Stay awake!

NOVEMBER 19TH, 2023

First Reading 1 Thessalonians 4.9-18

Gospel Matthew 25.1-13

So apparently the average person - over an average life span - spends about five years waiting in queues of one sort or another, including about six months waiting at traffic lights. In our individualistic, "me first" society, paradoxically enough, we meekly queue up and wait for almost a sixteenth of our entire life expectancy!

And this, Jesus send to be telling us, is what the kingdom of heaven is like. Waiting around to get into a slap-up party. By way of background, wedding feasts in rural Galilee in the 1st century were chaotic, multi-day, whole-of-village events, at some stage of which the bridegroom would be escorted to the bride’s home where - well, you can use your imagination but in any case the young girls of the village would bring him in to his bride amidst general merriment and that would give them good luck in finding a bridegroom of their own. But the point is that what with the eating and drinking and the endless speeches nobody really knew when the bridegroom would be coming - and no matter how excited they were the fangirls would inevitably nod off.

So here’s the first thing. Jesus tells us five of the girls are sensible and five are silly. But they all nod off. Eventually they wake up again because the sounds of the party are getting closer, the bridegroom’s equally sozzled mates are cheering him along the back laneway. The girls wake up to find it’s about three in the morning and their lamps have run out of oil. The silly ones forgot to bring extra. So what the sensible girls don’t do is share, their mothers have taught them to always be prepared and they don’t plan to miss out on the party. The silly girls try their best, they go out to beg, borrow or buy more oil but of course by the time they get back the party’s in full swing, the bridal couple aren’t too pleased to be interrupted and sorry but no, you can’t come in. You shouldn’t have run out of oil. And that, Jesus tells us, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Trouble is, most of us have been coming to church so long we listen to Jesus’ parables but don’t really hear them. Bridegroom equals Jesus, heaven is a party, if he catches you napping you miss out. But - really?

Hopefully, with the benefit of my somewhat tongue-in-cheek retelling of the story, you’ll have worked out I think this parable might be a bit difficult. Now, I know the usual way is for preachers to make the point that we as disciples who are the recipients of God’s over-the-top love need to make a response of our own - that we need to be prepared for the real cost of being disciples. And so we need extra oil, or at least make sure our smartphones are fully charged, or something. And fair enough.

But actually - the sensible girls who got into the party - they weren’t very nice, were they? And the bridegroom? He certainly isn’t the same character as the one we meet in Jesus’ other parable about the kingdom of heaven, the long-suffering father of the prodigal son who limps back feeling sorry for himself after running away from home and spending the old man’s inheritance - the wastefully generous father who runs out onto the road to meet his wayward son and throws a party for him. The bridegroom in today’s story who shuts the door on the silly girls who ran out of oil isn’t much like the father who forgives his son for his foolishness and his faithlessness just because he loves him. Is he? And the sensible girls certainly weren’t listening to Jesus when he tells us to give to everyone who begs or wants to borrow from us, and if anyone wants your coat then give them your cloak as well.

Jesus is telling this story in the last week of his life, and it is in the context of his criticism of the Pharisees who, he pointed out, were very good at being pernickety over the little things, like tithing the inconsequential stuff like herbs and spices, but were neglecting the real business of the Law of Moses which is justice and mercy and faithfulness (Mtt 23.23). You give the appearance of faith, he tells them, and you make a show out of following the rules but you neglect what the Law is really about, which is love. And to be honest, the mean girls and the up-himself bridegroom in today’s story seem a bit like the Pharisees themselves, sticklers for getting the details right but not so big on generosity and compassion. And yes, to be honest, behaviour like this does happen all too often among people who claim to be a part of God’s kingdom.

You know what? I might be wrong, but I think that if God’s kingdom is like a party, then it’s a party where the bouncers at the door don’t scrutinise the invitations too carefully, and actually everybody is invited, even me. Including a whole lot of people who seem a bit scruffy or disreputable. If you knock, Jesus tells us - in fact, even if it is late at night and the lights are off and everybody is in bed - if you knock on God’s door it will be opened to you - that one is in Luke’s Gospel (11.5-13). I think in telling the story about the mean girls Jesus might be pointing out a home truth to the religious professionals of his own time - you make up rules about who’s in and who’s out, and it suits you for people to think you are the gatekeepers. But God isn’t like the Pharisees - in fact, God is more like the scruffy rabbi who hangs around with prostitutes and scoundrels and tax collectors and lepers and says, ‘you’re invited, in fact, you’ve got the best tickets!’

Well, the other part of the context of the parable is Matthew - the gospel writer’s - own teaching on the Second Coming, which also incidentally is also the context behind our reading this morning from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Beyond any real doubt this letter is the earliest document that made it into the New Testament, and all scholars agree it was written by Paul perhaps as soon as 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion - and as the verses we read make clear, Paul and the Christian community are waiting day by day for Jesus to return. It is an any-day-now kind of expectation, and Paul even finds it necessary to remind the community they do still need to work and get on with life in the meantime. But they are waiting, quite literally, to be snatched up into the sky to be with Jesus. If you read Paul’s later letters you get the sense that, well, we’re not quite sure why it’s taking so long - and a dawning realisation that maybe following Jesus is about how we live our lives, not about getting raptured. But the imminence of Jesus’ return, and the hold-your-breath sense of expectation is the mood of this earliest New Testament letter - and something of that sense also comes into the way that Matthew shapes this parable.

Well, two millenia later we are still waiting for that, and even in the parable they all nod off. This sleeping thing is actually very important because in Matthew’s Gospel, in fact in the very next chapter, Jesus will be pleading with his disciples to watch and pray with him in a garden as he awaits his arrest. But they all go to sleep, and so do we. We are not alert. In our Aussie vernacular, we take our eye off the ball. Actually, we think we have other more important stuff to do.

But, what if the faithful waiting is the whole point, not the party at the end? Jesus himself sums up the point of the parable in our reading from St Matthew’s Gospel, and the big surprise is this: it’s not about the oil, it’s about how we wait! After telling the parable, Jesus turns to his disciples - this is in verse 13, the final verse of today’s readings, and he says, ‘keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour’. It’s not about how much oil we have, Jesus’ critique is for disciples who fall asleep on the job. Which in the parable, and in the garden in the next chapter, is all of them.

Being awake, it seems to me, is the spirituality of attentiveness, of being available, the spirituality of the extra mile. What if it is in serving and loving, in forgiving and being forgiven by those around us that we see the face of Christ? Will we even notice when he appears? Are our eyes open, or have we nodded off?

What if the kingdom - and the encounter with Jesus - happen in the waiting? There is an old Russian story - which you might have heard before - about a rabbi who dreams that the following night the longed-for messiah will reveal himself to him. ‘Oi vey!’, he thinks to himself, ‘I’d better stay awake’. So the following evening he builds up the fire and lights the candles and opens the front door. Then he settles himself to wait, dealing with a few unexpected interruptions on account of the open door. Midnight comes and one o’clock and two o’clock and no messiah - and inevitably the old man goes to sleep by the dying fire. He dreams again, that the messiah is sitting next to him by the fire in his cottage. ‘Why didn’t you stay awake?’ he asks. In his dream, the rabbi protests, ‘I tried Lord, but you didn’t come. Nobody came! Only an old woman needing bread, and my neighbour, Yiitshak, wanting to borrow a blanket. You didn’t come!’

Stay awake!