The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 27A
“Keep awake! You know neither the day nor the hour!”
As we near the end of the church’s liturgical calendar (Advent is right around the corner!) we get a lot more of the unsettling, apocalyptic readings from the Bible. If you’re in the practice of Morning and Evening Prayer, you’ve been getting readings from the Book of Revelation. Today we get the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, and Paul encouraging us to be hopeful because Jesus will get back and we’ll all be swept up into paradise to be with him.
Good times, good times.
We as moderns have a lot of baggage with apocalyptic literature. There are Christians who have wasted countless hours trying to calculate when Jesus might show up – for some reason, Biblical fundamentalists seem to ignore what Jesus literally says here about not knowing the day nor the hour. There are Christians who have made careers of scaremongering, who have made every tragedy into a sign of God’s judgment.
And for another big chunk of us who call ourselves Christians, we might want to jettison this stuff entirely. It’s not out of line to feel a little unsure about all this apocalyptic stuff – early Christian leaders also had their own issues with some of these texts, too.
I’m generally fine with apocalyptic literature in the Bible. It’s emphasizing our need to be watchful and to not lose hope that God loves us and will care for us, even if the world should fall apart or be under the thumb of forces of hate.
But the hesitation I have with Jesus’ parable today comes from a different direction. The parable praises the wise bridesmaids who have said, “Well, if you don’t have oil, it’s your fault, go buy some, not our problem.”
Something hits me in that. I think of our culture where there’s always a looking for where to place blame and deflect responsibility.
“Oh, the homeless? Well if they’d not be lazy, not do drugs, if they’d planned better, then they’d not be in that situation. Not that I care enough to find out why they’re homeless – it’s still somehow their fault. Not my responsibility to care for them. Let’s criminalize them camping on public property, too.”
“Oh, the single parent struggling to find a job that can pay enough for rent and food? Well guess they should’ve planned differently. Not my responsibility to ensure they get paid a living wage, and sure not my responsibility to fund school programs so a parent can work. Not that we realized how much we depend on schools to provide care for children during COVID when schools were closed and some parents were forced to be at work as ‘essential workers.’.”
“Oh, the college graduate saddled with debt because state universities are underfunded and administration squeezes every drop of loan money they can? Well I guess they should have foreseen that a few years in the future AI would disrupt the entire economy and displace workers so the rich could get richer. Too bad, so sad.”
You get my point. It’s so easy to displace the blame and write people off. If I can figure out how it might possibly be their fault, I’m free from any obligation to help. It’s their fault, it’s their problem.
It’s easy to sit with the wise bridesmaids and look over at the scrambling foolish ones. “They weren’t smart enough to bring extra oil with them, so it’s not my problem at all. I’ve got mine, I get to go to the wedding banquet, I get to go to the party, I get the celebration. Too bad, so sad for you. Better get to the store and buy some oil!”
So where do we sit with this?
Do we share our oil – even if it might not be enough? Even if the other person had a chance to do the right thing but now looks at us to save them from the consequence of their choices?
Do we hold back – they chose this mess, not us, we’ve got to put on our oxygen mask before helping others, and there isn’t enough oxygen to go around?
What do we do? Tough call, isn’t it?
Part of us wants to feel like we’d share, that we’d find a way to include everyone. Part of us hopes that someone else would help us in our hour of need, even if it were our own doing. Part of us also knows the annoyance, the frustration, the anger that would be right there when someone turns to us and puts us on the spot, to sacrifice to help them when we’re struggling ourselves.
In a way, we’re always in that kind of situation. We inherit decisions made by others. Others snatch up the oil for themselves. It might be people in power, it might be people with resources snatching up even more. It might be even our forebears who made decisions that left us with no oil in our flasks.
Perhaps there’s a second parable to tell: instead of wise bridesmaids, it’s insightful ones, and instead of foolish bridesmaids, it’s greedy ones. The greedy ones hoard the oil for themselves, and insightful bridesmaids are left to go without even if they can find a way to make the lamps shine for everyone.
You’ve probably heard my grumbling about the design of this building – how it makes no sense, how a split level makes part of our building less accessible, how it faces the wrong way from the street, how a long hallway is a nightmare for heating and navigation, how so much lawn was a terrible mistake in our Boise climate. There were some honestly foolish decisions along the way, and we get to figure out how to adapt to it.
I could spend my time grumbling even more, and yet what does that do, really?
The better question should be, will a future generation look at what we do now as foolish or wise? Will we be handing them an empty flask instead of a full flask of oil? Will we be handing them an empty flask with empty promises? Will we hand them a full flask, full of faith and hope? Will we hand them an empty flask, or will we make sure that the flask is topped off with oil, ready to use to share the light of the kingdom of God?
We face those decisions every day, really.
Do we want others to have hope, to see light?
Do we want to get our way and hoard the oil to ourselves and use it up?
Do we want to look at future generations and say, “here, put this to good use, I trust you” or do we want to look at others and say, “No, you’d waste it, I’m keeping it for myself.” What will be our guide?
If we wish to be the wise bridesmaids, we need to keep our oil ready. We need to keep our hearts and eyes alert for Jesus. The wise ones knew what they wanted – light to see God.
If we want to avoid being the foolish ones, we need to get that oil. Not for our own good use alone, but so that we are ready to share the light. We need to be ready not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.
Do we want them to have oil for their lamps? Or is our lamp the only one that matters?
Let the light shine – and let the oil be ready to give light to everyone in the house, and everyone who will one day fill this house in joy. Amen.