Ten young women are waiting for a wedding. Maybe they’re bridesmaids as we understand bridesmaids today. Maybe they’re torchbearers in a procession from the bride’s home to the groom’s. Maybe they’re just wedding guests. We don’t really know. But we do know that they brought their lamps, and that five of the ten packed extra oil.
The groom runs late. And all ten women fall asleep.
At midnight, someone calls out that the bridegroom is coming. The women wake and trim their lamps. Five of them are running out of oil, and they ask to borrow some from the others. But the others refuse, saying they don’t have enough to share. They tell them to go buy more oil. What shop would be open at midnight I can’t imagine, but that’s how the story goes.
While the five foolish bridesmaids are away, the bridegroom arrives, those who are ready go into the feast, and the door closes behind them. When the others return and ask to come in, the bridegroom says, “I do not know you.”
And then Jesus tells us to keep awake.
This can be a hard parable to make sense of.
Is it the Gospel according to FEMA? I’ve lived a lot of my life in hurricane country, and now live in tornado country, so I’m all for having supplies on hand. But I have my doubts about whether our eternal salvation depends upon how many non-perishable goods we’re able to store in our basement.
Besides, why couldn’t the wise bridesmaids share? Even if they couldn’t spare extra oil, couldn’t they share their light? A lamp gives light to more than just the person holding it. Surely they could have walked together.
Christians have been wrestling with this text since the early centuries of the Church. Early theologians made sense of the story by reading it as metaphor. St. Augustine thought the oil represented love. Chrysostom understood it as mercy.
And maybe that works. We can share literal oil. But we can’t simply hand a neighbor a heart that has learned to love.
The closed door at the end of the story is the harder part, at least for me. Later in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus speaks of judgment for those who fail to care for him in the hungry, and the stranger, in the sick, and in the prisoner. But he also says, “knock and the door will be opened.” A priest I knew a long time ago said he put certain questions in a box labeled “awaiting further light.” Maybe the locked door in this story belongs in that box.
I do think we can tie ourselves up in knots over the hard parts of this parable and miss other important details. We remember that Jesus tells us to keep awake. But we fail to notice that all ten bridesmaids fell asleep.
Matthew says, “all of them became drowsy and slept.” The foolish and the wise alike. Whatever Jesus means by keeping awake, he clearly doesn’t mean that we’re forbidden to rest. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus himself sleeps in a boat even while a storm rages. And the concept of sabbath goes back all the way to the book of Genesis.
Whatever else this parable means, it’s also pretty clear that it can’t be just a story of a single night and a single wedding. If St. Augustine was right that the oil running short represents love, that’s not a thing we can stock up on in a day. We learn love in community, over time. By listening to one another. By caring for one another. By resting when we need to.
We live in anxious times. And I suspect that we can all see the uncertainties ahead. As we face whatever comes, yes, we need to keep awake, alert, aware of the things happening around us. But we can also rest. We can seek out moments of joy and of respite. And we can seek to build up our own stores of love and mercy—stores large enough to sustain us through whatever may come.
Yesterday, in Topeka, a number of people—including one member of St. Paul’s—were confirmed in the Episcopal Church. A visiting bishop prayed this prayer over the confirmands: “Strengthen, O Lord, your servants with your Holy Spirit; empower them for your service; and sustain them all the days of their life.”
Sustain them all the days of their life. All the days spent waiting for the bridegroom to arrive.
As the bishop yesterday prayed that God would sustain those he confirmed, may we pray that God will sustain us too.
And may we do our part— by living into the Baptismal Covenant that all those who attended yesterday’s service also reaffirmed. By continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. By persevering in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, by repenting and returning to the Lord. By proclaiming by word and example the good news of God in Christ. By seeking to serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. And by striving for justice and peace among all people, and by respecting the dignity of every human being.
May we make the confirmation prayer our own: “Strengthen, O Lord, your servants with your Holy Spirit; empower us for your service; and sustain us all the days of our lives.”
Make us wise. Fill our lamps with oil. And welcome us in whenever we knock.
Cover image: Terracota oil lamp, detail from photo by Wikimedia user Davidbena, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. (Original at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ner_005.jpg)
