November 8, 2020
Matthew 25:1-13
This Gospel story is horrible. These foolish bridesmaids just can’t get it right and the consequences are dire - like wailing and gnashing of teeth dire.
It reminds me of the most recent iteration of my anxiety dream where I am running into church late - without time to put on my robe or print my sermon - and I can’t make my way to the front - and Oran fires me on the spot. Nothing like this has ever come close to happening and yet I can’t tell you how often I have this kind of dream.
Today’s Gospel parable is like my worst anxiety nightmare.
And it feels a little too realistic at this moment in our national life.
Here we are just a few days post-election. I intentionally recorded this sermon on Tuesday, so I wouldn’t know the results yet. So I don’t yet know who wins and who loses. (Maybe you don’t either!) But I do know that either way it goes, unless we can change things fast, we are going to be stuck in this Gospel story like quicksand.
No matter how this election turns out, we are like these bridesmaids divided. Living in fear, judging each other, looking at people that disagree with us with contempt rather than empathy, assuming the worst about the other side. And, of course, we all think we are the so-called “wise” bridesmaids and the others are “foolish” (which is actually better translated “morons” according to everything I’ve read, which fits pretty well with our modern-day name-calling). And it does not feel like the Kingdom of Heaven.
What to do with a gospel reading that feels not just like a horrible nightmare but like a horrible truth?
I kept rereading -- thinking maybe I missed a piece that would help it all make sense. Looking for more hope, more grace, more love. But for me, anyway, it just wasn’t there.
Thankfully, my timing was perfect.
I finally read a book that has been on my nightstand for over a year. Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts. It was long and frustratingly organized and not very well edited and a little slow, so I can’t say I’d recommend it. But there was an overarching theme riding through the book that really struck me.
Armstrong shows over a 3000 year span of history that scripture isn’t meant to be read rationally or frozen in time. Instead, God’s word is infinite and un-confinable and it is meant to be continually reimagined -- to be a living thing that enters our hearts and transforms us and inspires us to cultivate habits of empathy and compassion toward the stranger and even the enemy.
Armstrong quotes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who puts it this way: “The choice is ours. Will the generous texts of our tradition serve as interpretive keys to the rest, or will the abrasive passages determine our ideas of what we are and what we are called to do?”
In my book, that question is underlined and starred in two different colors.
And just in time because I desperately needed that permission to approach this parable differently.
Because honestly, while there may be another time in my life when I’ll read this Gospel passage and the message I need to hear is about keeping awake, or being prepared, or separating myself from people that have made foolish and dire choices, I don’t think that is what my soul or our world needs to hear today.
Today it is important for me to push back against this story and to sit in the space of confusion and questions where almost nothing in this story fits my understanding of scripture or my experience of God. To stay smack dab in the middle of that place until my wrestling yields new life.
So let’s start with the separation of people into wise and foolish. Forget the fact that Jesus taught that whoever says, 'You fool!' will be subject to hellfire. Forget that Paul warned that whoever professes themselves to be wise, becomes a fool. The Jesus I know is always taking the side of the underdog -- children, sinners, outcasts -- and, dare I imagine, the foolish? The whole premise of this parable doesn’t sound like Jesus to me.
And wrapping it in pretty paper like a fun wedding party doesn’t make it any more palatable to me. We know what it feels like to be separated and treated differently for who we are or what we think or what we have in this country. Whether it’s based on economics or education or race or political party. And, while we might disagree about the solutions to our problems, I think we can probably agree that that kind of separation doesn’t feel like the Kingdom of Heaven.
I think the Kingdom of Heaven is much more like when I was volunteering in my child’s kindergarten class and completely undone by the antics and behavior of one of the kids who refused to sit still or listen or share. I was just about to intervene with my serious face and exasperated voice ... when the assistant teacher sat down on the floor and invited that child to sit on her lap and hugged him and asked what he was feeling. That is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And what about the so-called “wise” bridesmaids’ refusal to share any oil with the others, their sisters and friends? Do we really want to hold that up as behavior to emulate? What about “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, the love of God isn’t in them?” What about loving our neighbors as ourselves?
I don’t think the Kingdom of Heaven can be found in refusing people in need. I think it is more like when my husband found a rare and wonderful pack of toilet paper at Costco in the height of pandemic TP-scarcity and gave half of it to a friend sick with COVID.
And the oil piece…. Running out of oil is such a threat that half the women run out to find more -- and it leads them to miss everything. But some of my favorite miracle stories are about oil miraculously multiplying for people in need, and Jesus’ most beautiful invitations are about turning to him to be filled when we are empty.
To me, the Kingdom of Heaven is like when I’d just gotten my driver’s license and was on a long roadtrip with my dad. He trusted me enough to drive while he fall asleep, and, unfortunately, I wasn’t paying much attention to the dashboard and ran out of gas. I managed to coast the car to the shoulder of the road not too far from an exit. I remember being afraid my dad would wake up mad and that this incident would be reason for him to doubt my maturity to be driving cars in the first place. But, thankfully, dad was gracious and kind and understanding as we walked to the gas station which, luckily was just a bit off the exit. I’d expect no less from Jesus.
And what about the bridesmaids arriving late and finding the door shut tight to them? Just a few weeks ago we had the parable about the landowner who includes everyone in the work of the vineyard and pays them all equally no matter what time they arrive. And my favorite hymn paraphrases scripture to promise: “knock and the door will be opened unto you.”
I much prefer to think of the Kingdom of Heaven as being like when my family was on vacation at the beach. Our rental came with entrance to the community pool, but we couldn’t find the pass to get through the electronic gate to the pool. We managed to follow another family through the gate, explaining sheepishly but earnestly that we really truly were staying there. We swam and played longer than the other family, and saw that as they were ready to leave, they actually needed the pass to get out of the gate too. Just as we started to get nervous about getting stuck inside the fence forever, the dad of the other family clearly also realized that if they left we would get locked in. And so he left one of his flipflops between the door and the gate to prop it open, saying he would come back for it later.
And maybe most shocking of all is the ending of this parable, when the foolish bridesmaids are desperately banging at the door and the bridegroom’s muffled voice says so forebodingly: “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” Is this the same shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to search for the lost one? The one who calls each of the sheep by name? The one who sees the very foolish prodigal son coming a mile away and runs out to welcome him home?
What if instead the Kingdom of Heaven is like the time when I sat in our Sunday night service -- after a bad day when I had been at my worst -- and I spoke the words of the New Zealand prayer: “It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.” And I knew with every fiber of my being that it was God’s invitation and forgiveness and grace offered to me despite it all.
In his book The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis makes midrash of this bridesmaids parable, playing with it through a conversation Jesus has with his disciple Nathaniel. After telling this parable, Jesus asks, "What would you have done, Nathaniel?" And Nathaniel replies, "I would have opened the door." Jesus replies: "Congratulations, friend Nathaniel . . . this moment, though you are still alive, you enter paradise.... Open the door for the foolish virgins and wash and refresh their feet, for they have run much."
Let us usher in the Kingdom of Heaven by living it out as we hope and believe it to be in our heart of hearts. Not through division and name calling -- not through exclusion and hoarding -- not through closed doors and refusing to know each other. But by living as if. As if we are one beloved community, with shared problems and a shared humanity. As if even at our most foolish we are still invited to stick around and receive grace and love. As if every one of us is worth sticking our flip flop in the door to hold it open.
I speak to you in the name of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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