James’ Bible as “The Parable of the Ten Virgins.” Since the headlines in any Bible have no inspired authority, I’m offering you my own version: “Oil Crisis for the Bridesmaids” for that seems to me the nub of the story. Allegorists would immediately begin to play with the number ten—five and five—and find all kinds of hidden meaning in the numbers. I prefer to think that Jesus, telling a story about a wedding, from his own experience thought that ten was an average number of bridesmaids in what was obviously a first-class wedding party.
The first thing that strikes me is that he chooses a wedding party to illustrate the Kingdom of God. You will remember that Mark tells us that Jesus once said: “How shall we picture the Kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we describe it?” Well, more than once he deliberately decides to use the picture of a wedding. I’m not going to bore you with an elaborate description of the wedding customs of his day, but will just remind you that a marriage ceremony then not only lasted longer but was even more joyful and hilarious—not to say riotous—than any we know today. So Jesus must have surprised many of his hearers, and may surprise us today, by simply saying: “The Kingdom of God is like a wedding.” If by the Kingdom of God he meant true religion, taking God seriously and living daily in his presence, this is not what the average man or woman would expect. From their observation of some aspects of Church life they would rather be inclined to say: “The Kingdom of God is like a funeral.” “No,” says Jesus, “like a wedding, a joyful, relaxed, love-dominated, uproarious wedding.” This is what he came to offer everybody who would listen—a life of glorious freedom and fulfillment under God’s rule, a life that has already the foretaste of the eternity where it will be fulfilled. “I am come,” he said, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” So he invites us to enter the Kingdom with the expectation that it will be at least as happy and refreshing experience as the singing and dancing at a glorious wedding party.
But the parable that begins on this startlingly happy note ends sadly. There’s no getting away from that. Five of the girls missed the feast. They were arrayed in their finery and had with them the lamps which were an essential part of the ceremony of greeting the arrival of the bride and groom, but they neglected to take with them a supply of oil to replenish the lamps after the long wait. The Anchor Bible calls them the silly bridesmaids and the other five the sensible. When the crisis of the bridegroom’s arrival in the middle of the night was upon them, the sensible naturally told the silly to run off and buy oil at the nearest store. If you protest that they were rather mean in not sharing what they had, I think Jesus would have answered: “I’m not telling you what they should have done, but what actually happened—so be quiet and listen to the story.”
So, when they came back, “the door was shut.” In these four words lie the tragedy of the story, and to my mind the point of the parable. We may not like the thought, but there’s no doubt whatever that Jesus believed and taught that it is possible to miss the joyful experience of the Kingdom of God. It is possible to be so silly and so slack that when the critical moment comes the door is shut. Matthew ends the parable with the grim picture of the silly bridesmaids hammering at the door. “Sir, sir,” they cried, “open the door for us.” But he answered, “I declare, I do not know you.” We are reminded of that other solemn saying: “Not everyone who calls me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my heavenly Father.”
When Matthew inserted this story into his Gospel he probably had in mind the situation of the infant Church which was expecting an early return of the Lord Jesus in glory and judgment. A constant theme of the preaching in those days was that Christians should hold themselves in readiness for a sudden and dramatic re-appearance of Jesus to bring the present world order to an end and usher in his Kingdom in power. They believed firmly that the slack and the silly, the careless and the worldly-minded would then be shut out. Belief in this Second Coming of Christ has endured in the Church. We say that we believe “that he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead.” Most conventional Christians have pushed that thought to the blurred edges of their belief, but it is significant that in times of great disturbance and insecurity, like ours, the doctrine of the Second Coming always reappears. I believe that it is true that history moves to a climax and that humanity, like the individual, faces in the end a death and resurrection. Whatever our thoughts may be about this Second Coming of Christ, we cannot escape the fact that we all face the crisis of death, and that there are other moments of crisis in our life and the life of nations, in which we are suddenly confronted with the reality of the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus told this story his hearers were confronted by the greatest crisis in world history, although the powers of his day, the rulers, the policy makers, the agitators, and the observers—seemed totally unaware of it. How many are aware of it today? The crisis was the advent here in our world of the Savior, the Son of God, the Word of grace made flesh, who was offering the Kingdom of God to all who would accept. He was the bridegroom and his invitation went out to all without distinction. He had not come simply to reinforce the ethics of the Old Testament or formulate some new code. He came to invite the religious and the irreligious, the respectable and the disreputable, the saint and the sinner, into his Kingdom. As he watched the crowds who had greeted him at first begin to fade away, as he saw the opposition mounting and the danger signals on every hand, his teaching took a more sombre turn, and his parables had the thrust of a rapier. As he moves to the Cross where he was to give his life in sacrifice for the whole human family and inaugurate the “new covenant” in his blood, he made his last appeal: “Here is your chance. Don’t miss it. Don’t wait till the door is shut.”
If we feel like saying: “Well, I wasn’t there when that great crisis struck, and the future crisis of his Second Coming means little to me,” we still cannot escape the fact that he comes still in the great crises of our own experience. How easily we settle down to a minimum level of faith and hope, how subtly we allow our very familiarity with the truths of the Gospel to dull our spirits to the presence of Christ when he comes. There is an element of routine in Christian discipleship. The sensible bridesmaids, and not only the silly, “slumbered and slept” till the bridegroom arrived. But in that routine there is need for alertness, the preparedness, the expectancy of the true disciple. There was no oil crisis for the sensible when they suddenly awoke.
We say that the season of Advent is a preparation for Christmas. What do we mean by that? Is it a reminder that we should be buying those presents and mailing off these cards? Is it a preparation for conventional celebrations at home and in church? Advent means Coming, and the preparation above all others that is required of us is a readiness to meet the Lord as he comes to us. Who knows how he may come to the one who is alerted to the reality of his Kingdom and suddenly finds that the message of the carols is no ancient mythology but a piercing and glorious truth? Who knows how he may come to one who has been a typical agnostic if heart and mind are open at the moment of crisis?
“Don’t miss it!” That’s what this parable says to me. “Don’t keep putting off the question of the Kingdom until it is too late, and the door is shut.” It is Jesus who is speaking to us, this Jesus who keeps coming with his Kingdom in all the crises of our lives, this Jesus who has made possible for us a special meeting with him in the sacrament of his Supper.
Years ago it was a Presbyterian tradition to prepare for this Sacrament with prayer and fasting. Then the exercise was abbreviated to a Friday night service of preparation. It was a way of putting oil in the lamps so as to be ready for the bridegroom. With our custom of more frequent communion, in which I firmly believe, we run the risk of forgetting preparation, of even partaking of the bread and wine, in Paul’s words, “not discerning the Lord’s body.”
Jesus comes to us here again this morning. He offers us this feast as a symbol of that great wedding feast that is his picture of the Kingdom. And his word again is: “Don’t miss it; don’t miss what I have to offer through indolence or carelessness or dullness of spirit.”
“King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His