How much of your day do you spend preparing for what’s to come? For me, it’s little things I try to do - I program the coffee maker to go off at a specific time in the morning- I always feel like an absolute winner the next morning when I remember to do that. I might meal prep a bit over the weekend by making soup for lunches for the week or, maybe even making some muffins for our breakfasts. It’s really wild how much meal prepping really does make me feel more in control of the rest of my life, I hate to admit it but it’s true.
One of my recurring stress dreams, that I tend to only have on Saturday nights by the way, is that it’s my week to preach but I can’t find my notes. Not only can I not find them, but I have a horrible suspicion in the back of my mind that they don’t actually exist - I can’t remember what the scripture even is that I’m preaching from and I realize that I’m up to bat and I have nothing written down. It’s truly a nightmare of zero preparation. So far it hasn’t happened but I’ve only been doing this for like 4 years so I’ve got time!
This passage from Matthew this morning seems to be about this theme of preparation - we have ten bridesmaids who are waiting for the wedding banquet to begin. Five are wise, and bring extra oil for their lamps, and five are foolish and do not. The bridegroom is horribly, rudely even, late to the wedding. It’s after midnight, and the oil in all ten of their lamps is out - thankfully, the wise brought extra and start refilling when the bridegroom arrives, but the five foolish are left in the dark, and they leave at the start of the wedding banquet in order to go find some more fuel for their cold dark lamps.
We hear this passage, and if you’re anything like me, you want to turn it into a tale of morals. The wise people are a prepared people, and the foolish ones are unprepared - therefore: be prepared! To be prepared is to be wise! The bridegroom in this passage, Jesus, is coming at any moment and you must always be ready for Jesus to return! Growing up, my mom had a gimmicky painting of Jesus called “Wandering Eyes Jesus”, where it was a 3D relief of Jesus’ portrait so that the eyes were sort of further back in the painting, which had the effect that whether you were looking straight on, or if you were slightly to the side glancing at the painting, Jesus’ eyes would always be staring at you straight on. That’s the typical way this passage is often interpreted - Jesus, the Bridegroom, is watching even if he’s not here - so be prepared.
Can I just say, being prepared is so not as easy as it sounds. I recently got one of those huge LL Bean Boat and Tote bags, the large size with the long handles so I can cart all of my daily stuff. It’s an enormous bag, and the irony is that the more I stuff into this bag, the more I lose in the bottom of this bag until it feels completely worthless to have prepared for every possible iteration of my day by bringing every possible item I may need because I can’t access any of it quick enough anyways. It’s a Mary Poppins bag except I’m not Mary Poppins so nothing comes out of it when I need it to.
Over preparing can sometimes feel useful. But there’s an interesting psychological phenomenon that happens with over-preparation called the “disconfirmation bias” - the way it works is, when you prepare in every way for every possible outcome, and the feared outcome does NOT happen, you conclude not that the feared outcome was never all that likely, but rather that it was your preparation that protected you from said outcome. Which just continues the loop of overpreparation and worry in the face of some unknown outcome. We start to believe that our preparation in itself has the power to magically avoid an undesirable outcome. In other words, we believe, deep down, that we are more powerful to change the world around us than we actually are.
That’s what’s going on in this passage - disconfirmation bias - the wise bridesmaids with extra oil are the ones who end up going into the wedding banquet, so we conclude it was their overpreparedness that gets them on the guest list. But, if we spend just a minute looking closely at the parable, the moralistic reading of “thou shalt be prepared” quickly begins to break down.
First of all, all the bridesmaids fall asleep. They are at a wedding, waiting for the bridegroom to arrive and he’s late, and all ten bridesmaids - both the ones that the world calls foolish, the unprepared, and the ones that the world calls wise - fall asleep. Neither the wise nor the foolish are prepared in the sense of being ready to actually meet a bridegroom who comes in any unexpected manner - in this case, the unexpected manner of being exceptionally late.
And second, the “wise” bridesmaids, once the bridegroom does finally arrive and the foolish ones ask to share their plethora of oil with them, completely refuse to do so. If there’s any Christian moralism in this passage, it seems to skip over the idea of the golden rule - doing unto others as you would have them do unto you by sharing what you have with one in need.
And not to mention the glaring fact that the bridegroom is late at all! What kind of bridegroom is late to their own wedding? How could the bridesmaids have possibly expected such a turn of events? If I was doing a wedding, and the groom showed up past midnight, we would all very much assume that there would be no wedding whatsoever. The bride would have long been in tears, the family furious, but I can tell you, I would definitely not still be here at the church waiting around for the groom, assuming he might still show up around midnight.
But because the wise ones had extra oil and ended up in the party in the end, we assume it’s their preparation, despite all of the surprising turns of events that evening, that landed them on the guest list.
No, the problem for the “foolish” bridesmaids wasn’t that they didn’t have enough oil, but that they left to go get more. They weren’t foolish because they failed to foresee a dreadfully late bridegroom and prepare accordingly by bringing extra oil - they were foolish because they thought there was something they had to do at all to make them ready to see the bridegroom. And the wise bridesmaids are wise, not because of their extra jugs of lamp fuel carted around in their enormous LL bean tote bags, but because they simply walked into the party when the bridegroom welcomed them in. It seems that those “wise” bridesmaids thought it was their preparation that got them in - the fact that they’re entering with lamps full of oil. But whether they understand why they’re there or not - the point is just that they walked in when invited.
The life of faith is not about preparing for Jesus - it’s actually about not being obsessed with preparation, not constantly trying to put your best foot forward - but about being present just exactly how you are, when you’ve been awoken suddenly from sleep, with whatever preparation you believe you’ve done - and when given the invitation of the open door that you’ve been waiting for for hours, with an empty stomach and empty cup ready for a meal and toast of celebration after the depressing dark of the night, you do the only thing that makes sense to do - you simply walk in and enjoy it. The walking in is the one act of faith required - and really, no other response to an empty stomach makes sense than to say “yes, please!” when offered a seat at a banquet.
The other morning I was up bleary-eyed from the time change, and as I stood looking out the window from my house, I watched as the sun began to rise over the ridge of Carter Mountain. And in an instant, because of the thick fog on the mountain, the sky and the trees suddenly all turned a blinding bright white - it was incredible. All of a sudden you could see none of the trees, you couldn’t even see the mountain, all you saw was astonishingly bright white light as the sun climbed higher. I looked at Brian and said - do you think Jesus is returning right now?
It was just as Christ’s transfiguration on the Mountain is described in the Gospels - in Luke it says he became as bright as a flash of lightning, and in Mark that his clothes were brighter than anyone could bleach them. The brightness of Christ is a blinding light - it pushes out all darkness, it reveals all truth, it burns off all sin and death. No lamps are needed in the face of such a display of glory.
As adorable as the children’s Sunday school song is, it’s not “this little light of mine” that’s going to brighten the whole world. It’s not this little light of yours that saves you, that gives you a place at the table of the supper of the Lamb. It’s not your kindness, your generosity, your Christian charity, your social graces, your courage, your perseverance, your intelligence, or your self-awareness - none of that in the end is what saves you. It is not your light + Jesus’ light combined that saves you, but rather your darkness, sin, death, plus Jesus’ light, righteousness, resurrection, that does it.
My question for you today is this: what are the things, in your spiritual oversized tote bag of preparation, that you schlep on your shoulder and carry around with you every day, that you hope will make God and other people smile upon you? What are the virtues, or the accomplishments, or the struggles, that you cling to, that give you self-esteem, and maybe if you’re honest, sometimes a sense of superiority in some way? I’ve got my own list. Maybe it’s your political opinions? Maybe it’s your patience with difficult people in your family? Maybe it’s your generous volunteerism? These little jugs of oil that we carry with us to fuel our lamps of self-importance can so quickly turn rancid with resentment and martyrdom when we believe that it’s our lamps that light the world. Not to mention the fact that eventually, carrying the weight of such expectations on our shoulders can be so exhausting.
Well in light of such exhaustion, as we wait for Jesus to return, there is nothing to do but fall asleep - in other words, we find ourselves dead in our sins. Our lamps go out. We have no power within ourselves to help ourselves. Here’s the good news: there is no need for a lamp when attending a party with the light of the world. There’s no need to go off looking for more oil, no need to come up with reasons to be worthy of such grace from God. There’s nothing to bring to a wedding banquet but yourself. What you’ll find, in fact, on the other side of that door of faith, is a huge party to catch you off guard unprepared. All there is to do is walk in, which is really the most obvious response when you’ve been waiting so long for the party to start. The door opens, light pouring out, the bridegroom ushers you in and says: Come on in, drop that horribly large tote bag at the door, leave your lamp on the stoop, grab a drink, I know you must be parched - there’s a seat with your name on it here at the supper of the Lamb.
Amen.
