Scripture: Matthew 25:1-13
I think I want to talk to you today just about some of the ways today’s scripture reading speaks to me. There’s a bunch of them. So this is not likely to be a linear kind of sermon, in fact maybe not even very well organized.
Before I get to the ways today’s scripture reading speaks to me though, let me acknowledge that there are some things about this passage that do not speak to me, or at least don’t speak to me in a very nice way. As some of you have no doubt noticed, I do this fairly often, at least I feel like I do. That is, I feel like I fairly often find some reason to take exception to things that are said in the Bible. I find myself fairly often quarreling with some part of a passage or pointing out how problematic it is in some way or other. Since I do this fairly often, I want to take just a moment to say something about the spirit in which I do this and the spirit I hope you will take it in.
It’s really not my intention to approach the scriptures with a kind of argumentative attitude, as though I were all the time looking for something in the scriptures to take exception to. It’s not a matter of my needing to point out the fallibility of the Bible with as much energy as some others seem to feel the need to assert and defend the infallibility of the Bible.
It is a matter, for me, of being honestly engaged with the scriptures. And that means that when I encounter some portion of scripture that is bewildering, troublesome, downright offensive, or all of the above, that I admit that that’s the way I feel, admit it first of all to myself, but also be willing to be open about it as I talk with others. It shows no great respect to the scriptures, in fact it shows disrespect, to simply gloss over difficult passages or ignore the difficulties we may have with any particular passage. The Bible sometimes seems to say things, or has been made to say things by its interpreters, that ought not to go unchallenged, and it’s out of our total engagement with the scriptures that we hope that truth is shaped and constantly reshaped within us. There’s a lot more to be said about this. This will do for now. I just had to get that off my chest, since I’m about to say some things I have trouble with in this particular passage.
This is a story about…Well, let me not begin by suggesting to you what I think the story is about. That’s part of the point of our being engaged with a story, that we work our way toward some understanding of what the story is about, and to allow for the possibility that it might be about lots of things. This is a story Jesus told that he said had something to do with the coming reign of God. God’s realm, he said, will be like this. And then he told this story of the ten bridesmaids, five of whom were designated as wise, and five of whom were foolish.
The parable, according to the commentaries, is based on the custom of Palestinian weddings in the time of Jesus where the groom would come to pick up the bride at her home and they would go off together to have the celebration. It was the bridesmaids’ job to keep a lookout for the groom, let the bride know when he was coming and go out to welcome him. So in this parable they were doing that, except that he took a lot longer to arrive than they were expecting, and they all got tired and went to sleep. When the groom finally arrives, it’s no problem for five of them. They wake up and re-light their lamps and go on with the celebration, since they were wise enough to bring some extra oil. The others on the other hand had let their lamps burn out and had not brought any extra oil, for whatever foolish reason or non-reason they may have had. They ask their friends, or the people they thought might be their friends, if they could share some of their oil. “Oh no,” the wise ones say. “We may not have enough for ourselves. Go get your own oil.” (Maybe you guess that this is where I begin to have problems.) But then the story goes on. The foolish women go off to get their oil and by the time they get back the party is in full swing and when the foolish bridesmaids ask to come in they are told no, too late, don’t even know who you are, go away.
Now I’m troubled some by the attitude of the so-called wise bridesmaids. I balk a little at calling them wise since wise is associated with good in my mind and it wasn’t very good of them not to share their oil, even if they weren’t sure it would last. If they had been really wise they could have brought enough for themselves and someone else who might not have been quite as foresighted. But I’m willing to not get too hung up on this part of the story. I’m sure Jesus didn’t mean to say that sharing was bad and hoarding was good. I doubt that this was a lesson on tough love and how sometimes people just have to be made to live with the consequences of their actions. I don’t know why Jesus told the story exactly this way. Maybe someday I’ll have an insight about that. Today I don’t, and I’m willing to live with some rough edges in the story. It doesn’t have to be neat and clean and nice and moral in every detail.
But I am troubled a lot more by the attitude of the groom, who when the foolish ones arrive ready to party claims he has never seen them before and slams the door in their faces. What’s this about? If the party is closed to them, who else is it closed to? Does God ever, for any reason, close the door on anyone? Who is shut out from participating in God’s reign? Or better, if a little foolishness is enough to get a person excluded from the party, who is it exactly that is included? We are pretty clear around here that there is room among us, and will be room in any ingathering of God’s people, for people of all races, conditions, genders, sexual orientations, gifts and abilities, theologies. Is there not room among God’s people for a little foolishness as well? Or do we have to be completely prepared, totally thoughtful, and thoroughly mindful at all times…in order for God to even recognize us?
I said I would acknowledge the difficulties. I didn’t say I would resolve them. But as I say it’s important to at least acknowledge the tensions. Who knows what wisdom may be contained in our struggles with the text! In the meantime, I am pretty sure this is not a story about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and whether my foolishness will cause God to say she doesn’t know me.
Now, as to some of the ways this passage does speak to me. For one thing, burn-out. This is a story that speaks to me about burn-out. Literally, it is about lamps burning out, which caused the bridesmaids not to be able to carry through on their task of being bridesmaids. Ava and I were driving in the car last Sunday afternoon, on our way up to the Mud Dauber, beginning the artists tour that was going on last weekend, enjoying a crisp, clear autumn day and some beautiful scenery along Earlysville Rd. In the midst of all this I turned to her and said, “What do you think I should preach on next week?” She could have said, probably should have said, “You need a vacation.” What she did say, after a moment’s pause, was something about how life gets filled up so quickly with so many things to do and how there doesn’t seem to be time for just being and how she’s said yes to too many things and no to too few and why is this and what can be done about it? Something to that effect, I think.
And I said, “So you’re suggesting maybe a sermon on burn-out. That’s convenient because the scripture happens to be about lamps burning out and energy supplies running out and the like.” The scripture had already been speaking to me about burnout. So have other people besides Ava remarked to me on numerous occasions about this problem of being overcommitted, said that they’ve said yes too often, said that they have a feeling of time getting away from them, which of course means life getting away from them, said that they need some kind of a course in how to say no…and so forth. Come to think of it, I’ve said those things to myself now and again. I even heard this sentiment from Martha in church a couple of weeks ago when people were sharing thoughts about what children need. I remember Martha saying that children need times and places to be quiet and not to be surrounded with noise and places to go and things to do, that they need time to be quiet and to be children and to be themselves. So this part of the scripture resonated on a number of levels.
The question is what to say about it. If we try to extract a lesson from the parable on this topic, it might be something like: Don’t take your energy supply for granted. At least be aware that running out of spiritual fuel is a danger. At least be aware of the need to provide some way to re-fuel along the way. There needs to be some kind of energy source in our lives, or we will find that we are just existing in the darkness.
Now those things don’t sound like very much to me, not initially. The parable says yes, running out of fuel can be a problem. But we already know that. If we didn’t already feel it as a problem, we wouldn’t be asking the questions we ask about how to deal with our sense of being overburdened and having too little time and like. So at first glance if the lesson is only that we shouldn’t take our energy supply for granted, it doesn’t sound like that’s saying much. Life is teaching us that lesson every day.
On the other hand, the suggestion that we pay attention to our energy supply does say something that may be worth saying after all. It says, in my way of thinking, that the problem here is with our energy supply. It is not with the number of times we say yes to things. I could point out that those who ran out of oil in the story did not run out because they were so busy and used up all their oil. Both the wise and foolish were after all sleeping, not exactly overcommitted. The problem of burn-out may not be precisely one of having too many things to do, of having said yes too often, or of being overcommitted, though I know a number of us feel that way from time to time, or maybe all the time.
I didn’t want to make too much out the details of the parable, so I thought more broadly about Jesus’ life and ministry. Here’s a fellow who was probably overcommitted. The gospels are pretty clear about the fact that people just wouldn’t let him alone, always bringing questions, bringing people to be healed and the like. And the distinct impression you get reading the whole gospels straight through, at least the impression I get, is a constant sense of urgency and movement, always the next place to be and the next thing to do. I don’t get the sense that Jesus dealt with saying yes too often by cutting back. He’s not quoted as saying, “Gee, I think I better cut back on the preaching, feeling a little overwhelmed today,” Or, “Life is just too crazy. Better stop scheduling so many healings.” What he did do, according to the writings, was to find time to go off by himself to pray.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is how Jesus renewed his spiritual energy and vitality. But I don’t want to turn this into some kind of moralistic pronouncement, as in “you should go off and pray more because if you do you will no longer feel so burdened or stressed by demands on your time and emotions.” So let me try to put it less moralistically and without any finger waving. Whatever the equivalent of going off by yourself to pray may be for you, it is likely to contain some significant part of the answer to what can unburden us or what just might replenish our energy supply.
Of course that poses questions to us, all of us. Is it prayer, real set-aside prayer time, not some hastily whispered prayer that fits into frantic life-styles, but real set-aside prayer time that will realistically renew our spiritual resources? And if it’s not going to be what we can authentically and honestly call prayer, what is that equivalent going to be in our lives? In any case, the focus is not on how busy we are, how many times we have said yes, or anything like that. It is on how, in the midst of whatever it is we have chosen or been chosen to do, we can make some space for ourselves where we can be rained on, in the way the choir sang, some space for ourselves where we can fill our lamps with oil.
This is not to be confused with finding some time for ourselves or with vegging out, which does not mean that vegging out is a bad thing, just that it’s not the same as spiritual replenishment, not the equivalent of prayer. And this leads me to another thought about how this is not a question of how often we say yes or no, not a simple question of how many things we have on our plate.
There are different ways of saying no. I’m not an expert, but my sense is that just saying no is probably not a terribly effective slogan in combating substance abuse. It’s also probably not an adequate slogan for preventing burnout. The question is: When we say no, are we also saying yes to something. The problem may be not that we say yes to too many things, but that we say yes to too few things that are life-affirming, that are life-giving, that lead us along a path toward wholeness.
Whenever I think of this problem of lives that are too full, too busy, too stressful, I also remind myself that there are many lives that are burdened not by too much to do but by too little. I have ministered in situations where I heard very few complaints about being stressed from too many things to do. There was stress, but of a different kind: stress from having too few things to say yes to, stress from having too little of value to fill their days. Rather than asking how to deal with burnout and how to learn to say no, people would ask other questions. Feeling that they had outlived any usefulness their lives might have had, people would ask why God wouldn’t take them. Quite as much as people who have too many things to do, these people also need to make space, in their un-busy lives, for set-aside times of prayer or an equivalent. We are burdened in the end, I believe, not by the sheer number of things we do or the lack of things we have to do but by the things we have said yes to that have become mere busyness and the things we have said no to that have become just emptiness. Saying this, I realize, is not an answer to the issue of burnout, only a direction. It leaves us all to explore for ourselves and to discern what it is we most deeply need to say yes to. That for me is where the prayer comes in.
Do we have too much to do? The answer to that question, for people of faith, is always resoundingly and joyfully “yes”. We have too much to do because we are called to proclaim release to the captive and to set at liberty those who are oppressed. We have too much to do because we are called to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. If we have said yes to such a call, if we have said yes even faintly or tremblingly to that call, we have already said yes to way more than we can handle, in the sense that we will always have too much to do. May we find ways not so much to say yes less often, but to say yes wisely, joyfully, lovingly, and gratefully. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 10, 2002