Five Foolish Bridesmaids
In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that nothing can separate us from God’s love.
Paul is convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says that not even the dead will be forgotten, but the dead in Christ will rise first, and that we are to encourage one another with these words.
So today’s parable which ends with five bridesmaids arriving late at the wedding banquet and the bridegroom saying to them through a closed door that he does not know them, is shocking. And not in a good way.
I want to believe that the door to the wedding banquet is never shut, but open in welcome for anyone who desires to come in, even for those who show up late.
The reality is, though, that doors do shut, despite our deepest hope that an exception will be made in our own cases.
For instance, when my daughter Catherine was visiting universities, she and I flew out to Nashville, TN, to check out Vanderbilt. We flew from BWI.
You probably already know where this story is going.
Traffic on the way to the airport was terrible. I should have been prepared to leave sooner. My last minute flurry of getting out the door activities meant that we left home with not a minute to spare.
We arrived at the airport, parked, raced to the gate and got this news.
“I’m sorry, but the plane doors just shut.”
“No, we can’t board you once the doors are shut.”
So frustrating. There the plane sat on the runway, but
THE DOORS ARE SHUT, AND THEY AREN’T OPENING FOR YOU.
We had gotten there just a minute too late and had no choice but take the consequence.
We missed that flight.
And the miss was my fault.
This hard to swallow lesson led to a gain of wisdom on my part.
I have left home early enough never to miss a flight since then. I have been careful to be in place when the plane is ready to board, rather than caught and distracted in traffic, or wandering around lost in the airport, or making a last minute purchase in some airport shop that might mean missing the flight.
And I have also never booked another flight out of BWI.
But this sermon isn’t about how to be prepared to catch airline flights successfully.
Instead, this is a sermon about how to be prepared for the coming of Jesus/God into our lives ever more deeply and fully and to actually be in place and waiting for God to be with us, and to be in place and waiting for Jesus’ coming in glory at the end of time.
So part of our wisdom as Christians is to know that preparation for Jesus’ coming is necessary and then to follow through with our preparations.
The reading from Wisdom offers some ways to prepare as we wait for the Lord.
First. Desire God’s coming. The beginning of preparing for the Lord is to desire God’s coming into our lives in ever deeper and fuller ways, even now, before the day of the Lord’s return.
Second. Wait with intention. Be intentional about seeking the Lord and fixing our thoughts on the Lord, easy to say and hard to do in the midst of our distracted lives.
Third. Humbly ask for instruction. Our wise seeking of a deeper relationship with God is filled with humility. Having humility reminds us that yes, no matter how well we believe that we are doing, “the beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction.” People who know that no, they do not know all that is to be known, especially about God, and so they desire and ask for instruction from God, are both wise and humble. Humble people ask for wisdom from a place of vulnerability rather than from a belief that they are simply entitled to whatever they want in the moment.
Fourth. Love. Love instruction. Love keeping God’s laws.
The book of Wisdom says that “Giving heed to God’s laws is assurance of immortality, and immortality brings one near to God.”
So wait and prepare—and I’m going to repeat the list of how to prepare.
Desire God’s coming. Wait with intention.
Humbly ask for instruction. Love God and love keeping God’s laws.
Doing these things keep us in the company of God and bring us to the open door into God’s kingdom, with Jesus welcoming us in.
Now to the bridegroom and that shut door.
In the past, when I’ve spent time with today’s parable, my sympathy has been with the five foolish bridesmaids, since I can identify with their plight. I have felt that they didn’t deserve the treatment they got at the end.
But this time around, instead of taking up for these foolish bridesmaids and trying to defend them, I’m going to humbly ask for instruction from this text and try to learn from their mistake of being unprepared when the bridegroom finally showed up.
“When the foolish took their lamps to meet the bridegroom they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.”
The foolish five had oil in their lamps, and no doubt assumed that what they already had would be enough, so they didn’t need to plan to replenish their oil. Their example reminds me to examine my own life honestly. Am I assuming that what I am bringing to God as I am is enough?
I’ve said to myself plenty of times and to others as well, “God loves you just as you are.”
Yes, that statement is true. But God also expects us, as God’s children, to be intentional about growing into the image of God, not just being contented with and complacent about our imperfections.
The words of this prayerful hymn by John Bell illustrate what I mean.
“Take O take me as I am. Summon out what I shall be. Set your seal upon my heart and live in me.” These words spell out an intentional desire for growth in God.
The extra oil in the flask—”summon out what I shall be.”
Second, the foolish got distracted when they realized that they were going to come up short. They rushed to ask for help, and then when that help wasn’t forthcoming, they ran off to the dealers to buy more oil.
They forgot the most important thing of all—that they were waiting for the bridegroom!
They left before the bridegroom ever got there!
What would have happened if those without enough oil had simply stayed at their posts, and waited for the bridegroom, and then gone with him to the banquet, even as their lamps flickered and went out?
Maybe they would have humbly asked for forgiveness before going into the banquet for the fact that they had been unprepared for the long wait and had come up short on oil.
And the bridegroom, I’m willing to bet, would have forgiven them and let them in. After all, their places had already been reserved for them at the wedding banquet. That is why they had been waiting for the bridegroom in the first place.
This whole scenario of forgetting who and what we’re waiting for and leaving our posts has the potential to happen to us in our own lives.
We so easily can take God for granted as we go through our busy days. We pray when it’s convenient or when we want something. Suddenly we might find ourselves in a big bind, and so we desperately ask God for help. When we don’t get an easy answer, or don’t get the answer we expect, or we don’t seem to get an answer at all, we go off to find the answers to our dilemmas elsewhere, in distractions of all sorts that keep us pulled in a million different ways and disconnected from God.
Like those five foolish bridesmaids, we leave before the bridegroom ever shows up.
So this parable reminds me that I need to remember that when I wait on God, God will indeed be present.
This parable reminds me that God will show up whether I’m waiting or not.
So I want to be present and waiting, and ready, no matter how long God seems to be delayed.
As the writer of Wisdom says, when we seek God, then God “graciously appears to us in our paths, and meets us in every thought.”
So stay the course. Wait on God.
And as we wait– Desire God’s coming. Wait with intention.
Humbly ask for instruction. Love God and love keeping God’s laws.
In doing these things, we will be awake and ready to go into the wedding banquet when he comes again in glory.
And nothing, not even our own foolishness, will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, if we wait on the Lord.