Matthew 25:1-13 "The Wedding" Scott Hoezee

When I meet with an engaged couple prior to their wedding, and certainly at some point during the wedding rehearsal the evening before the big day, I always make a point to tell people, "Now don't forget to enjoy yourselves!" Typically I remind them just to relax and to savor the moment. Too often the bride, groom, and others get so up tight about the choreography of the ceremony that they make themselves miserable instead of joyful. There seems to be a kind of nervous belief that if things don't go perfectly, it will be a disaster. But aside from the rare fainting spell, and despite some of the zanier wedding clips shown on America's Funniest Videos, the average wedding ceremony sails along quite nicely.

The truth is that if there is anything to ponder or fret about at a wedding, it is not that the candles will burn too fast, that the bride will trip on her train, or that the organist will play the wrong song. Instead, a proper thing to ponder is whether the wedding should be taking place at all, whether people are appropriately serious about their vows and sufficiently mindful of what it means to make such weighty promises before the very face of God. But I can't recall a single instance in my dozen years of doing weddings when I heard anyone at a rehearsal worry that just maybe the ceremony would not be pleasing to God. We may hope that Aunt Mildred will like it and that cousin Floyd will remember to pick up his tuxedo, but we seem to assume that the divine dimension to it all will take care of itself.

Sometimes we simply forget to have the right focus. That seems to be the point of the wedding story in Matthew 25, too. This parable is on one level very straightforward. The major elements of the story lend themselves very readily to allegory. It is easy to match up each character and event of this story with a real life person or event. This is so easy to do that we assume that the meaning of the whole story is likewise easy to understand. The bridegroom is Jesus, the ten virgins are people in the church like us, the oil for the lamps is faith, and the bridegroom's arrival is the second coming of Christ at the end of history when there will be that ultimate sorting out process known as the last judgment.

And much of that is correct. But does that neat and quick allegory mean we've really got this cased? There are, after all, good questions to ask about this parable. For instance, where's the bride? Where there is a bridegroom and bridesmaids, there is usually a bride to go along with them, but in Matthew 25 not one word is devoted to that person who tends to be the central figure at a wedding. So where's the bride and, presuming there is a bride, whom would she represent if this whole story is just an allegory?

Also, why did the five so-called wise virgins bring an extra can of oil along? What made them think to do that? Suppose that next Saturday you attend a wedding in which you see the bridesmaids coming down the aisle, each with a lovely bouquet of flowers in her hands. But suppose that half of that bridal party walked down the aisle using one hand to hold the bouquet and the other hand to lug along one of those old-style tin watering cans with a long spout. Surely you'd conclude that this is a non-standard thing to bring to a wedding.

But upon seeing it, I doubt you'd lean over and whisper to your spouse, "Well, that is certainly non-standard and interesting." Instead you'd conclude that something a little nutty was going on and you'd want to know what. So suppose you asked one of the women what the deal was, only to hear her reply, "It could be a long ceremony--I want to keep these flowers fresh as long as I can." Such an answer would at the very least give you pause.

So also in this parable: what made half of these bridal attendants conclude that the ceremony could go on so long, or be delayed so long, that they'd need extra oil? Think of it this way: suppose you have a certain medication you need to take every day at 6:00 in the evening. And then suppose you had been invited to an 11am wedding one Saturday morning. Would you think to bring along your 6pm pill just in case you would still be sitting in the sanctuary still waiting for the wedding to begin seven hours later? Not likely. So why in this story did half the young women bring something along for the long haul when generally speaking wedding ceremonies are not about the long haul?

On top of that, what's the deal with their refusing to share their oil? That hardly seems a gospel-like way of treating other people. Can it really be the same Jesus telling this story who also said on another occasion, "If someone asks you for your coat, give him your shirt, too"? Wouldn't a generous person say, "Let's divide this oil among us: after all, it's better to have ten half-full lamps that can then all burn than to have five completely dead ones." But that doesn't happen here, instead half of the girls hoard their extra supply, sending the other five on the unlikely errand of finding an oil shop still open at midnight (a fool's errand that ultimately will leave those hapless five bridesmaids out on their ear--eternally so if we connect the allegorical dots here).

So where's the bride, what does the oil as well as the extra oil really represent, why did half tumble to the idea of lugging an oil can along, and what's the deal with this uncharitable lack sharing? I'm not certain we can answer all those questions this morning, but if even this early on in the sermon I've succeeded in helping you to see that this is not a simple parable just by virtue of its being an easy allegory, then we're off to a good start.

So let's back up a bit to consider first the context of this parable and then to re-consider the parable itself. The immediate context in Matthew is Jesus' long speech on the Mount of Olives about the end of the world. All of Matthew 24 was consumed by apocalyptic rhetoric about the signs of the end of the age. Throughout that chapter Jesus makes it clear that there will be, one day, an end to things as we now know them. But Jesus is equally clear that no one, including apparently even he himself, knows when that will be precisely. There will be no missing it when it happens. Until then, however, Jesus warns the disciples to steer clear of anyone who claims to have it all figured out.

Despite the cottage industry that has arisen around making apocalyptic predictions, Jesus says that all such speculation and calculation is wrong. And since Jesus himself indicates that even he doesn't know the date or time, it's a cinch that no one will calculate that date based on Jesus' words.

As I've said before, if I tell you that I know nothing about fractal geometry, it would make no sense to gather up the sum total of my sermons and other writings in order to crack Scott's secret code through which the truth of fractal geometry will be revealed. Jesus says he doesn't know the time, so don't ask him (and don't look for hidden clues in the things Jesus said because Jesus didn't give any). Jesus says to rebuke those who claim to know the future's precise timeline, and don't be afraid to do that rebuking even if these people claim to be doing their predicting in the name of Jesus. You cannot do things in the name of Jesus if Jesus himself told you not to do them.

In Matthew 24 Jesus is not trying to create starry-eyed disciples who do nothing but scan the horizon for clues as to history's end, he's trying to create focused disciples who keep their eyes on the chief things of the gospel. He's not training short-distance sprinters who will perpetually dash for history's finish line but long-distance marathon runners who are poised to stay faithful over the long haul.

In context, then, the reason to plan ahead on the likely need for extra oil becomes clear. Wise believers will not necessarily think that the end is near. The wise won't bother with predictions that the year 2000 is it, that this or that clash with Iraq is it, or anything else that might prod one into thinking that the end of everything is so imminent, we don't need to bother with things like taking care of the environment, developing long-term strategies for peace among the nations, or nurturing a faith strong enough to deal with issues that may crop up many years from now. The wise, in other words, take the long look.

That much we maybe can glean from this parable with ease. What we may miss, however, is that to some people, taking that kind of approach to the faith may look every bit as silly and odd as a modern bridesmaid carrying a watering can. Lots of people in this world, including some in the wider church, may snicker at our carrying along the extra can of faith. Jesus' parable indicates that lugging the extra oil along is what makes the wise virgins wise, but that hardly means that they will look wise. In an upside-down world, those whose thinking is ultimately right-side up will be the ones who appear to be standing on their heads for now. It's a classic kingdom inversion: those who are finally wise appear for now to be foolish, and those who appear for now to be sensibly outfitted for the wedding turn out to be the foolish ones after all.

In just a moment we'll talk about just what it might mean to have extra oil with you in life, but first let's finish up a couple of other matters. For one thing, why do the wise ones end up being so stingy, so uncharitable in ways that seem to cut against the grain of the gospel? Obviously it's dangerous to over-interpret this imagery, but we can safely assume that Jesus is not encouraging a callous attitude, nor is he saying that even if you can share, you shouldn't. That would be too contradictory to everything else we know about Jesus.

So without over-extending ourselves, it may be safe to say that if in the end the extra oil is not shared, it is perhaps because it cannot be shared. I could no more give you a piece of my faith (and so make you thereby more faithful yourself) than I could give you a chunk of my love and so make you a more loving person. There are some key elements of life that I can encourage you to pursue, certain characteristics I can model for you and hope you will perhaps imitate, but I can't just give them to you. A surgeon could help me donate a kidney to you, but no one can excise my hope or my love or my faith and transplant it into your heart. Some things must be sought through the Holy Spirit and then nurtured by that same Spirit or they aren't there at all.

But what about that other issue I raised about this parable's lack of a bride. It's a glaring omission if you just stop to think about it. A wedding story without a bride is like a birth story without a newborn. So where's the bride? She's there, of course, but she's not waiting for the bridegroom on the other side of the door. Instead the bride comes into existence the moment the wise bridesmaids are revealed. The wise bridesmaids collectively become the bride because they have been the real church all along. The ones who at first appeared to be just the sideline players of the wedding party become the object of all the love the groom can muster. "Always the bridesmaid never the bride." Well, not here.

So even though much of the rather simple allegory of this parable remains intact, maybe we've come to understand this story in a deeper way. This is not a tale about a few folks who just happened to have the foresight to take a little something extra along to the wedding, just in case. This is about disciples who are able to take the long look, who are able to accept that it could be a long wait filled with all the ugly, terrible things Jesus detailed in Matthew 24. And yet true disciples stick with the program anyway. This is about disciples who know there will be cancers and wars, terrorist attacks and birth defects, dictators bent on genocide and earthquakes that wipe out a class of 1^st Graders. But these are disciples who even so have let the Holy Spirit nurture a faith that can and will endure.

So this is also not a parable about people whose fondest hope is that they will be raptured away before anything too terrible happens but people who expect to have front row seats on lots of grim things but who have packed along the extra can of faith to help them make it by God's grace. But for that reason this is also not a parable aimed to make us feel good about ourselves and, by the way, too bad for the rest of the world. This is a parable of judgment, and we none of us should like judgment too much because we know that if we manage to be on the joyful side of judgment day, it will be because of the cross on which our proper verdict got laid on Jesus. When you survive judgment by grace alone, you've nothing about which to feel proud but only thankful.

Of course, these days people don't much like the very notion of judgment. To pass judgment implies, after all, something quite final, something settled and firm. But these days things that are final, settled, and firm, sound inflexible, intolerant, and closed off from new ideas. In university literature classes students are assured that if authors like Shakespeare or Cervantes had anything firm in mind as to the meaning of the stories they wrote, those thoughts are both inaccessible to us and anyway unimportant. The text means what the reader brings to it, so let's not draw any judgments or conclusions but rather share our varied opinions in open, safe environments where no one is likely ever to be judged to be in error.

Similar thinking gets applied to religion--we don't want to commit to saying one religion is right and another faith is wrong. We'd rather just acknowledge that various faiths are different and then explore those differences in non-judgmental ways. We're just looking for information to satisfy curiosity, not evidence from which to draw a verdict.

"Who are you to judge?" is perhaps the most commonly asked question of recent times. So when it comes to the parables of Jesus that have judgment motifs, we get a little nervous. But to deny the possibility of judgment is to deny that there is a reality called the kingdom of God--a reality which one either understands or not, for which one is prepared or not, of which one is a member by grace or not.

When we opened this sermon, I talked about how too often at weddings we tend to focus on and fret over the wrong things--the glossy surfaces distract us from the more vital core of it all. Too often life in general is like that. People in the wider world, and sometimes we ourselves, worry about going along to get along, fitting in, maintaining good relations with all, even if doing that means squelching our witness to the truth. Sometimes we miss the big picture.

William Willimon has written that when he was a young pastor in rural Georgia, a dear uncle of one of his congregation's members died suddenly, and though this uncle was not a member of Willimon's church, he and his wife decided to attend the funeral. So Willimon and his wife drove to a back-woods, off-brand Baptist church for the funeral one sunny afternoon. It was, Willimon said, unlike anything he had ever seen. They wheeled the casket in and soon thereafter the pastor began to preach. With great fire and flaying his arms all over the place, this preacher thundered, "It's too late for Joe! He might have wanted to do this or that in his life, but it's too late for him now! He's dead. It's all over. He might have wanted to straighten out his life, but he can't now. It's finished!"

As Willimon sat there, he thought to himself, "Well, this is certainly a great comfort for this grieving family!" The minister continued: "But it ain't too late for you! People drop dead every day, so why wait?! Make your life count, wake up and come to Jesus now!" "Well," Willimon concluded, "it was the worst thing I ever heard. 'Can you imagine a preacher doing that to a bereft family?'" he asked his wife in the car on the way home. "I've never heard anything so manipulative, cheap, and inappropriate! I would never preach a sermon like that." His wife agreed: it was tacky, calloused, manipulative. "And of course," his wife added, "the worst part of it all is that what he said was true." Amen.