Timing is Everything

I was outside, on the lawn of the church with this small congregation. I was a first-time visitor, having just completed a week of volunteering at Wesley Woods with a high school camp. This church was on the way home, so a few of us stopped at the small United Methodist Church for Sunday worship. And they were staging a heritage day service.

For those of you that don’t know, a heritage day service usually includes the pastor dressing up like a circuit rider. Circuit riders were Methodist preachers in 18th century America who rode on horseback from town to town, visiting the churches in his “circuit” on Sundays throughout the year. Well, on this heritage Sunday I was at, the church’s pastor dressed up like a circuit rider and rode in on a horse. And they staged it just like old times. The congregation was gathered on the lawn, singing hymns a cappella until the preacher came. “So when will the preacher be here?” I asked the woman next to me. “I don’t know. Sometime after 10:00, they say. He’ll get here when he gets here.”

This was really the full experience. We were all kinda in the dark about when the preacher would be here. We had a general idea, but I guess horses are harder to predict time-wise than our fancy cars. So here we were, pretending like we’re in 18th century America, waiting for the preacher to get there so we could have this dang worship service. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. We didn’t know when he’d come. We knew he’d get there…we just didn’t know when. And people used to do this every week. It drove me crazy after 10 minutes of waiting.
I was inside, in a classroom above the chapel. It was already 10 minutes into our contextual education class in seminary, and neither of our professors had shown up. One had already told us he wouldn’t be there this week, but the other one was supposed to lead the class. His name was Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Dr. Warnock usually was late, but not this late. So the minutes kept ticking away into our class period, and we started the talk that all students have when these things happen. “Where’s the professor? We’ll have to invoke the 15 minute rule soon.” For those of you that don’t know, the 15 minute rule is an unwritten but widely known rule that if your professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes of class, then the students are allowed to leave without getting in trouble. I was there once when we used it in college. It’s a risky thing. Well here we are, seminary students – the most ethical and honest people you can find, right? No, we’re invoking the 15 minute rule on Dr. Warnock. Who cares that he preaches from the same pulpit Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. both preached from? Who cares if he’s an internationally known preacher? He’s 15 minutes late, we don’t know when he’ll be here – if he comes at all. We knew he’d come, we just didn’t know when.

I was sitting in my living room, waiting. I had things to do, but I couldn’t leave because the Comcast guy was supposed to come and hook up our new service between 9 and 1. Oh, the cable guys. Everyone else makes appointments, but they give you a 4 hour range that you have to wait for them to show. You’re a prisoner in your own house, waiting for the cable guy, not knowing when he’ll show up. I knew the Comcast guy was coming to my house, I just didn’t know when.

In this parable of the ten bridesmaids, they knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. They knew he’d come and invite them into the wedding, they just didn’t know when. So they waited with their lamps until he came. And when he came, some were gone because they had run out of oil.

How did this happen? As I read this parable, this first century oil crisis, I try to imagine the argument that broke out before they left with their lamps. Half the women are taking backup oil, just to be safe. We don’t know how long we’ll be waiting, they say as they grab their reserves. The other half of the women aren’t. It’s usually not that long, We’ll have enough. A backup flask of oil is heavy and bulky and we don’t want to carry it with us. We don’t want to look like over-prepared fools, weighed down with more than we need.
Any experienced hiker will tell you to be prepared, but that it’s foolish to be over-prepared. You don’t have the room in your pack to be over-prepared. You have to be lean and mean, or you’ll be the fool who brought a jacket and a sweatshirt, the fool who brought 3 kinds of sunscreen, the fool who brought backup hiking boots just in case they need them. And you’ll be the tired, slow fool that now has to carry all of it.

So who’s foolish and who’s wise? Is it foolish to be over-prepared, or foolish to be under-prepared? You see, the distinction between foolish and wise comes down to bringing extra oil or not. And at first, you can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, bringing extra oil “just in case” may turn out to look wise. But if the bridegroom comes quickly, you might look foolish. And to forego the backup oil can look wise if the bridegroom comes quickly, but if he doesn’t you’ll end up appearing foolish. It’s all about the timing of the bridegroom’s arrival. Basically, no matter when the groom comes, someone’s going to look foolish. So who actually is foolish?

You see, the mistake of the foolish bridesmaids was not falling asleep. Even the wise, over-prepared bridesmaids slept. The foolish bridesmaids were the ones who ran out of oil. Why did they end up foolish? It’s because they didn’t have enough oil of their own, and they had to run around town trying to buy oil at midnight, when obviously no merchants would be open. See what happens when you depend on foreign oil? You end up missing the wedding feast – you end up looking foolish.

So these bridesmaids looked foolish running around in search of more oil, but it wasn’t just their lack of oil that made them foolish. It was the motivation behind their lack of oil. It was foolish of them to think they knew when the bridegroom was coming. It was foolish to try to predict something so unpredictable and out of their control. The wise bridesmaids were the ones smart enough to know what they didn’t know. They were the ones that admitted, “We know he’s coming, we just don’t know when.” Meanwhile the foolish ones acted in their preparation as if they could predict that he wouldn’t be delayed that long. In an act of arrogance, they acted as if they knew what would happen, as if they knew when that bridegroom would show up. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t be certain. It wasn’t a guarantee that he’d show up quickly.
In telling the parable, Jesus says that the bridegroom was delayed. Whether it was a flat tire, or having to change shirts because he got a stain on it, or what, he arrived later than expected. And the foolish women were revealed – the ones who weren’t ready for the unexpected. The ones who were too arrogant to admit that they didn’t know for sure what would happen. The ones who pretended like they knew when he was coming, when in reality they didn’t. When they set out without extra oil, it was an act of arrogance – an act of presuming to know what they did not actually know. And this is what made them foolish.

Just as I was on that church lawn, in that classroom, and in my living room, all the bridesmaids knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. Half of them admitted that, but the other half were too foolish to admit they didn’t know everything.

You see, the foolish women were the ones who just didn’t take the event seriously enough. Here is a wedding feast, one of the grandest occasions there is, and they’re not treating it like it’s any big deal. So while you can make an argument for either group of bridesmaids being the foolish ones, we see that the truly foolish are those who do not take the event of the bridegroom’s coming seriously.

And what of the wise bridesmaids? As I said, they probably looked pretty foolish at the outset lugging around all this extra oil. What are you doing? Why are you wasting your time and money on spare oil? It’s similar to those who ask, why are you wasting your time at church when you can sleep in, or watch football preview shows? Why are you wasting your money by giving 10% of it away to the church, when you could use that 10% to buy more of the things you want? There is often criticism of being over-prepared, but some things are worth taking with the utmost seriousness. The bridegroom’s arrival is to be taken very seriously, and the wise bridesmaids know that. They know that he’s coming, they just don’t know when. And they are not going to miss this banquet for anything. They are going to make sure they are ready when the invitation comes. The foolish cannot say the same.

Jesus uses the example of preparing extra oil for the lamps as a symbol for preparation, but it was the attitude of those bridesmaids that made them foolish. You see, it’s not a story about what we prepare or store up, or what we bring to the event. This isn’t a call to “be prepared,” to make sure you’re covering yourself with good, holy thoughts and deeds. It’s not a warning to make sure that you’re not caught with your hand in the cookie jar when Christ comes again. It’s not just about the preparation itself, the works we do or the things we say.

This parable is about an attitude of expectancy. It’s a parable about admitting our own limitations. It’s a parable about humility, about not being so arrogant as to think we have the bridegroom’s schedule figured out. It’s a parable about taking Christ’s second coming seriously. What requires more preparation than feasting at Christ’s heavenly banquet?

Christ is our bridegroom, and we cannot predict when Christ will come again. We have no way of knowing. We are not in control of the bridegroom’s schedule, so we can’t pretend like we’ve solved a mystery that is not meant to be solved. And we can’t act like it’s no big deal. All we know is that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead,” as our Apostles’ Creed says. We do not know when that time will come. We don’t know when Christ will come, we just know he’ll be here sometime. We can’t predict it, we can’t know for sure, and we mustn’t pretend like we have it figured out. We must be willing to admit that we don’t know everything – that God only knows when the church’s bridegroom, Christ, will come again.

We must await with eager anticipation, our lamps trimmed and burning. We must have enough oil of faith stored up that we can wait as long as it takes. We must be prepared for the long haul, even if Christ comes before this service is over. We must be prepared for everything, because when it comes down to it, we don’t really know anything. May Christ come again when the time is right, and may we be prepared when that day comes, without being so arrogant as to think we know when that day will come, or that Christ will have mercy on those who do not take it seriously. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.