voice in the action-packed parables.
The sermon “Oil Crisis for the Bridesmaids” is based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. This parable is especially topical as our world faces an overriding oil crisis. We simply don’t have enough oil for our energy-drained, overpopulated world. At the same time, we have far too much oil as far as the ever-increasing, climate-damaging carbon deposits in the atmosphere are concerned. It is through this timely parable, then, that David Read brings the Advent message alive for us today.
The Bible readings are normally taken from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.
Advent Parables: Oil Crisis For The Bridesmaids
A Sermon preached by David H. C. Read at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on Advent Sunday, December 1, 1974
Text: Matthew 25:1–13 (NEB)
Readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 (NEB); Matthew 25:1–13
Jesus was a great storyteller. That’s one of the reasons why we read that “the common people heard him gladly.” When he was talking, as he usually was, about life in the Kingdom of God, life under God’s rule, what it means to reckon with God, in this world and the next, he told stories. The modern preacher is inclined to say things like: “The Kingdom of God is a concept of varying significance according as it is understood historically, sociologically, or eschatologically.” Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God is like”—and then told a story.
Most of his stories are called parables. We tend to think that a parable is what we call today an illustration—one of these little stories that preachers work into their sermons to illuminate the point they are making. Last week, when speaking about hunger and making the point that anyone of us could find ourselves scrambling for bread if all supplies were cut off, I used an illustration from my experience as a POW. That wasn’t a parable: it was an illustrative story. Jesus used illustrations too but the stories we call parables had another purpose and another shape.
Others think that parables are allegories. An allegory is a tale in which everything stands for something else. If that sounds confusing let me remind you of an allegory told by the prophet Nathan to King David. David had just had his notorious affair with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, whom he had then dispatched to the battlefield in such a way that he was bound to be killed. Nathan told the king a story about a rich man who had lots of flocks of sheep and a poor man who had only one ewe lamb which he loved like a child. When the rich man needed some roast lamb in a hurry he spared his own flocks and took the poor man’s little pet animal. When David heard the story he was furious and said to Nathan: “As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.” And Nathan said to David, “Thou art the man.” The rich man in the story stood for David; the poor man for Uriah; and the little ewe lamb for Bathsheba. Apart from some trimmings to the story, everything in an allegory like this fits. We say: “This stands for that, and this for that, and so on.” Jesus used allegories occasionally, but his favorite form of story was the parable, and we may easily miss the point of a parable if we start allegorizing. When he made a point about prayer by telling the parable of the unjust judge “who cared nothing for God or man and finally gave in to the nagging of a widowed plaintiff,” we get off on the wrong foot if we say that this judge stands for the God who listens to our prayers.
A parable is normally a story from real life which gets our attention by raising some unusual question, even evoking from us a protest about what happened. It is when we are pondering our question or our protest that a truth about the kingdom may begin to dawn on us. You can easily miss the point of a parable. An illustration is usually almost painfully plain and an allegory not hard to figure out. That’s why Jesus spoke often about parables being “hidden” from the careless listener, found even his disciples slow to discover their meaning, and kept warning about the need to have ears to hear.
I’ve said all this because during Advent this year I want to listen again to four different parables of Jesus. When I say “listen” I mean that we should all let the parable speak to each one of us personally. It’s much more important that you should hear the parable than the preacher, for not one of us can lay down the law and say: “This—and nothing else is what this parable means.” It is part of my job to suggest what the parable meant to the writers and editors of the Gospels who were members of the first generation Church, and if possible, to get behind that to what Jesus originally intended it to convey. But no one can set limits to the power of these words to explode in the soul and challenge us to a new level of Christian obedience.
Here, then, is the parable, headlined in the King James’ Bible as “The Parable of the Ten Virgins.” Since the headlines in any Bible have no inspired authority, I’m offering you my own version: “Oil Crisis for the Bridesmaids” for that seems to me the nub of the story. Allegorists would immediately begin to play with the number ten—five and five—and find all kinds of hidden meaning in the numbers. I prefer to think that Jesus, telling a story about a wedding, from his own experience thought that ten was an average number of bridesmaids in what was obviously a first-class wedding party.
The first thing that strikes me is that he chooses a wedding party to illustrate the Kingdom of God. You will remember that Mark tells us that Jesus once said: “How shall we picture the Kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we describe it?” Well, more than once he deliberately decides to use the picture of a wedding. I’m not going to bore you with an elaborate description of the wedding customs of his day, but will just remind you that a marriage ceremony then not only lasted longer but was even more joyful and hilarious—not to say riotous—than any we know today. So Jesus must have surprised many of his hearers, and may surprise us today, by simply saying: “The Kingdom of God is like a wedding.” If by the Kingdom of God he meant true religion, taking God seriously and living daily in his presence, this is not what the average man or woman would expect. From their observation of some aspects of Church life they would rather be inclined to say: “The Kingdom of God is like a funeral.” “No,” says Jesus, “like a wedding, a joyful, relaxed, love-dominated, uproarious wedding.” This is what he came to offer everybody who would listen—a life of glorious freedom and fulfillment under God’s rule, a life that has already the foretaste of the eternity where it will be fulfilled. “I am come,” he said, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” So he invites us to enter the Kingdom with the expectation that it will be at least as happy and refreshing experience as the singing and dancing at a glorious wedding party.
But the parable that begins on this startlingly happy note ends sadly. There’s no getting away from that. Five of the girls missed the feast. They were arrayed in their finery and had with them the lamps which were an essential part of the ceremony of greeting the arrival of the bride and groom, but they neglected to take with them a supply of oil to replenish the lamps after the long wait. The Anchor Bible calls them the silly bridesmaids and the other five the sensible. When the crisis of the bridegroom’s arrival in the middle of the night was upon them, the sensible naturally told the silly to run off and buy oil at the nearest store. If you protest that they were rather mean in not sharing what they had, I think Jesus would have answered: “I’m not telling you what they should have done, but what actually happened—so be quiet and listen to the story.”
So, when they came back, “the door was shut.” In these four words lie the tragedy of the story, and to my mind the point of the parable. We may not like the thought, but there’s no doubt whatever that Jesus believed and taught that it is possible to miss the joyful experience of the Kingdom of God. It is possible to be so silly and so slack that when the critical moment comes the door is shut. Matthew ends the parable with the grim picture of the silly bridesmaids hammering at the door. “Sir, sir,” they cried, “open the door for us.” But he answered, “I declare, I do not know you.” We are reminded of that other solemn saying: “Not everyone who calls me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will
