take the time to see the Jesus who is revealed in vulnerability in the world around us. We see him at the Food Pantry picking up his monthly box. She awaits our visit in the corridors of assisted living and nursing homes. He’s learning about Jesus in Sunday School. She looks out her window and watches us head to church, wondering if we will ever invite her to join us. The bridegroom is near if we will only have eyes to see him.
Jesus’s parable suggests that it is not enough for us to patiently wait. We also need to be prepared for action. The wise bridesmaids heard the cry and leapt up to trim their wicks, fill their lamps, and greet the bridegroom. Will we shine our light before others (Mt. 5:16)? Carla Works, a New Testament scholar at Wesley Theological Seminary, says that, “To live in vigilance means for disciples to do the tasks that they have been appointed in preparation for the Master’s coming.” We know what we are called to do, but will we do it? Will we feed hungry people? Will we visit those who need our love? Will we teach Sunday School? Will we invite a friend or neighbor to church? Are our lamps lit? How will we greet the bridegroom?
I suspect that even if we heed Jesus’s difficult teaching, we still won’t like waiting. We’ll still grow grouchy, frustrated, annoyed, and bored as we wait in line at the grocery store. That’s because researchers say that the human attention span is a whopping eight seconds, one second shorter than that of a goldfish. But our waiting can be transformed as we pray for others and take time to attend to the hidden Jesus who walks among us still. Perhaps this world can look a little more like the promised Kingdom of Heaven if we keep our lamps lit and shine that light before others.
Resources
“How Much Time of an Average Life Is Spent Waiting?” in Reference, Science and Technology, April 3, 2020. Accessed online at https://www.reference.com/science-technology/much-time-average-life-spent-waiting-7b315c05172d2b4d
John Anderer. “Hurry up! Modern patience thresholds lower than ever before, technology to blame” in Study Finds, Sept. 3, 2019. Accessed online at https://studyfinds.org/hurry-up-modern-patience-thresholds-lower-than-ever-before-survey-finds/
Dirk Lange, “Commentary on Matthew 25:1-13” in Preaching This Week, Nov. 9, 2008. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org. Greg Carey, “Commentary on Matthew 25:1-13” in Preaching This Week, Nov. 9, 2014. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.
Matthew 25:1-13
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9But 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.’ 10And 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. 11Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 13Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
Joann White 