Amos 5:18-24
It seems appropriate, to me, that we
encounter the Gospel story with these 10 bridesmaids and their lamps on the
weekend we celebrate Veterans’ Day. Doesn’t
it?
How’s that, you ask? What do 10 bridesmaids have to do with
soldiers at war or Veterans at home? Not
much, I guess, except the women are sitting quietly in the dark, unable to
predict what is coming, stewarding their energy and their resources, waiting on
alert for a fateful moment of arrival…
This
is a parable about waiting.
From all the stories I’ve heard and
read and watched about war, especially those with ground combat, this seems to
be a norm. Gear up, pack up, gather all
your belongings and…wait. Wait stateside, for a command. Wait at the
airfield, for transport. Wait in camp,
for replacement troops. Or wait in a
trench for the enemy to make a move… Hurry up and Wait.
According to the Veteran’s history
project from the Library of Congress, “Hurry up and wait” is actually an
expression long associated with life in the armed forces: the endless lines,
the delays while an assignment is being readied, the long night before a major
battle, and finally, the anticipation of final orders. (According to Wikipedia,
the expression may even have originated with the US Military in the 1940’s!) Since Soldiers spend most of
their time waiting, many consider this phrase to be synonymous with military
culture. In the military, patience is more than a virtue, it is a vital tool.
The wait can
feel endless…
But it’s not
just soldiers who struggle with the wait.
In 2006 Military wife and Journalist Kristen Henderson compiled a book
telling the stories of military wives. The book, entitled, While They're At War, was the
product of dozens of interviews with the husbands and wives of those serving in
the U.S. military, and describes wives waiting at home in a haze of
anticipatory grief. In Kristen’s words,
“The homefront gets a lot less screen time then war — the
camera swings around to focus on military families just long enough to peek
through the window at the tearful goodbye and the joyful homecoming and, in
between, the occasional yellow-ribbon moment. The rest of the homefront
experience is hidden behind a closed door.” […] And
yet, “the men and women who go to war will tell you that the loved ones they
leave behind have a profound effect on their ability to hold up under fire.”
As military spouses, Kristen continues, “we solve problems ourselves. And while we're doing all that,
we're waking up every morning knowing today could be the day the staff car
pulls up in front of our house and two or three people in dress uniforms walk
up to our door. Today could be the day our life as we know it disappears into a
black hole of grief. As a result, when our warriors return, they're not coming
home to the same person they left behind.”
The wait can be one of dread
and unthinkable anxiety.
And even then, for some Vets,
the wait begins once they arrive home. They may not come home to the same person they
left behind, and they may not come home as the same person who left. Surviving war is more than assuring one's physical safety. Colonel Frank Wismer, retired, an Episcopal
priest who served as an Army Reserve chaplain for 25-years, said his personal
concern is for the many who meet death either psychologically or
spiritually.
Wismer says, "Returning from war
alive is not merely an issue of the body; it is an issue of the soul," he
says, relating incidents during which he counseled those suffering from
"the long dark night of the soul."
Waiting to return to some sense of normalcy, some sense of balance, when
you are in the midst of darkness is an ordeal in itself.
Our Gospel Story today is one often
told as one of eschatology – as in, waiting for the second coming of
Christ. It has been used to create a
visual for the doors to salvation. Typically,
interpretation of this parable alludes to the church being the bride of
Christ. If Christ is the bridegroom, the
one who is late, then the bridesmaids are the Christians, the followers of the
Way, the members that make up the church.
The lamp oil is the Christian fuel – that mix of good deed and strong
faith and Christian love that keeps us lighted from within. The wedding feast symbolizes the Realm of God
– heaven – where all will feast and the world will be realigned.
This story was told to the community
of Matthew, a community living through the destruction of the temple and
rejection and exclusion from the Jewish community they considered themselves
part of. They all thought Jesus would
return in their lifetime, and at this point some of their community is
beginning to die and they are worried.
So this story is a comfort to them, an assurance and a caution to remain
vigilant in their words and deeds, to make sure they are ready when the
bridegroom comes.
But what if it wasn’t about Christ
at all?
I gotta be honest, this parable has
never sat well with me. It’s not only
the discomfort I have with calling the church the “bride of Christ”… it also seems to directly contradict the very
things that have come out of Jesus’ mouth.
Jesus asks’ us to be generous with our possessions and live into the
kingdom of heaven.
In Luke chapter 6, Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one
who takes away your goods do not demand them back”. How could these wise bridesmaids be examples
of the Christians that make up the body of Christ if in the face of need, even
if that need was preventable - they cling so blatantly to their earthly
possessions rather than lean into and extend the treasure of heaven? This is being lifted up as Godly?
Jesus created a feast from a few
loaves and fishes… he turned water into wine… he brought
with him abundance, abundance of love, generosity, and trust. We worship a God who forgives sins and asks
us to do so also, to trust that we will be forgiven when we turn back to God. But this same God closes the doors to heaven
merely because the foolish bridesmaids were late – even while the groom was
later? It seems a little unjust.
The shut doors, however, were probably
a very relevant image to the community surrounding Matthew. Matthew’s Gospel was written down shortly
after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. As Christ-following Jews, these early
Christians they still considered themselves part of the Jewish community. The traditional community leaders, however,
were re-trenching, clamping down on rebellious strands of Judaism, like the
Jesus movement. And so Matthew’s community
was denied access to the holy temple and ostracized from the community – and
certainly not invited to wedding banquets.
The doors were literally closed in their face. They were a community left out in the cold, in
the darkness.
As Christians, are we expected to
have our lamps filled with the oil of strong faith and good works at all
times? Do we expect ourselves to always
be living in the light?
When we gathered with the youth at
Grace UMC this last Wednesday – as part of our new youth partnership with FCC
and Grace - Kimberly, the youth leader there, asked the group of 20 kids about
the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs last Sunday. She asked how they were feeling, if they were
ok. She asked them if it scared them,
and if they had trouble talking to God about it.
They were, understandably, quite
shook and upset. They confessed being
afraid and wondered aloud whether they were safe in any place. And we all questioned how this fit into God’s
world and God’s plan.
There are times when God feels far
away, when it may feel like we are walking in darkness. There are times when it feels like we’ve
reached the last of our oil and our faith is spitting and sputtering,
threatening to go up in a thin tendril of smoke. That is how David Henderson, an Episcopal
Priest, said this scripture changed for him when he stumbled into the darkness
of doubt.
“Suddenly, I saw myself as a foolish
bridesmaid, watching as my lamp’s light evaporated into a thin tendril of
smoke, quite jealous of those whose faith still burned so brightly.
I was foolish, begging my lamp not to die. I could no more conjure more faith or light
in my life than the foolish bridesmaids could conjure up the needed oil in the
dead of night.
So I began to ask, “What mistake did the foolish bridesmaids make?
What made them so foolish?”
This is a parable lesson about
waiting. Hurry up and wait. Perhaps the foolishness of the 5 bridesmaids
was not in being unprepared, but in thinking they could go and find what they
needed elsewhere. Perhaps it was in
taking the advice of the other bridesmaids, to leave the meeting place and go
in search of replenishment. Perhaps it was in the desperate seeking of a
short-term solution, the quest for the oil that would re-light their fire, the
spirituality that might spark them anew, the praise music that might give them
that boost, rather than sit and wait and bask in the light from other lamps for
the time being. Recognizing that while
our lamp may be out, there is light to be shared through a listening ear, a
compassionate touch, a concerned conversation.
Soon we will be in the season of
Advent, the liturgical season of waiting.
While our secular lives take off with Christmas Carols and holiday
shopping and baking and cookie-making, the texts and advent litanies we will be
reading will be centered on a feeling of wandering in darkness. In the approaching darkness of winter,
liturgical literalists, like the Life-long Lutheran I learned under at St.
Luke’s, will put off the festive feeling of Christmas and, instead, take refuge
in a state of hibernation and anticipatory watchfulness for the rebirth of
light into the world.
And it’s a relief, really, to have
that built into the ritual we do every year. To recognize that darkness comes to each of us
in this life, to some more often than others, but that light will come again.
To recognize that there are times when we just need to sit with the darkness
and hold fast to the knowledge that, though God may feel far away right now,
hope will come again. To reflect on when
we were in that darkness and how we found our way back to the dawn. Because, though we may wander through a
desolate landscape of faith, seek other sources or just plain walk away for a
while, God is always there longing for our presence. Even while some may now suffer through the
long dark night of the soul, God is always near. God waits for us too. And when we are ready,
when we find a little oil to light our path again, when we return to the door
and knock, I believe that God will always open the door.
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