The Parable of Foolishness

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the 23rd Sunday After Pentecost, November 8, 2020 by Daniela Lee, Postulant for Holy Orders.

Jesus tells a lot of parables, all presenting an incomprehensible riddle and giving this impression that the knowledge is just for the initiated few.  

The first layer of the parable is just as baffling as the metaphorical one. What kind of wedding banquet starts after midnight? What kind of bridegroom is so late to his own wedding that the bridesmaids fall asleep while waiting? Perhaps this would have made more sense nearly two thousand years ago when Matthew was putting it on paper, but it really is an odd story today, as our social norms regarding weddings have changed. 

But what about the other meaning of this text? The one that tells us about the kingdom of heaven? In the layers of the parable we can see the allegory of the bridegroom as being Jesus and the wedding banquet as the kingdom of heaven. We wait for Jesus, for his second coming, to take us to the great banquet. We, his church, the people of this earth, are of course the ten young women waiting, all of us falling asleep and not being able to properly keep vigil. And the night? What is the night? It might look different for each one of us, I believe, but then there are some things that we can experience together. War, famine, poverty, death, these are all things that do happen too much in the world today, we just need to take a good look around and we will see it. And in times like this election, when we look to see at all that is displeasing with the world, to see what we don’t like and what can be fixed by a political platform that we can vote for, this is a time of night, a time of darkness. If you are happy with the result of the election, please still know that this is not the wedding banquet. We have not arrived. This is not the justice of the kingdom. The wait is not over. So while you might be saddened by the result or overjoyed, or merely indifferent, remember that this is a chapter in human history that will end and will be followed by another as life unfolds. The political compass we get from God might never align with a political party, but it is nevertheless clear: “Only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk humbly with your God.”(Micah 6:8). These three must go together. 

While we are in the night, this is not the night before the banquet, this is not the night that we are expecting the bridegroom. We still have time to pack extra oil. 

So is this parable, as we have undoubtedly all heard time after time, a story about how to be prepared for when Jesus returns? Is it about good deeds and keeping the faith and packing up enough oil to last us through the night? 

There is a lot to be said about those things we can acquire that we can not also acquire for another. We can not learn for another, just as we can not do a good deed for another. We can not study the Scriptures for another, and no matter how much we might love someone, we can not take their burden in life. There are some things that really are strictly individual. I can not be healed for your hurt, nor can you be healed for mine. It is up to each one of us to want to do the work of being prepared for the bridegroom, but we can still do that in community, we can remind each other and support each other along the way. “We become what we do,” says Robert Farrar Capon when he talks about this parable. “some day, late or soon, it will be too late even to believe. If we trust, we become trusters, and we enter into the sure possession of him whom we trust. If we distrust, we become distrusters and close out the only relationship with reality ever offered to us” he continues.  Our daily habits do make us more prepared. If we wake up every morning, we will become morning people, if we choose to be kind we become kind people. If we pray we will become prayerful people. So yes, the way we prepare ourselves does matter and it is often these habits that help us in keeping watch and waiting for the Lord. The small flicker of the lamp might be able to keep away the fear of the darkness of the night, might help us stay strong in our time of waiting. 

And yet, looking at the story, perhaps the foolishness was not to forget the extra oil. Perhaps the foolishness was to go looking for it, thinking that the oil was going to get them in the wedding banquet. Thinking that the wisdom of the world and the trust we put in other people of this world will bring salvation.  Thinking that the bridegroom will not find us in the darkness, thinking that the kingdom of God can not come amidst the darkness and dispel it. 

As I was thinking about this parable I was looking outside and noticing the sunset come way earlier now since we changed time. The air is cold and the night becomes increasingly longer this time of year. The night also obscures everything around us and perhaps, without the advantage of sight, our other senses do not know what to make of the information. There's a silence that comes with nightfall that unnerves us. All the noises that we could ignore during the day now suddenly become menacing. We can not trust the darkness of the night. Not just by ourselves.

These foolish young women, they also couldn’t stand in the anxiety that came with darkness. Those of us that have sight, all rely on it far too much, trusting that what is before our eyes is the truth and the reality, and fearing that as we can not see something it might be a mere illusion, a fabrication. Would they see the bridegroom in the darkness? Would the bridegroom find them? 

What are we to do when we find ourselves in darkness? When fear and grief are overwhelming and we can not see? The bridegroom isn’t there and other people’s light is just not quote enough, wouldn’t last us all through the night. Should we go out looking for another light? Should we fill our lamps with the fake flickering lights of today’s world? The fake light of more and more possessions.  The fake light of social media fame or chemical happiness that comes as pills or drugs. The fake light of our own egos. 

It is not easy to sit in darkness. When we are left without the flashy distractions of the world, what is left is just to look inwards. And how scary it is to face ourselves, to look at who we really are, underneath the flashy lights of a busy life. When we slow down and get quiet and we look at everything we have carried with us throughout our lives. The people that we loved, the people that loved us. The loved ones that are still here and the ones that are gone. Our regrets and our mistakes. Our moments of joy and fulfillment. The suffering that burdened us and the grief we still carry. 

And God. Inside of us, God dwells with all of that. With all the loved ones and the suffering and the regrets and the joy. In the midst of our own humanity, there God has folded down so he can be with us. Even in darkness. 

“Faith sees best in the dark” says Soren Kierkegaard. He thinks that faith can not be fully understood in times of happiness. Faith needs a leap and that leap can not be made in times of certainty. 

Perhaps the foolishness was not to forget the extra oil. Perhaps the foolishness was to go looking for it, thinking that the oil was going to get them in the wedding banquet. Thinking that the bridegroom will not let them into the banquet without the oil. Thinking that with the little that they might they would not be enough. This parable is not about the merits of the oil, those merits are useful for ourselves as we wait, but the bridegroom brings into the wedding all those that wait for him. 

The kingdom of heaven is not for perfect Christians, it is not for the sinless, the spotless, the super-well-prepared. The kingdom of God is for those who search for God, for those who ask God to fold down into the reality of our lives, to be a companion in the disheartening reality of our world. 

Perhaps the foolishness is to think that in this world we must try to ascend to the divinity of God, to surpass our human nature. But God made us in God’s own image and then he also embodied humanity in the person of Jesus. God does not ask us to be impossibly perfect, God asks us to welcome him, to search for him. 

God came to visit Adam in the garden, God came down to eat with Abraham, God came to Mount Sinai to spend 40 days with Moses, God came down in Bethlehem, born into a regular human family and created bonds of love and friendship. He laughed and he cried and he suffered so greatly. For us and also with us. To believe that this same God would ask us to be anything other than his beloved humans is foolish indeed. Time after time God chose to be immersed in our reality because someone that was human and flawed and sinful asked God to be there, wanted God there. Invited God to walk with them. 

So then the wisdom is perhaps nothing more than being there when the bridegroom arrives, with or without oil. As you are, God invites you to the banquet. You just have to say yes.