Pentecost 26
The Reverend Martha Frances
Year A, Pentecost 26, Proper 27
9 November 2008
Text: Matthew 25: 1-13
Other: Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78: 1-7; I Thessalonians 4: 13-18
Have you ever stopped to wonder what is actually going on in the scene which Jesus portrays in the parable of the ten wise & foolish maidens? It is helpful to me to know a little of the wedding customs in Palestine in Jesus' day, very different from our own. The night of the wedding, the groom—accompanied by his friends—descends upon the bride's family home & abducts the bride, taking her to their new home. The entrance of the bride & groom to the marriage home is, in fact, the symbolic act of marriage, beginning a festive wedding celebration which lasts several days. Young women of both families attend the bride, but the groom's relatives & neighbors wait at his house for the entourage to appear. Their arrival time is unpredictable, especially if they have come from a neighboring town. The maidens, in lighting the way to the front door for the new couple, hope to be invited in to the celebration.
Readiness & preparedness are watchwords for the maidens as they are for this time of year. During the last weeks of Pentecost & through Advent, our stance as Christians is one of preparation. We're not talking about shop-'till-you-drop urgency when people rush from store to catalog to find the right gift for Aunt Maud & a bauble for the children to give to each teacher. This preparation is of our selves, our minds & souls, for the time when Christ comes in all his glory. The last Sunday of this month, Advent begins, & the parables we read this month are about eschatology—a $5 word for the end times, the judgment day, when we want to be ready for Christ to invite us into the fullness of his reign which we can only glimpse here on earth. So Jesus uses a celebration familiar to his listeners to emphasize this need for readiness.
Jesus resorts to one of his favorite introductions in "Then, the kingdom of heaven will be like this." He means this is what life will be like at judgment time, when all are invited into eternal life. As in other judgment parables, there are wise & foolish folks. Remember the wise man who built his house on solid rock while the foolish one built his house on sand? In this parable, we encounter maidens waiting at the couple's new home. They've all brought lamps & are all ready to party. When the couple is delayed, they all fall asleep. Jesus had the same problem with his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, didn't he?
At this point, we might wonder why the groom is delayed. Perhaps he had to haggle with the bride's father over the bride price. Perhaps he was looking for the bride; did you notice that the bride never actually appears? At any rate, what we do know is that by the time Matthew wrote his gospel, Jesus' expected return in glory, sometimes called the parousia, hadn't happened as soon as the Christian community expected it. In fact, in the reading from Thessalonians today, Paul is already dealing with the same sort of disconnect between the earliest Christians' expectation about the timing of Christ's return. We humans struggle with the gap between our expectations & reality in our daily lives, don't we? From that standpoint, these stories become very modern. Jesus & Paul both counsel their audiences—which includes us—both a patience yet a watchfulness for the future, practicing a faithful lifestyle in the meantime.
Back to the story: The groom—presumably with bride on his arm—arrives to begin the celebration, & all 10 maidens awaken. By the way, I use the term maidens, a better translation of the Greek word than either bridesmaids or virgins, & also the same word used for Jesus' mother Mary earlier in Matthew. By this time, the lamps have burned out & the maidens start to trim their wicks & replenish the oil. But the foolish maidens have no more oil. At first glance, the wise maidens seem awfully selfish. However, if those wise maidens had shared their extra jar of oil, none of them may have been able to last through the festivities. The wise maidens have the one great thing in mind: entering God's kingdom. So perhaps we ought to cut the wise maidens some slack.
Where would the foolish maidens find oil at midnight? Even if there were a Super Walmart nearby, it wouldn't be close enough because, by the time they get back, the party is going on behind closed doors without them. The groom sounds rather harsh to us when he won't let the foolish maidens in the door, but the whole point of the story is that the maidens need to be prepared as do we.
When we read scriptures about end times at the end of the liturgical year, we are reminded to stay alert & be prepared for Jesus' coming once again. The passage ends with "you know neither the day nor the hour." Jesus' first followers looked forward to Jesus' return which was delayed far beyond their expectations. Perhaps they wondered how long they must be alert & prepared. We modern Christians, on the other hand, want to put off the judgment as long as possible. What does Jesus tell us about living in the meantime, whether that be until midnight or for a long time in the future?
We're surely not to be idle, waiting for something to happen. We're to be prepared, like the Boy Scout motto. It's not a matter of earning our way into heaven. Both groups of maidens are invited & are welcome. It's not that God is excluding anyone but that the foolish maidens are excluding themselves. It may be that they're not taking responsibility for themselves or preparing for the long haul.
But another intriguing idea is that the foolish maidens are foolish because they assume everything depends on them—they leave to buy more oil rather than trusting that the groom will have all that is needed when they get into the celebration. How often do we assume we know what's best, what is necessary, & we're too busy being self-sufficient to rely upon God's abundance? After all, it's the bridegroom throwing the party. All the maidens are doing is acting as the welcoming committee. Then, they'll all be invited in to join the party.
Jesus has already invited us to be new creatures in God's world, & Jesus continues to invite us. What are we invited to? The banquet. The joy of living in God's realm. We're invited to become the humans that God created us to be in the first place. God simply asks us to love God with all our hearts, minds, & souls & to love our neighbors as ourselves. God created us to be in relationship through Jesus, sustained by the Holy Spirit. Coming to the banquet involves celebrating Eucharist—that is, thanksgiving—together with one another regularly, praying privately & in community, Bible reading & study, & fellowship with the Christian community. Being in relationship with Jesus is horizontal as well as vertical. How do we behave as new creatures, new brothers & sisters in Christ?
As we meditate on God's word to us in a moment, I invite you to consider what time, talent, & treasure you are willing to contribute to keep Hope alive & to strengthen the new creation which we are becoming.
Year A, Pentecost 26, Proper 27
9 November 2008
Text: Matthew 25: 1-13
Other: Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78: 1-7; I Thessalonians 4: 13-18
Have you ever stopped to wonder what is actually going on in the scene which Jesus portrays in the parable of the ten wise & foolish maidens? It is helpful to me to know a little of the wedding customs in Palestine in Jesus' day, very different from our own. The night of the wedding, the groom—accompanied by his friends—descends upon the bride's family home & abducts the bride, taking her to their new home. The entrance of the bride & groom to the marriage home is, in fact, the symbolic act of marriage, beginning a festive wedding celebration which lasts several days. Young women of both families attend the bride, but the groom's relatives & neighbors wait at his house for the entourage to appear. Their arrival time is unpredictable, especially if they have come from a neighboring town. The maidens, in lighting the way to the front door for the new couple, hope to be invited in to the celebration.
Readiness & preparedness are watchwords for the maidens as they are for this time of year. During the last weeks of Pentecost & through Advent, our stance as Christians is one of preparation. We're not talking about shop-'till-you-drop urgency when people rush from store to catalog to find the right gift for Aunt Maud & a bauble for the children to give to each teacher. This preparation is of our selves, our minds & souls, for the time when Christ comes in all his glory. The last Sunday of this month, Advent begins, & the parables we read this month are about eschatology—a $5 word for the end times, the judgment day, when we want to be ready for Christ to invite us into the fullness of his reign which we can only glimpse here on earth. So Jesus uses a celebration familiar to his listeners to emphasize this need for readiness.
Jesus resorts to one of his favorite introductions in "Then, the kingdom of heaven will be like this." He means this is what life will be like at judgment time, when all are invited into eternal life. As in other judgment parables, there are wise & foolish folks. Remember the wise man who built his house on solid rock while the foolish one built his house on sand? In this parable, we encounter maidens waiting at the couple's new home. They've all brought lamps & are all ready to party. When the couple is delayed, they all fall asleep. Jesus had the same problem with his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, didn't he?
At this point, we might wonder why the groom is delayed. Perhaps he had to haggle with the bride's father over the bride price. Perhaps he was looking for the bride; did you notice that the bride never actually appears? At any rate, what we do know is that by the time Matthew wrote his gospel, Jesus' expected return in glory, sometimes called the parousia, hadn't happened as soon as the Christian community expected it. In fact, in the reading from Thessalonians today, Paul is already dealing with the same sort of disconnect between the earliest Christians' expectation about the timing of Christ's return. We humans struggle with the gap between our expectations & reality in our daily lives, don't we? From that standpoint, these stories become very modern. Jesus & Paul both counsel their audiences—which includes us—both a patience yet a watchfulness for the future, practicing a faithful lifestyle in the meantime.
Back to the story: The groom—presumably with bride on his arm—arrives to begin the celebration, & all 10 maidens awaken. By the way, I use the term maidens, a better translation of the Greek word than either bridesmaids or virgins, & also the same word used for Jesus' mother Mary earlier in Matthew. By this time, the lamps have burned out & the maidens start to trim their wicks & replenish the oil. But the foolish maidens have no more oil. At first glance, the wise maidens seem awfully selfish. However, if those wise maidens had shared their extra jar of oil, none of them may have been able to last through the festivities. The wise maidens have the one great thing in mind: entering God's kingdom. So perhaps we ought to cut the wise maidens some slack.
Where would the foolish maidens find oil at midnight? Even if there were a Super Walmart nearby, it wouldn't be close enough because, by the time they get back, the party is going on behind closed doors without them. The groom sounds rather harsh to us when he won't let the foolish maidens in the door, but the whole point of the story is that the maidens need to be prepared as do we.
When we read scriptures about end times at the end of the liturgical year, we are reminded to stay alert & be prepared for Jesus' coming once again. The passage ends with "you know neither the day nor the hour." Jesus' first followers looked forward to Jesus' return which was delayed far beyond their expectations. Perhaps they wondered how long they must be alert & prepared. We modern Christians, on the other hand, want to put off the judgment as long as possible. What does Jesus tell us about living in the meantime, whether that be until midnight or for a long time in the future?
We're surely not to be idle, waiting for something to happen. We're to be prepared, like the Boy Scout motto. It's not a matter of earning our way into heaven. Both groups of maidens are invited & are welcome. It's not that God is excluding anyone but that the foolish maidens are excluding themselves. It may be that they're not taking responsibility for themselves or preparing for the long haul.
But another intriguing idea is that the foolish maidens are foolish because they assume everything depends on them—they leave to buy more oil rather than trusting that the groom will have all that is needed when they get into the celebration. How often do we assume we know what's best, what is necessary, & we're too busy being self-sufficient to rely upon God's abundance? After all, it's the bridegroom throwing the party. All the maidens are doing is acting as the welcoming committee. Then, they'll all be invited in to join the party.
Jesus has already invited us to be new creatures in God's world, & Jesus continues to invite us. What are we invited to? The banquet. The joy of living in God's realm. We're invited to become the humans that God created us to be in the first place. God simply asks us to love God with all our hearts, minds, & souls & to love our neighbors as ourselves. God created us to be in relationship through Jesus, sustained by the Holy Spirit. Coming to the banquet involves celebrating Eucharist—that is, thanksgiving—together with one another regularly, praying privately & in community, Bible reading & study, & fellowship with the Christian community. Being in relationship with Jesus is horizontal as well as vertical. How do we behave as new creatures, new brothers & sisters in Christ?
As we meditate on God's word to us in a moment, I invite you to consider what time, talent, & treasure you are willing to contribute to keep Hope alive & to strengthen the new creation which we are becoming.
posted by
Hope Episcopal Church
at 10:42 AM
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