"Getting Caught Up" (Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost)

 Matthew 25:1-13

1 "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, "Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' 7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' 9 But the wise replied, "No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' 10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11 Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, "Lord, lord, open to us.' 12 But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' 13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

            In 1980, shortly before his untimely death, John Lennon released his final album Double Fantasy with his wife Yoko Ono. To be honest, I’ve never heard the entire album, and I don’t know much about its reception or most of the songs on it, but there is one song I’ve heard more than once, a song Lennon wrote to his son, Sean. The song is titled “Beautiful Boy,” and it’s sort of sounds like what you might think a John Lennon lullaby from 1980 would sound like. There’s a lyric in “Beautiful Boy,” though, that rings with a great deal of truth I think. Lennon writes, “Before you cross the street,/Take my hand,/Life is what happens to you,/While you're busy making other plans.” “Life is what happens to you, while you’re busy making other plans…” In light of Jesus’ parable this morning, I want to paraphrase John Lennon a bit here and say, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy waiting.”

            You see, every time I’ve read this parable or heard someone speak on it, it usually goes something like this: “the five wise virgins/bridesmaids were ready for when the bridegroom appeared because they had plenty of oil, but the other five were foolish because they were not ready when the bridegroom appeared; therefore, we have to be ready for when Jesus comes again. You have to have prayed the right prayer or done the right things to be ready or else you’ll be left out of the banquet too.” The end. Let’s pray and have an invitation, right? But that’s not what this parable is about; it’s not about simply being ready for the unpredictable end, having your bags packed, your ducks in a row, your paperwork in lines, your plans laid out. No, this parable is about more than that—so much more than that.

            You see, all ten of these bridesmaids are prepared for the arrival of the bridegroom, and all ten of them know he’s coming, and all ten of them have brought their lamps to light the way for the traditional procession to the bridegroom’s house, and all ten of them awake and trim their lamps at the shout of the bridegroom’s appearance. The only difference between these two sets of bridesmaids is that five brought enough oil for their lamps and five brought extra—that’s it; that’s all the difference between these two sets of bridesmaids Jesus mentions. Here’s where we need to ask a question so obvious it often gets overlooked when we read this parable: why did the “wise” bridesmaids bring extra oil when the “foolish” ones didn’t? I mean, did they have some inside information about the delayed arrival of the bridegroom? Did they always carry extra oil for their lamps? Were they betting on things taking a while? I mean, all ten bridesmaids were prepared for the bridegroom’s arrival: they would have known the wedding customs, they would have been dressed for a wedding banquet, they would have been invited beforehand, and they come with lamps-in-hand, so they obviously know they might have to be out in the dark for a little while. But why did these “wise” bridesmaids bring extra oil when the “foolish” ones did not?

            Here’s where I’ve heard some preachers say something to the effect of “well, the wise bridesmaids are ‘prayed-up;’ they represent those who are ‘rapture-ready,’ those who are looking forward to the return of Christ and are prepared to meet him because they’ve accepted Jesus into their hearts.” Now, I suppose that’s one way to read it, but all ten of these bridesmaids are looking forward to the bridegroom’s arrival; all ten believe the bridegroom is coming; all ten are actually prepared for his arrival. The difference is that while all ten are prepared for his arrival, only five were truly prepared…to wait. They were prepared to wait, to endure the bridegroom’s tardiness, to do more than watch the clock and hope they got everything right.

            I don’t know about you, but I hate to wait. Really, I hate to wait in line at the restaurant to be given a number or some plastic buzzer and told to wait some more. I know I’m not alone in that regard because I’ve led the charge out the door of some nice establishment after waiting for a half-hour only to drive across town and eat at a Denny’s! I hate waiting so much, sometimes I’d rather eat scrambled eggs in a hurry than wait on a steak! I hate to wait for things to come in the mail. One of the worst things I have ever done is sign up to be an Amazon Prime member: I get free, two-day shipping with my membership and can track the progress of my packages when they’ve been shipped—and I still hate waiting on them! I know I’m not alone there too, because Amazon has over 63 million Prime subscribers!

            I hate to wait at the airport, at the doctor’s office, at the dentist, at the mechanic’s shop…I hate to wait on the weekend, on Christmas, on deadlines, on other folks who are getting ready when I’m dressed with my shoes on and my keys in my hand (I’m obviously NOT talking about my wife here…). Why, I hate to wait so much that I’ll sometimes just give up on something and move on to the next thing if it takes too long. But here’s the thing, the biggest reason I don’t like to wait, is because in the meantime, while I’m waiting, I know there are other things to do, other tasks that lie before me, and the truth is I don’t often care as much about those things as I do those things upon which I am waiting. In other words, if I’m honest, I’d rather track my Amazon package, stand in line, or watch the clock than do the hard work of living life in the meantime.

            Five bridesmaids were wise because they were ready to wait; they were prepared for life in the meantime. They were not only looking forward to the bridegroom’s arrival; they were prepared to wait, to have enough oil in their lamps for however long it would take for the bridegroom to arrive. There’d be plenty of light at the wedding banquet—no need for oil and lamps there. They were ready to wait.
            You see, I’m convinced that so many Christians (at least in this country, thanks to our theological history) have focused so much on this escapist eschatology, this notion that the end is coming soon so we won’t have to put up with the things we don’t like for much longer, that we’re like the five foolish bridesmaids: we believe we’re prepared for “the end,” but the truth is, we’re not prepared to wait. In the words of that great theologian, Bobby Burns, many of us have become “so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good!” We are so enraptured by the thought of ideas like the rapture, the “end of days,” and so on, that we read hundreds of books, watch dozens of made-for-tv movies and documentaries, listen to countless sermons, give our money to organizations that promise a hastening of the return of Jesus by claims that are more than questionable, and buy into all kinds of garbage about interpreting the events and signs of the 24-hour news cycle that we are almost giddy at the thought of the end coming soon. We hate waiting so much, don’t we?

            I am convinced that our obsession with “the end of days” is what has led to a great deal of the unease in the world. We are so focused on preparing for some unseen “end,” some great finality, that we spend most of our time distracted by our ideas of the future, perhaps even of heaven, that we miss the calling of God, the opportunities Christ places before us here and now—in the meantime, while we wait. We allow our singular focus on tomorrow to create greater anxiety today, because when the bridegroom doesn’t come on our timetable, when we were sure we had enough oil in the lamp to make it to his arrival, when he doesn’t show up when and where we had expected, we can begin to lose hope.

That, my friends, is why the five bridesmaids who brought extra oil are “wise”—not because they prepared for the bridegroom’s arrival, because they were prepared to wait for his arrival. They were prepared for the meantime.

For so many of us, faith has become about the contrived notion of “getting caught up” in some kind of rapture, of escaping this world when the end comes. But Jesus calls us to a greater faith than that, a faith that not only looks forward to the future, but a faith that is most assuredly present in the here-and-now. The faith to which we are called is not only about the “sweet by-and-by;” it’s about being a part of doing God’s will, of bringing God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s as much about being ready for Christ’s return as it is about being ready to wait for it! So, if “Life is what happens to you, while you're busy making other plans,” if you know the bridegroom is coming, if this faith to which we are all called is as much about the present as it is about the future, what will you do with the time you’ve been given to wait? Amen.