Matthew 25:1-13
I was a boy scout once. I remember the motto of the scouts -- Be prepared. And we were. All of us had a boy scout knife with a screwdriver, a saw, a can opener and an awl in addition to the knife blade. Part of being prepared was to have a flashlight that worked, a collapsible drinking cup, and of course on a long hike you would carry water in a metal canteen, coated in canvas, so that if the water got warm, you could splash some on the canvas and it would cool down. To cap things off, I remember one of our scoutmasters taking us through the woods identifying plants we could eat if things got desperate. I’m afraid I forgot all that lore. But we were prepared, we thought, for anything.
But five of the young ladies in our gospel story are prepared for everything except waiting. And that’s one message to take home today. Are we prepared for waiting, and waiting for the Lord? Because the bridegroom is a symbol for the one we wait for -- the one who will come again as promised, Jesus. And after two thousand years it’s easy to assume that it might be another two thousand years before he comes, so naturally, we aren’t holding our breath. And that’s where we fall down.
I hate to wait. If I am put on hold when I call about a problem, that’s a good way to ruin my day. I imagine there’s one person trying to address twenty different problems, and he’s hoping I’ll give up and hang up. And after I wait ten minutes or so, I’m too invested to hang up. I can waste a lot of time this way.
We don’t know why God is making us wait. The early Christians thought the return of Jesus was just around the corner, and that colored everything they did. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that people were selling their possessions and laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles -- if Christ was coming soon, what good was there in owning a farm? By the end of the first century, people were making excuses -- He would come when the whole world had a chance to hear the gospel; he would come in one thousand years like it sort of said in the book of revelation. The second letter of Peter tells us that for God, a thousand years is like a day, and he reminds us that 400 years passed before God kept his promise to the Israelites that he would free them and give them a land of their own. God is outside of time and space.
While we wait, we know God is not waiting, he’s always acting in the world. And he is acting in us. One of the reasons we wait is so that we become aware of what God is doing in us. How do we do that? One of the Psalms tells us “be still and know that I am God”. If you really want to know what God is doing, you have to make time to listen. We think praying means that we do all the talking. Part of praying is listening.
Another thing we can do while we wait is stock up on oil. We do that by doing what Christians have been doing for two thousand years. Praying, studying scripture, form a stronger relationship with Jesus. And he told us how to do that -- feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and so on. Whatever we do for the least of our brothers, we do for him.
And we have to recharge. God gives all of us something special that recharges us -- it may be listening to music, taking a walk in the woods, playing a sport, or maybe a video game. Blessed Carlos Acutis, who died in his teens, allowed himself one hour a day to play video games. And all of us should devote a little time to recharging our batteries.
And that of course is why the smart bridesmaids didn’t share their oil with the foolish ones. You can’t share your oil. If I admire someone who can play the violin, he can’t share that with me.
This parable has a sad ending, not just because the foolish ladies get locked out of the banquet. The really sad thing is that the bridegroom says, “I do not know you”. But the good thing about the parable is that it reminds us that we still have time, we still have the opportunity to store up extra oil, we still can change our lives so that we will hear those words, “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”
