Today’s gospel is the parable of the ten bridesmaids. This parable demands a little explaining because it presumes a custom that we no longer follow. On the day of a wedding, the groom would go to the bride’s house and confer with her father. He would sign the marriage covenant and then escort his bride back to his house, or his father’s house. All of the bride’s family would follow. When they finally got to the house, the wedding reception, to use our words, would begin. Then they would seat the priest next to nasty old Aunt Harriet. Oh, sorry, that was another receptions I was invited to. Anyway, the ten virgins were part of the ceremony, lighting the way for the newly weds, particularly the groom. One semblance of the wedding that still remains in our custom is the father walking the bride down the aisle. The meaning is that the bride is gong from her father’s home to her husband’s home.
The point of the parable is not about weddings, though. It is about being ready. Perhaps a better way to understand the Lord’s point is if we consider playing musical chairs. You remember how to play musical chairs, right? You walk around the chairs, carefully situating your sit down over each chair, (Hey this is PG rated), just waiting for the music to stop, hoping that you can get to a chair before a slower person.
Consider Jesus telling the parable of the kids playing musical chairs, and then turning to you and to me and asking, “Where are you going to be when the music stops?”
During the month of November, we come to the end of the Church year. We consider the end of our lives. We consider death. And we ask ourselves, “Where are we going to be when the music stops?”
Did you ever read the comic the Wizard of Id? That’s the one with the little short king, His Runtness. In one strip, King Twerp calls the royal monk in to ask him a theological question. He asks the monk, “How do you feel about capital punishment?”
“There’s not much we can do about it,” the monk says to the King.
The King is quite perplexed by this answer, “What do you mean that there is not much we can do about the death penalty?”
“Well, the fact is,” says the monk, “that we are all born with it.”
That is the reality that we deal with throughout our lives. Our loved ones die, we will die. How do we deal with it?
The Christian view of death is that it is a transition from this life to a life that hopefully leads to full union with God. Many times we grieve the loss of a loved one. Some times we fear for our own lives. But through it all, we know that if we are ready when the music stops, we will receive the reward of the Resurrection of the Lord, the defeat of eternal death.
I love the image of the man who goes fishing. He announces to his family that he’s going to take the motor boar to the far side of the lake go after some really big fish. He doesn’t know how long he is going to be gone. When will they see him again? He doesn’t know. He loves fishing and meticulously prepares his rod and reel, and his other equipment. He fills the boat with whatever he needs. His family comes out to the dock to see him off. He kisses them all and then leaves. To the family the boat is getting smaller and smaller as it gets further away. Dad is gone, and they begin to miss him. But he has everything he needs and he is happy. That’s an analogy of the Christian belief in death. Our loved ones whom we remember this month are gone. We miss them, terribly. But they are happy.
How tragic our lives would be if all that mattered to us was the here and now.
But that is not the Christian faith. Our faith is in Jesus, the Eternal One, who gives us his life and who assures us that we can say to our loved ones who die, and to our loved ones who remain when we die, “Until we meet again.”
Jesus Christ, is the Victor over Death. His victory is our victory. United with Him, we also will live forever.
So we play the game of musical chairs to win, ready for the Lord when the music stops.
A32 Be prepared
Matthew’s parable of the Ten Bridesmaids is almost identical to Luke’s ( Lk 12:35-38): “ Let your belts be fastened around your waists and your lamps be burning ready. Be like men awaiting their master’s return from a wedding, so that when he arrives and knocks, you will open for him without delay. It will go well with those servants whom the master finds wide-awake on his return.”
We have heard in sermons, Parish Missions or retreats things like, “If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, what would I do today?” A more reasonable question might be, “What have I done or not done in the past that can help me to do better in the future – no matter how short or long that future turns out to be!”
We admire people who are “alert”, sharp as a tack, don’t trust just anybody, have eyes in the back of their heads, don’t let anything pass them by, don’t miss a trick…
Oh, we’ve been told to prepare all right. I would point out to Jesus that our problem is not that we haven’t been asked to prepare but that we have been overly concerned with being prepared. Why? Because it is the way to manage and control our lives so nothing is left to chance or uncertainty. We don’t want surprises, uninvited guests, upheavals, strangers at the door, last-minute notices, to be caught off guard.
An anonymous wag once said: “Providence has kept death at the end of life in order to keep people time to prepare for it.” How many of us really get ready? Even talking about death is considered bad manners, bad taste or not proper!
Churchill once said,in his ironic and mildly irreverent humor, “I am ready to meet my Maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me…is another matter!” He should have found out by now!
A32 “LIGHT UP YOUR FAITH”
The first Christian generation really believed that Jesus, the risen Lord, would return full of life very soon. That was not the case. Little by little, the followers of Jesus got used and prepared for a long wait.
We cannot easily figure out the questions they might have asked. How did they keep their faith alive at the beginning? What did they do to be ready for their Lord’s arrival? Jesus’ parable about the bridesmaids at the wedding must have helped those Christians to light up their faith.
Ten bridesmaids, friends of the bride, took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. At sunset, the bridegroom would arrive to pick up the bride and they would accompany the couple and guests to the bridegroom’s home where the wedding’s celebrations would commence.
There is a detail that the Gospel writer wants to clarify from the start. Among those ten bridesmaids, five were foolish and five were sensible. The foolish ones had not brought along any extra oil, while the sensible ones took flasks of extra oil along with their lamps. Didn’t the foolish maids know that oil lamps wouldn’t last forever?
But soon they realized their mistake. The bridegroom was late and did not arrive till midnight. When they heard the cry “The bridegroom is here! Go out and meet him, the sensible bridesmaids filled up their lamps with extra oil and went out to meet the groom. The foolish bridesmaids begged from the sensible ones, “Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.” But there was no time and the banquet doors were closed. They were left out.
Many gospel commentators try to see a hidden meaning in the symbol of the oil lamp. Was Jesus referring to a spiritual light, to love or baptismal grace? Perhaps it would be easier remembering what he said on another occasion: I have come to bring fire on earth and how I wish it would be enkindled? Can anything better happen to our faith than staying in touch with Him?
Is there anything more foolish than trying to keep our faith alive without the oil/fire of Jesus? Isn’t it a contradiction calling ourselves Christians and really not know Jesus’ project or not being attracted by his life style?
We urgently need a new relationship with Jesus if we call ourselves his followers. We must prepare and focus our lives on Jesus’ person and daily presence. Let us not waste our energy in things that keep us away or distracted from the Gospel. We must feed our lamps/faith every Sunday as we listen to his Word and share his Body. Nobody and nothing else will be able to transform our Christian communities.
A32 WISE vs FOOL
Jesus told the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids to urge people to be prepared for the coming of the Kingdom. The foolish bridesmaids did not bring enough oil for their torches to last all night. Wise people look ahead, make plans, and overcome obstacles.
If you could be granted your fondest wishes, what would they be: wealth, a longer life, or good health? And if you were granted just one wish, what would it be? That is precisely the position in which young Solomon found himself before God. Solomon was already a King, having succeeded his father David. God appeared to him in a dream and offered him any one gift he wanted. Wealth, pleasure, health, power: all of these must have occurred to Solomon. But Solomon asked only for wisdom.
How do we attain wisdom? First, we must decide to pursue wisdom intentionally, and, secondly, we can be comforted to know that wisdom seeks us too. A successful businessman was asked by a young protégé the secret to success in business. The older man said, “Make wise decisions.” “But how did you learn to make wise decisions?” asked the eager associate. “From making poor decisions,” he replied. .
This parable is certainly not everyone’s favorite. We would rather choose the parable of the Prodigal Son or the Lost Sheep. On top of that, the wise bridesmaids, who are obviously the “good girls” of the story, don’t come across as very Christian. They refuse to share their surplus oil, and then they have the nerve to tell their ditzy counterparts to go buy some themselves.
But let’s also remember that this parable is not about “caring and sharing”. It is a lesson about “responsibility.” Let’s change the bridesmaids and come down to our own times. Let’s talk about ten students: five go into the exam prepared, the other five partied the whole week before. Do the five prepared students have an obligation to share their answers with the five others?
Jesus is talking about the coming of the kingdom at the end of time as well as the presence of God’s kingdom among us now.
A32 OT BRIDESMAIDS Matthew 25,1-13
How ugly if Alfred Tennyson’s verse is applied to us at our death, “Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet? O let us in, tho’ late, to kiss his feet. No, no, too late. ye cannot enter now.”
“It is not easy to be a Christian,” advises a spiritual writer,” but it is easy to start.”
Today’s parable occurs only in Matthew. There may be a sidebar reference to it in Luke 12:35-39. A wedding in Palestine was a marvelous excuse for a super-party. The people deserved it. Their lives were ones of back-breaking toil, as the wonderful musical Fiddler on the Roof frames it, from sunrise to sunset.
The bride and her groom did not go away to a posh resort for a week on their honeymoon. Rather, they stayed home and threw a party for seven days. It would be the most joy-filled interlude of their lives. And no doubt the overworked townspeople felt there could not be too many weddings. All, even workaholics, love a few laughs and a good party.
Now the bitter disappointment of the five careless bridesmaids without oil can be better gauged. They were shut out from the wedding ceremony itself in all their new wedding finery bought on the lay-a-way plan. But also they would not be able to party hearty for a week.
Some may feel the five foolish virgins were treated harshly. Yes, virgins they were, but they were not children. They knew the rules. The parable reflects the commonplace customs of their homeland.
The utter originality of Jesus is once again revealed in the ease with which He takes ordinary customs about Him and weaves them into His parables.
The parable was depicted often by artists of the Middle Ages. Tourists to Paris and Rheims will discover sculptures in stone narrating the story. The Nazarene is in the middle depicted as the bridegroom. Looking delighted with themselves on His right are the five enterprising bridesmaids who represent the Gentiles. They have embraced the Messiah. The foolish ones, the Jews, on the left are looking wistfully at their dead lamps. They have come up empty. They have turned their backs on Him.
It is this latter group to whom our attention is drawn. The Jews of the time paid special attention to a proverb, “A door that is shut is not so easily opened.” The same thought is expressed in the famous words, “For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.”
No wonder then the Pharisees listening to Jesus were angry with the Nazarene. He was hardly telling them the pious platitudes and sweet nothings they demanded to hear.
But the parable, which is ranked by many among the top ten of the Master, was spoken not merely to the Jews. It is addressed also to us. There is never a time when it is safe to take a vacation from the Christian life. That microsecond could be our last.
It was impossible for the bridesmaids to borrow oil. Likewise, there are some things we cannot cadge from others. To paraphrase William Barclay, we cannot get character and virtue on a credit card; we must develop our own. We cannot live parasitically on someone else’s union with God; we must develop one ourselves. We must pay our own dues.