PROPER 27, YEAR A

Sunday, November 12, 2023

Saint Mark’s Church, Warwick, R.I.

 

Wisdom 6:12-16

I Thessalonians 4:13-18

Matthew 25:1-13

 

Today’s Gospel addresses themes of preparation and readiness. A wedding feast is about to take place. By custom, the bridegroom has gone to the home of his bride’s parents, to sign the marriage contract, and then bring his bride back in a festive procession to his house, where the celebrations will begin. But for some unexplained reason the bridegroom is delayed in his return. Perhaps the last-minute negotiations have bogged down in some difficulty.

 

The bridegroom’s return at midnight reveals who are wise and who are foolish among the young women who’ve been waiting outside his house to greet him. “Bridesmaids,” by the way, is a bad translation. If they were really bridesmaids, they’d be at the bride’s house rather than the groom’s. The word Matthew uses is more akin to “virgins” or “maidens.” In any case, having anticipated the possibility of just such a delay, the wise maidens have brought along extra flasks of oil for their lamps; but not so the foolish maidens who are caught with their lamps flickering out – and who at length find themselves locked out of the marriage feast.

 

The Church has traditionally interpreted this parable as a commentary on Christ’s Second Coming, and I see no good reason to depart from that line of interpretation. After our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension, the earliest Christians expected him to return within their lifetime to judge the world and inaugurate the Kingdom of God.

 

Again and again, the Bible describes the Kingdom of God as a wedding feast, with Christ as the bridegroom. In the parable, then, the shout at midnight: “Look! Here is the Bridegroom! Come out to meet him” evokes the imagery in today’s reading from St. Paul to the Thessalonians: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven …”

 

But as we know, the years went by and Christ didn’t return as soon as expected. The bridegroom was delayed. Perhaps some Christians in the second and third generations were tempted to give up on the hope that he’d ever return, and grew slack and lax in their faith. They’d once been eagerly waiting; but as time went on some of them found their faith flickering and growing dim, just like the lamps of the foolish maidens. Perhaps for them Matthew remembered and wrote down in his Gospel this parable of the Lord.

 

The parable thus functions as both a warning and an exhortation. Even though the bridegroom seems delayed in coming, we need to remain alert, prepared, and ready. Regardless of whether we believe in a literal return of Christ to earth in human history, we’re all going to meet him sooner or later, one way or another. And when he does arrive, at an unexpected hour, there won’t be time to begin making the preparations that we should have been making all along. So, in today’s Collect, we pray that “we may purify ourselves as he pure; that when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom …”

 

Our Old Testament reading for today indicates our need for divine wisdom. After all, the presence or absence of wisdom was what made the difference between the wise and foolish maidens. And today’s reading from the book of Wisdom comes from a genre of biblical literature that treat's God’s wisdom, in Greek Sophia, as a manifestation of God’s Word, or Logos. The implication is that we grow in holy wisdom by attending to God’s Word.

 

That, after all, is why we’re here in Church today. We all need continuing formation. All the spiritual practices of our faith – Mass, Offices, daily prayer, spiritual reading, meditation, confession, retreats, and so forth – constitute a regimen of training to steep us in God’s Wisdom and so prepare us for whatever crises and joys lie ahead.

 

I once knew a woman whose teenage sons periodically rebelled and gave her a hard time about coming to Church on Sunday. Her response was to tell them this: Much as you might think you don’t need Church now, someday you’ll be grateful for a place to turn for comfort and hope when you lose your job, your girlfriend, or your spouse. Otherwise, without something solid to fall back on, you’ll be tempted to lose yourself in drinking, drugs, gambling, or some other addictive form of escape. But to gain any meaningful support from your faith at that moment, you’ll need to have been practicing it all along. Otherwise, it’ll be the worst possible time to start learning.

 

A youngster in the Sunday School class in one of my parishes once asked the teacher: “Isn’t it hypocritical of us to say the Lord’s Prayer by rote every Sunday when we don’t really mean it or don’t even think about what we’re saying?” “Not at all,” the teacher replied. “Think of each Sunday as a time of training to pray. We teach you to know the Lord’s Prayer by heart because one day, when you find that you really need to pray more than anything else, you’ll at least have the words to get started.”

 

But the practice of our faith isn’t just preparation for the bad times, the inevitable moments of crisis in our lives, but even more for the good times. How much more we’re able to enter into the joy of a baptism or a wedding, for example, when already we’re accustomed to being in Church, when we understand what’s going on, and when we know the responses, symbolism, and customs!

 

Most of all, however, the practice of our faith is preparation and training for the joy of heaven itself. There, we shall be caught up in the continual praise and adoration of the Blessed Trinity; and here, Sunday-by-Sunday, our worship affords us the opportunity to practice and get ready for that. Again, if we hope to spend eternity with God, it’s a good idea to spend some time every Sunday in Church, and every day in prayer, getting to know him now!

 

The Bridegroom is coming. We can be ready to meet him if by divine Wisdom we attend to God’s Word and practice the spiritual disciplines that constitute the oil by which we keep our lamps burning brightly. Then, when he comes, we shall enter into the never-ending joy of the wedding feast celebrating the marriage of heaven and earth.