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We are approaching Advent, a time of
preparation, expectation, and waiting.
Some wait for the trivial, for tinsel and catalogs, for playoffs and bowl games. Some prepare for
the busiest time of year in the American retail economy. Children, of course, wait for Santa Claus, and
others wait for snowfall and skiing.
Still others wait for the important, for the the visits of family or friends, and for God, for the
celebration of the Savior's birth and for his coming as king and judge of the world.
Of the celebration of Our Savior's birth we have a date. Jesus' birth has long been celebrated on
the 25th of December, and we will all be at the celebration, gathering to give thanks for Christ's birth
at Christmas, just as we will all gather on Thanksgiving Day to give thanks for the blessing of God in our
lives in countless ways.
How can we not gather as the Body of Christ on these important days? You've got dinner to cook,
or guests to welcome, or football to watch? Plan ahead! Schedule dinner around the Eucharist! Bring the
guests along! Because certainly they, too, will want to gather at God's altar to give thanks for God's
blessings on Thanksgiving Day and to celebrate the birth of the Savior at Christmas, because that's what
these days are for, and because that's what we do on these days. The guests don't want to come? Then
certainly family and friends will understand that you will want to do so, so that dinner and football can
wait upon the main event of the day.
But of the second important thing we expect and prepare for during Advent, of the coming of Christ
as king and judge of the world, we do not know the day or the hour. So for that we must watch and wait
and expect and prepare right through Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, and on into the rest of our
lives.
And that's what St. Matthew had in mind in retelling the story that Jesus told about the ten
virgins or bridesmaids, five of whom were wise, and five foolish.
In Jesus' day, as in ours, everyone was invited to a big party and a feast following a wedding.
But in those days, for reasons the scholars all seem to have to guess at, one never knew for sure just
when the bridegroom was going to come along with his bride to start the procession through town, which was
part of the party. And bridesmaids would have to wait for the bridegroom to arrive and for the
festivities to begin.
And so they did, in Jesus' story, ten of them. And the groom was long in coming. And it got
late. And they dozed off. And then suddenly, at midnight, the bridegroom was announced: "He's coming!
He's coming now! Light your lamps, and let's join the procession and the party."
But five of the bridesmaids were not ready. They were there, and they woke up. But they had used
up all the oil for their lamps. They had not anticipated so long a delay, and their lamps had gone out.
So they asked the other five bridesmaids if they could borrow some of their extra oil.
But the wise bridesmaids, the ones who were prepared, said, "We can't give you any. You'd better
run quickly and buy some for yourselves." And they did. But by the time they got back, the party was
already in full swing, and the door to the feast was closed, and they couldn't get in. So they shouted,
"Open the door and let us in!" And the bridegroom said, "To tell you the truth, I don't know you. Where
were you when I arrived to begin the procession?" And they missed the party.
Jim Clelland, the late Dean of Duke University Chapel, was a popular preacher at boys' prep
schools in the 1950s. At one all-male school, he preached on today's Gospel lesson, and he ended his
sermon with a rhetorical question. "Young men," he asked, "where would you rather be? In here, in the
light, at the feast for the bridegroom? Or out there, out in the dark with a group of foolish young
girls?"
"Out in the dark with the girls!" the boys shouted back.
"End of sermon," said Clelland.
That's a pretty good ending, too. But there is more to say. A look at a couple of Greek words
may help us. The Greek adjective used to describe the five wise bridesmaids is phronimos, which suggests
that these five young women were shrewd about life. And the adjective used to describe the five foolish
bridesmaids is moros, the word from which we get our English word "moron," which means silly or
stupid.
This story, I think, is another of those times when Jesus is simply describing life as it is. He
is telling us to be realistic about life, to be shrewd about what we anticipate in life and realistic
about how we wait for it. It's another of those stories of Jesus that says, "Life is like this. And it's
best to be realistic about it."
The story of the wise and foolish virgins tells us at least three related truths about life.
The first is this: there are certain things in life that cannot be obtained at the last
minute.
Everyone who has ever been a student knows this truth. Every student knows that if you wait until
the day of the examination to study, then you've waited too long! And when, in life, some special
responsibility or task needs to be met or done, it's too late then to develop the skills or character
necessary to the occasion. Those who need a special job done look to those who have prepared themselves
for it ahead of time.
The great moments in life always belong to those who have prepared for them. In 1830, for
instance, a serious constitutional crisis occurred in the United States. In the history books it is known
as the Nullification Crisis. And Daniel Webster, the Senator from Massachusetts, was ready for the
critical moment when it came.
South Carolina and other southern states did not like the tariffs Congress was passing, because
they imposed duties that favored the industrial states of the northeast at the expense of the agricultural
states of the South. In response to the tariffs, South Carolina claimed that any state had the
constitutional right to nullify an act of Congress, making that act no law within its own state
boundaries.
One day in January of 1830, Senator Hayne of South Carolina got up in the Senate and issued the
constitutional challenge. He claimed that the United States was not a Union at all, but merely a weak and
loose confederation of sovereign states, which could ignore the laws of Congress if they wished. And it
was so strong a challenge that it threatened to carry the day and destroy the young nation unless it was
met immediately and forcefully.
So the very next morning Daniel Webster got up and delivered what some still consider, hands down,
the finest and most powerful and persuasive speech in American history. With that speech Webster brought
the Senate and the country over to his view and, at least for a time, saved the United States from civil
war.
It was such a great speech that, later that day, a colleague in the Senate asked Webster, "How did
you prepare such a masterpiece overnight?" "I didn't," Webster replied. "I have been preparing that
speech for thirty years."
Daniel Webster had oil for his lamp, and when the time came he was ready.
Mary of Orange was also ready for a crisis when it came. When she was dying, her chaplain went
to her bedside and began to tell her the way to salvation. And Mary said, "Sir, I have not left this
matter to this moment." Mary, too, had oil for her lamp. And when the time came she needed no
last-minute cramming.
Life is like that. Mary was a wise bridesmaid. She had not spent her life so consumed with
jazzercize, or with food or sex or drugs or sports, or with how wonderful all the choices on satellite TV
are, she had not spent her life so consumed with the trivial or the relatively important in life that she
had neglected to prepare herself for the truly important.
Nor had Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago. Six years ago, when he was dying of pancreatic
cancer and had only a few months to live, Cardinal Bernadin celebrated a special mass for the ill. He
spoke of death, including his own. "A dying person does not have time for the peripheral or the
accidental," he said in his sermon. "He or she is drawn to the essential, to the important -- yes, to
the eternal."
It's a puzzlement, isn't it, this matter of time. In one sense, there is always time to accept
God's invitation to the feast. God's grace is unlimited. He is Our Father who opens his arms whenever we
turn to him. He is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast, never-ending love.
Yet there always comes a time when there is no more time. Life is like that. The time comes when
the children are grown, and having spent so little time with them when they were young, we find that we
have little in common now that they are adults.
Or the time comes when the children are grown, and you have spent a lot of time with them, and
they are your best friends, and they marry and move to the other side of the continent or the other side
of the world. And they are gone.
The day comes, as the prophet says, when one runs from a lion only to confront a bear. The day
comes when the little beeper on the machine falls silent, and the heart stops beating, and, in an instant
life flashes before our eyes and is over, and we haven't a clue what the meaning of our life was. And we
have never come to know the love of God that leads some to trust him, even at the midnight of their lives,
even at the hour of their deaths.
Does that sound morbid? Or does it just sound true?
We who live in the entertainment culture of America with all its glitzy choices are all dying,
regardless of age. We just don't believe we are! All flesh dies. It's one of the facts of life, and we
would do well to heed Cardinal Bernadin's wisdom, and Jesus's.
A second realistic truth, related to the first, is that there are some things in life that cannot
be borrowed.
How, William Barclay asks, can one borrow a relationship with God? It can't be done. A person
must possess it for himself. A husband cannot borrow a relationship with God from his wife, nor can a
wife borrow one from her husband. Nor can a son or daughter borrow a relationship with God from his
parents, nor a parent from a child. Nor can a friend's relationship with God be borrowed by a friend.
Each person must come to know God himself. A personal relationship, either with God or with anyone else,
simply cannot be borrowed, anymore than it can be crammed for at the last moment.
And how can a person borrow character? He can't. If you and I would have the character needed to
live life as God intends it, then you will have to build yours and I will have to build mine, because
character, too, cannot be borrowed or traded like a commodity in a market. Life is like that.
One of the saddest realities of contemporary American life is the fact that professional schools
are hurrying to teach courses on "Business Ethics" or "Medical Ethics," or the ethics of some other line
of work. It's sad, not because the teaching of ethics is not important and needed, but because if we are
waiting until graduate school to teach one how to live an ethical life, we have waited much too long.
Watergates happen, Enrons and Arthur Andersons fail, and even empires fall because ethics wasn't taught a
generation ago, and not in graduate school, but at home, and in school and in church and in shops or at
tea.
Life is such that the important things in life cannot be borrowed or traded or delayed. We can
support each other and encourage each other and faithfully pray for each other. But we cannot trade
places with each other. And if you would have a faithful relationship with God, one that will sustain you
in times of crisis, it must be a relationship that has been nurtured all along, and it must be your
own.
"Having one's own oil" is what counts in a spiritual crisis. And, like the rains and the winds,
spiritual crises do come. And when they come, one can't run to Walmart to find this oil, because it is
the "oil of faithfulness." And you can't acquire it from someone else, but only as a by-product of your
own relationship with God and neighbor. Asking someone to lend you some of his share of this oil would be
as ridiculous as asking someone to be baptized for you. It just won't work. One cannot live on the
spiritual capital amassed by others.
Finally, a third truth this story of Jesus teaches us is that what we are to expect in life is
grace. Grace happens. That's the promise of God. But in life one needs to be prepared for grace to
happen if one is to experience it.
The bridesmaids were not waiting for a scolding or for punishment. They were waiting for a party,
for a feast, for a banquet. And this, of course, is the good news for today -- that God does not call
us to expect disaster, but to expect him. He calls us to expect grace, the happy grace of his presence.
Salvation, heaven, the kingdom of God, Jesus' story is telling us, is like a wedding banquet.
The problem with the five unrealistic bridesmaids was not that they were bad or evil. They were
good and decent young women, perhaps even righteous. It was not that their lack of preparation invoked
the wrath of God. It was simply that it caused them to miss the party! Their lack of preparation simply
left them out in the cold! They just weren't ready for the grace of God when the time for grace to happen
came.
If only life weren't like that! If only God would be more specific! If only he would be more
precise! If only Christ would tell us exactly when to expect him, then we would be ready! Just tell us
exactly what you want and when you want it, Lord. Tell us exactly what to do, and we'll do it.
But life isn't like that. Life is such that grace happens. That's the promise of God. But in
life one needs to be prepared to experience the grace when it happens. The graces of God, including even
the grace of death and new life, come at a moment we do not know. The graces of God are available to us
when God brings them. Christ is Lord of his own return. We cannot schedule judgment and grace, because
God is in charge of them, not us. We can only expect them and prepare for them, not knowing the day or
the hour.
To expect the grace of God and to prepare for it, not knowing the day or the hour -- that's what
it means to live as a person of faith. We are called to live creatively with ambiguity, to live with an
expectation of God's grace, but not with certainty of the day or the hour. We are called to live in trust
that even at the darkest hour of life, even, when it comes to it, at the midnight of life, the bridegroom
will come as he has promised to call us to himself and to his feast.
That's the good news. That's the Gospel. Expect it. But don't be a moron about it. Be
realistic about it. When God happens, you will need your own oil for your own lamp.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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