The Bridesmaids [Proper 27A - Matthew 25:1-13]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 25:1-13

 

The Bridesmaids

 

It’s not that “Keep awake” is bad advice.  In fact, in some cases it is very sound, very relevant, advice.  Keep awake so that you don’t miss your stop on the train.  Keep awake so that you don’t snore in the crowded movie theatre, or during this sermon.  Keep awake because you are driving.  There are many situations in which it is very important to keep awake.  And so it is not a bad moral to tack onto a Jesus’ parable.  It is just that it obviously does not apply to this parable. 

 

“Keep awake” cannot be the point of this particular Gospel story.  It cannot be the point because everybody fell asleep – all ten bridesmaids featured in Jesus' parable – both the wise and the foolish – fell asleep.  And half of them joined the party anyway.  So “keep awake,” it turns out, didn’t really matter that much and therefore cannot be the point of the parable.

 

Now, there are other parables in this very Gospel that are about alert living.  Mostly we read them during Advent.  Mostly I preach them during Advent.  As people who regularly proclaim the second coming of Christ, we are “keep awake” people.  And Jesus tells us “keep awake” people to keep awake in many of his parables.  It's just that this parable is not one of those.

 

Like many of the parables in this Gospel, the Gospel according to Matthew, a confusing quip placed at the end of a confusing parable makes the confusing parable even more confusing.  Ironically, the fact that the parable is confusing is probably why “Keep awake” was added to the end of this parable to begin with: to clear up the confusion.  It just doesn’t work.

 

The parable is still confusing because some of the details are quite strange. 

 

Ten women go to meet the bridegroom.  On that evening, the groom was bringing his new bride to live in his home.  In that first century context, a bride was taken from the home of her father into the home of her husband.  The women were there to welcome the newly married couple and to join the party the couple was hosting in celebration of their beautiful new union.   In this case their arrival is delayed.

 

A delay in their arrival would not necessarily have been unusual – which gives us a clue as to why five of these ladies are considered intellectually suspect.  The two most likely reasons for a delay would have been: either longer than expected negotiations between the bride's father and her new husband – marriage was, in that ancient context, basically a business deal.

 

Or it might have been that the consummation, the couple's first romantic encounter, took a while longer than expected.  As uncomfortable as it might sound to us, the first go ‘round, the maiden voyage, if you will, occurred at dad's house; we see evidence of this in the Jewish apocryphal book of Tobit.  

 

Or maybe both deals took a while.  Or maybe the bride took a long time to pack.  It is hard to tell.  The parable does not explain the reasons, but it is reasonable to assume that the exact time of a bridegroom's arrival, generally, was a bit unpredictable.      

 

And so perhaps it is not unreasonable to label the five women who failed to bring extra lamp oil as the five foolish bridesmaids.  They should have known better.  They should have been better prepared. 

 

On the other hand, “foolish” feels like a pretty intense description.  Maybe the ladies just forgot.  It happens.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve forgotten things before.  I’ve left the house without my clergy collar, without my lunch, without my sunglasses, without my wallet.  It doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen.  And if I didn’t have a calendar on my phone constantly telling me what to do and where to be, I would be in really bad shape.  Because I’m people and people do forget things. 

 

And when things happen, when we are foolish or forgetful, we hope that others will be merciful and understanding and help us out.  And we want to believe that when given the opportunity, we will show mercy and understanding to others.  Because that is the Christian thing to do.  In fact, later in this same chapter of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the goats; and in that story he condemns those who fail to help others and he praises those who care for the needy.

 

And yet, in this parable the wise bridesmaids refuse to share their excess oil with those who are without.  It is an absolutely selfish move.  They are afraid to run out and so they leave the foolish ladies with nothing.  It seems surprisingly contrary to the way in which the storyteller, Jesus, lived his own life.  This aspect of the story is very human, but in the context of the Gospel, very strange.

 

At the prompting of the wise, the foolish leave the scene – even though they know the arrival of the bridegroom is very near.  I find this detail the most baffling of all.  There were still five lamps burning.  Five flames in a pitch dark world would shed a lot of light.  Two women per lamp seems plenty sufficient.  Assuming the women had any kind of relationship with the couple, you would think the newlyweds would be understanding about the oil and let them in regardless.  The lack of oil seems inconsequential.  And yet the five foolish women leave to buy more.          

 

And they miss it.  They miss the bridegroom's arrival.  Because they are buying oil, which, by the way, once the couple arrives and the party begins, they won't even need. 

 

By the time the five return, the married couple is back, the five wise bridesmaids are partying, and the doors are closed.  And in yet another strange detail, the bridegroom, for whom the women had waited, claims not to know them.  They have oil.  But they missed it.

 

They miss the point.  I think the five women are called foolish because they are distracted by things that do not ultimately matter.  The bridegroom was more important than the oil.  But they lost the plot.  They abandoned what was most important for something that was not.

 

Jesus is always arriving, showing up in our lives – at unexpected times and in unexpected ways.  But it is easy to miss him – because our lives are filled with a million distractions.  And it is easy to convince ourselves that the circumstances and problems that fill our hectic lives are more important than the Christ who longs to meet us and know us.

 

The ones who are wise are the ones who never stop looking, who never stop waiting, who long to see Jesus – through the crowd of distractions, through the thick darkness. 

 

Jesus is coming.  If the lamps burn out, wait and watch for him in the dark.  Because he is the point.  Everything else is just details.