By the Rev. Ernie Lewis

The passage from Matthew’s gospel we just heard is from what has been called by some the “other Sermon on the Mount.”

Instead of a huge crowd of listeners gathered on a hillside to hear the notorious young rabbi preach, we find ourselves today with Jesus surrounded by just a small group of his closest followers. They are gathered on the Mount of Olives.

The location is important because prophetic tradition held that the Mount of Olives would be the place from which the Holy One of Israel would stand to ultimately save God’s chosen people from those who had tried to destroy them. It’s a place with strong apocalyptic, “end times”, associations.

He’s speaking to them as his earthly ministry is drawing to a close. This passage is something like a coda, a device to reprise or “look back” at the themes that came before.

There’s an unmistakable mood of danger and urgency in the air. Resistance and opposition to Jesus’ is rising.

His words come in the form of a parable, introduced by the familiar phrase used by Jesus to introduce his teachings about the kingdom of heaven: “The kingdom of heaven is like…..

It speaks strongly of the presence of the kingdom in the present and the future; that “already, not yet” aspect of God’s reign.

The parable concerns 10 young women, girls really, probably attached to the household of a groom’s family at the time a wedding has been announced. They wear their finest apparel and decorations for this festive occasion and carry small lamps with which to welcome the bride and groom when they return from the visit of the groom to the bride’s family to finalize the negotiations between the two families.

It appears the negotiations are taking longer than expected.

And the young women are tired, worn out with excitement and preparations. They’ve been waiting a long time and, not surprisingly, they doze off. Aware that this might take longer than expected, some fill containers with extra oil. Others are not so forward thinking or are simply overcome by sleep.

When the wedding celebration finally gets under way with the return of the bridegroom, only those who have extra oil are able to go into the feast. The others are barred from the festivities which are already under way by the time they return from securing additional oil.

This parable has often been used as an illustration of apocalypse, “end times”.

“Be prepared or you’ll not get into the heavenly banquet, the ‘Wedding Feast of the Lamb’”, the arrival of the “kingdom of heaven.”

But that’s just part of it!

It’s also about what happens in the meantime!

It’s that “already, not yet” thing again.

It’s all about waiting!

It’s all about what we do as we wait!

It’s about how we live in this “in between” time, this “already, of God’s reign.

It’s about NOW!

Most of us are really not very good at waiting!

We’ve become accustomed to instant hot water with the first turn of the tap, or new, “instant” lawns which arrive in rolls on the back of large trucks and are laid down like new carpet!.

We have difficulty with simply “waiting”.

Our nation has come to what is likely to be the beginning of a new beginning after what has seemed like an interminable season of political campaigns.

We’ve anxiously followed the agonizingly slow process of counting ballots. (still not finished, actually).

Not all of us are of the same opinion about the outcome of that counting process.

We are an ailing, frightened, and polarized nation.

We are tired, anxious, feeling disoriented.

We face the worst worldwide pandemic in at least 100 years, likely in the last millennium. It is predicted that hundreds of thousands of us could die, millions more become infected, and our normal social patterns remain severely altered into an indefinite future.

We as “church” feel dislocated and adrift as we are unable to gather for worship and to celebrate the sacraments that are such important parts of our individual and communal lives.

But in the midst of all this anxiety and confusion, Jesus’s parable asks us some piercing questions.

Will we get swept up in all the confusion and sense of displacement?

The kingdom of heaven is NOW as well as in the future.

It’s all around us!

Are we prepared, no matter how long it takes?

Will we “doze off” from waiting, neglecting the care of our souls and of those around us?

Those of us who doze off will miss it!

Some, hopefully most of us, will awaken however, having seen to the filling of our flasks, our lights burning brightly, and join in the joyful procession moving confidently through the “already” toward the “not yet”, ministering faithfully and boldly to any caught up in the chaos of life.

There’s plenty of work to do while we wait for the full realization of that coming kingdom!

There are plenty of wounds to be dressed, plenty of tears to be dried!

Several years following the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, a group of German pastors gathered to examine their own thoughts and actions during those most difficult times. Those were stressful, perilous, and exhausting times for them as well as the people they served. They concluded, “…..we know ourselves to be one with our people in a great company of suffering……and we accuse ourselves for not witnessing more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyfully, and for not loving more ardently.”[1]

We, too, are living in difficult times.

Let us labor together so that we may be found awake, our lamps full of oil, that we may “witness more courageously, pray more faithfully, believe more joyfully, and love more ardently.”

Amen!

[1] Herman, S, The Rebirth of the German Church, SCM, London, 1946, 137