Thomas Kleinert
When they ask you for a story about the kingdom of heaven, I hope it’s not this one that comes to mind first. I hope you’ll remember the stories about the sower, the gardener, and the workers in the vineyard. There are better stories to be told about God’s reign, stories that don’t involve oil that can’t be shared and locked doors that shut out those who knock. “Is this really how we want to define a wise person, as someone who only takes care of herself?” asks Anna Carter Florence, and we’re glad she does, because the cold, calculating ‘No’ of the five wise young women has long bothered us, too.[1]
There are better stories to be told first, which may be why Jesus told this one toward the end of their journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and why he told it to the disciples in private, responding to their anxious desire for details about the end of days. “When will this be, and what will be the sign?”[2]
“No one knows about that day or hour,” he told them. “The love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved,” he said.[3]
Endure, he said. Disciples need to be ready to be long-distance followers. Move, don’t rush. We need to be persistent. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”[4] He has taught us to pray and to persevere in prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
We have prayed. We have asked, we have searched, and we have knocked. And we have waited. How long? “Not long!” the enthusiastic ones among us shout. “Too long,” the tired and exhausted ones whisper, rubbing their knuckles, sore from knocking.
The story about the ten young women and their lamps is about waiting. Five of them are introduced as foolish at the beginning of the story, the other five as wise, and those labels stick. At the end of the story, the foolish five stand outside the banquet hall, knocking and pleading, “Lord, lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”
Chilling. Is Jesus suggesting that parts of his Sermon on the Mount need to be rewritten? “Knock, and the door will be opened for you—unless, of course, you run out of oil and can’t restock quickly enough and show up late for the banquet, in which case you may as well forget about the party. You’re out.”
Do we perhaps need to add footnotes to some of his earlier teachings? “Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’”[5] But do worry about how much oil you have and how much you will need. Worry about your oil and let others worry about theirs, so you don’t end up standing outside in the darkness.
“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” the story ends—well, nothing keeps us awake like worries do. Has sleeplessness suddenly become a Christian virtue? Are we to stay awake, worried about our personal oil supply while anxiously scanning the horizon for the Son of Man coming with power and great glory?[6]
I don’t think so. According to the Psalms, it is God who neither slumbers nor sleeps so that God’s people can lie down and sleep in peace.[7] According to those witnesses, the kingdom of God is like a child, sound asleep in her mother’s arms, safe and secure from all alarms, and not at all like frantic young women running through the night in search of fuel for their lamps.
Jesus’ story is about waiting wisely. To live in anticipation of God’s reign to be made manifest in fullness for all, is like waiting for the wedding celebration to begin. The bride and her attendants are at her parents’ home waiting for the arrival of the groom and his party. The young women are ready, their dresses are beautiful, their eyes sparkle with joy and expectation, their lamps are trimmed. As soon as the children outside announce with happy shouts the bridegroom’s arrival, the women will meet him at the end of the street and escort him with dance and ululations to the house of his beloved. From there, the joyful procession continues to the groom’s home, and the banquet begins — with music and dance, and an abundance of food and wine!
In Jesus’ story, the groom is delayed — it happens, everybody knows it. The groom is delayed: the seams of his tux split, he can’t find the rings, he broke a leg, the limo is stuck on West End — it happens all the time. After a while, the ten young women are a little less chatty, they go looking for a couch or a chair, they become drowsy and go to sleep. All ten of them take a nap before the big party, lamps by their sides, and looking at them, no one can tell which five are the foolish ones and which ones the wise.
At midnight, the shout: “He’s here!” Now we can tell. All of them waited with their lamps lighted. The wise ones simply are the ones who had anticipated that the groom might be delayed. The ones who didn’t expect the night of waiting to be long are the foolish ones.
What does it mean for followers of Jesus to live and wait wisely? Jesus has talked about lamps before. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about the life of discipleship, and he says,
You are the light of the world. … No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.[8]
Let your light shine. Let it give light to all in the house. Let the world see your good works and glorify God.
The oil in our lamps is not some scarce commodity you can stockpile, steal, or borrow: it is the faith you nourish in community; it is the love you give to friend and stranger; it is the hope that keeps you going. Waiting for the fullness of God’s reign to be made manifest in fullness for all, on earth as it is in heaven — that’s not like waiting for the final season of the world’s favorite show to finally drop; it’s like improvising Jesus-inspired scenes every day, scenes that make fantastic trailers for the finale: kind, funny, deep, wild, quiet, loud, holy scenes. It’s like letting the mercy of God shine through. You can’t bottle it, you can’t borrow it, but you can live it in a million faithful ways. It’ll come to you like breath comes to the living.
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, and we notice the echoes in today’s story,
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
To be wise, Jesus tells us, is to hear his words and act on them. It’s like building a house on rock. It’s like letting your life be a lamp for his light. To be wise is not to obsess, “When will he come?” but to lean more fully, with our whole being, into the promise that he will come, as he has come before, in the fullness of time, and that his final coming will complete the work of creation in justice and in peace.
In the meantime, and this we do know, because he has told us, he comes to us in every person who is hungry or thirsty, unsheltered or a stranger, or locked behind prison doors.[9] Fullness of time awaits us in each other, every encounter a moment for the light of God’s reign to shine. We know how it feels to stand outside in the dark, and because we know, we can open the doors we have the power to open.
I don’t like the story we have come to call the parable of the ten bridesmaids. And I imagine Jesus sitting across from me, laughing. “Who said you have to like it? You don’t have to like it. It’s enough that it makes you push back, wonder, and think. Just remember, you don’t have to live as though the fifty-fifty split at the end of the story is inevitable. Let your light shine. Move, don’t rush. Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Follow me.”
[1] Anna Carter Florence https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002671/filling_stations
[2] Matthew 24:3
[3] Matthew 24:12-13, 36
[4] Matthew 7:7-8
[5] Matthew 6:31
[6] Matthew 24:30
[7] Psalms 4:8; 121:4-5
[8] Matthew 5:14-16
[9] Matthew 25:31-46