Matthew 25:1-13
25 “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ 10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. 11 Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 13 Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
This is one of those parables that feels a little odd.
First of all, the scene that is being described, of the young women, or in some translations, the bridesmaids staying up all night to be the first to see the groom, is just not something we do in our culture.
Parables, this story is a parable, not a true story.
Parables use stories of ordinary, everyday, typical situations, then turn that story into a teaching moment. The problem for us today, is that not only are we alive 2000 years later, but that we are also living in a completely different culture. We’re not first century Jews. And most of the 18th and 19th century German Biblical scholars, on whom much of Western theology is based, were definitely not first century Jews, and quite frankly many of them were so dang antisemitic that they never thought to ask any of the Jews around them if this parable related to the Jewish customs of the time.
Instead, they started *spiritualizing* the parable.
They didn’t understand the story, so they decided that the story was an allegory for God.
Theologians like, Friedrich Schleiermacher who lived from 1768 to 1834, who believed that the Bible is about the inner psychological lives of its many writers, rather than a faithful recording of what happened, which definitely has value as an interpretive lens, but to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a jar of oil is just a jar of oil.
So the German interpretive tradition that most of us grew up with was to read this passage, not as a parable- that is, using a story of something that would have been a totally normal wedding tradition in first century Palestine, but to read this passage as an allegory for how things are going to go down in Heaven — because for some inexplicable reason the German theologians (says this person of largely German ancestry), decided to take the Matthean phrase “Kingdom of Heaven,” literally, to mean the Heaven of afterlife, rather than understand the many, many, many contextual references that lead more modern scholars to conclude that “Kingdom of Heaven” and Kingdom of God, both refer to the God’s Kingdom coming and God’s will being done, here on earth as it is in Heaven, as it is described in the Lord’s Prayer.
So anyway – the German way of interpreting this parable as an allegory for how the afterlife will work is probably the way that you were taught about it in Sunday school growing up.
The Bridegroom is Jesus.
We are all bridesmaids, because the Church is a feminine noun in German – die Kirche, as opposed to der Führer
The German allegorical interpretation continues with the idea that *good* Christians will be prepared for the coming of Jesus, and bad Christians will not.
And we can’t possibly share the oil of our faith, who do you think we are, Communists!
So those who are prepared and stay awake will make it into heaven and those who are not prepared and fall asleep when they should have been checking their oil levels, will be left out in the cold. And to add insult to injury, the Bridegroom, whom we are supposed to believe is allegorically Jesus, adds insult to injury, by telling them that he doesn’t know them so they should have stayed woke.
So if you’ve been wondering where the word, “Woke,” comes from, here it is. “Stay Woke,” is just a Black way of paraphrasing verse 13 which is the very last line of the scripture in our bulletin:
13 Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
So when Black people say, “stay woke,” all they are saying, and all those of us who are borrowing that phrase are saying is, “pay attention to what is going on.” Don’t zone out or doze off and miss out on what God, or others, are doing. To be woke, is to pay attention.
So, what if we don’t interpret this parable as an allegory?
What if we interpret this parable like a parable?
A parable being a familiar ordinary situation that is being used as a teaching story. The use of the ordinary situation is not an endorsement of the situation, the situation is just familiar. For example, the fact that the parable of the Good Samaritan begins with a person being beaten and robbed, does not mean that Jesus was endorsing mugging. Make sense?
The Gospel of Matthew is partly stories about Jesus and partly a collection of teachings of Jesus. Sometimes the teachings fit into a narrative, and sometimes people just remembered the teaching and not the context. The authors of Matthew collected all these stories and teachings and tried to put them into some kind of cohesive order, but sometimes there are sections where a bunch of teachings are just collected into a chapter or two. This is one of those sections.
Today’s reading sits in the middle of a grouping of 3 parables without context.
Matthew 24:45-51 is a parable about 2 enslaved persons, one who does his job well and one who is the kind of co-worker that none of us wants to have. This does not mean that Jesus is endorsing slavery, it means that people being enslaved was a totally ordinary thing in the first century economy. It’s another story about the hour of what’s going to happen being unknown, so stay woke and stay focused on doing what is right.
The parable after today’s reading is the Parable of the Talents. Remember that a talent is a unit of currency, not the ability to sing or dance! Where once again, Jesus is not endorsing slavery, Jesus is describing a familiar first century situation where enslaved people would be put in charge of various aspects of the Master’s business interests while he was out of town. Two of the 3 people practice good stewardship by trying to make something more out of what they were entrusted with, and one just too afraid to try.
Assuming we have a thematic grouping of parables, it makes sense that the parable in the middle is not an allegory, but a parable about a typical first century situation.
In this ordinary wedding party situation, not an allegory for Heaven, just a parable setting, some of the young women came prepared and some didn’t. But everyone fell asleep.
So if you assume a thematic grouping, then the common theme is difference between those who are staying Woke, that is, staying aware and prepared, and those who *are*:
Like in the First Parable: Choosing to do things they know are wrong because they think they can get away with it.
Like in today’s parable: showing up kinda half prepared and expecting those who came prepared to cover for them.
Then in the Parable of the Talents those who were willing to take a risk to do the right thing were rewarded, and the one who didn’t even try, gets left out in the cold.
And here’s another fun little factoid that *may* be an intentional part of today’s parable. In Jewish tradition, oil isn’t just what you put in your lamp. Oil is deeply symbolic. Oil is what is used to anoint Kings and Prophets and the Messiah. So maybe the oil is a metaphor for staying righteous as well as woke? Maybe… I don’t have enough context to say.
But I will say that I don’t think that Jesus is telling us to not share.
I don’t think this parable is opposed to sharing resources, anymore than the other two parables are about endorsing slavery.
I think the point of today’s parable is to stay Woke, and keep your light shining.
Even this week, as many of us celebrate what some have called the “end of the Trump era,” that doesn’t mean that the we’re finished living into our Baptismal vows to:
“Accept the freedom and power God gives us
to resist, evil, injustice and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves” (p35 UMH)
Nor are we finished,
“Surrounding one another with a community of love and forgiveness” (p36 UMH)
The poor will always be with us.
Racism, misogyny, and bigotry towards our LGBTQIA+ siblings, especially our Trans siblings continues.
While writing this sermon, after the election — I definitely waited until after the election! I was messaging with 2 members of Haven struggling with accessing SSI benefits without which they cannot afford to live, and helping another member try to figure out how to save their tooth, which needed a root canal, because Medicaid has very little dental coverage…and this person works as close to full time as their employer will allow!
The horrors persist and so do we!
But we persist, not as people without hope.
We persist not as people without enough oil in our lamps to share the light.
We persist as people who are empowered by God and unafraid to call out those who would pretend that evil is good and oppression is normal.
We persist as those who are surrounded with a community of love and forgiveness – because we choose to BE that community – that kin-dom of God – that Family of God, that Body of Christ – whatever you want to call it, we’re In it, and we ARE it! And we are like white blood cells of the Body of Humanity – surrounding the horrors of this world with God’s unlimited compassion!
We persist as those who always have enough oil to share, because God is the source of our righteousness and God has more than enough to go around.
So celebrate the win!
Celebrate every win on the way to living into God’s will being done here on earth as it is in heaven.
It is good to remember the wins, to keep our lamps burning when the night is cold and dark.
But don’t let one win, or loss become an excuse to close our eyes to what is still happening or to what God is still doing.
Because as the Gospel of John puts it, in John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
