Wisdom for Fools

Propers: The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 32), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the Middle Ages, the Hallowtide was associated with marriage specifically because of this parable, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids. Traditionally the Church has understood this to be a story of the saints. The saints are those who faithfully await the Bridegroom, even if He is delayed, even if the night has grown long and dark and we do not know when He will arrive.

“The Kingdom of Heaven will be like this,” the Lord proclaims. “Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.”

The bridegroom, however, is delayed, and darkness falls. The bridesmaids grow drowsy, and by midnight are fast asleep. But then a cry in the night: “The bridegroom approaches! Come out to meet him!” So the wise trim and fill their lamps, while the foolish find that their fuel has been spent and they must run to buy more. By the time these latter return, the party has already begun. The wise bridesmaids have led the groom inside, and the foolish now find the door shut. They call out for entry but hear in stark reply, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

“Keep awake, therefore,” sayeth the Lord, “for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

So what are we to make of this parable, do you suppose? Most often it is explained as a prophecy of the Endtimes. Someday, the story goes, Jesus will return—we know neither the day nor the hour—and so we must keep alert lest we find ourselves excluded from the Kingdom. It reminds me of those billboards I used to see: “Jesus is coming. Everybody look busy.”

But I find this interpretation inadequate for a few reasons. Yes, it is true that someday Jesus will come again in glory. On that day the dead shall be raised, Heaven shall descend to earth, and the whole of Creation shall be renewed. Christ will dry every tear, heal every wound, and break every bond save that of love. Then shall be the mending of the world, when God at last will be all in all. This is the great Christian hope, the heart of our faith: nothing less than the redemption of the cosmos in Jesus Christ our Lord!

Which is why I think it would be hard to miss, right? It would be hard to be left out. If Revelation makes one thing clear, it’s that when the Kingdom of God comes down to earth, her doors shall never be shut. It says that explicitly. At the End of the Age, all shall stand before God to account for our lives. All shall be bathed and burned and purified in the pure and refining Light of unfettered Truth.

On that day, Jesus will not say to us, “I do not know you.” Rather He has promised us, “all that is hidden shall be revealed.” All shall be brought to the Light, no one and nothing left hidden in shadow. And certainly Jesus will not bar the door to those whom He has promised—again, from Revelation—“I have set before you an open door that none shall be able to shut.”

So I do not believe, brothers and sisters, that this is some simple parable of divine judgment, hanging like the sword of Damocles over our heads. Rather, this parable is about the Kingdom and Saints of God in this age, in this world, where Jesus is truly present but hidden, veiled, not yet revealed in glory.

What makes me say this? Well, according to the Gospel, Jesus tells this parable right before His death. He has ridden triumphally into Jerusalem, hailed by the crowds as the Messiah, the rightful King and Son of David. He has purified the Temple and outraged the authorities, and in the very next chapter—right after this parable—He is betrayed and arrested in the garden of Gethsemane.

You remember the story. Jesus gathers His Apostles at the Passover, the Last Supper, where He proclaims the prophesied New Covenant, for which God’s people have longed for centuries. And then very abruptly, before the Passover Meal is complete, He gets up and leaves—goes out into the night, down through the graveyard of the Kidron Valley, and partway up the Mount of Olives to Gethsemane, the garden of the oil-press.

And while He is there praying—knowing what comes next, knowing that the Kingdom of God will be inaugurated on a Cross—His friends, His companions, His beloved disciples cannot stay awake. It is midnight. They are exhausted. And they have no idea that the Kingdom has come, in the darkest hour of the night, and that the Bridegroom will now be taken back through the gates of the city in chains.

You see the parallel? Jesus tells a story of a bridegroom whose attendants cannot stay awake when he returns at midnight, and in the very next chapter His own Apostles cannot stay awake as He is arrested at midnight and forcibly returned to Jerusalem. No way that’s a coincidence.

This is the Kingdom of God, He is saying. This is the New Covenant in His Blood. A King on a Cross. A Crown of Thorns. And there with Him will be the faithful women, the wise bridesmaids, weeping at Calvary, the Place of the Skull, while the Apostles, those foolish bridesmaids, have been scattered to the night. Even Peter, who swore to stand by his Lord’s side come hell or high water, finds now the door to the High Priest’s palace shut. And when questioned by the serving girls before the gates whether he too is not a follower of this Jesus, Peter vehemently proclaims, “I do not know Him!”—and weeps. There’s your locked door.

Brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of God has come to earth. It came in the person of Jesus, the perfect union of God and Man. But it did not come as we expected, with fanfare and glory and victory in battle. It came in the Cross, upside-down, in the form of the opposite, as Lutherans like to say. We did not see it. We were foolish. Only those few women kept their lamps lit, and stayed by Him to the end. And so they received their just reward, becoming the first witnesses to the Resurrection on that glorious Easter Morn.

Dear Christians, the Kingdom of God is within you. It was given to you in Baptism, when the Holy Spirit made of your heart His home, and of your body His temple. It is given to us in bread and in wine, which become the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ upon this altar. When we confess our sins, it is Christ Himself who absolves us.

We here are the Kingdom of God! A Cross-Kingdom, an upside-down Kingdom! Sainted sinners gathered from every tribe and tongue and walk of life! We are the Body of Christ now! We are His hands and His feet and His voice in the world, still hard at work, still forgiving, redeeming, convicting and saving!

And we know that someday this work shall be complete. Someday, the Last Day, Christ will come again in glory, no longer hidden but unveiled—revealed—for all of humankind! Then shall come the mending of the world, and the New Jerusalem whose gates shall never be shut! This is the hope of our calling. This is the assurance of salvation. The wise bridesmaids are those who know that the King will come. And to know that He will come is already to possess Him, to have Him hidden in our hearts as our undying, eternal flame. Only the foolish forget Him. But that does not mean that He forgets them.

I know that it is dark. I know that the night is long. I know that the world groans with suffering and injustice, with murder and with war. But the King is coming. The Bridegroom is on His way. We do not know the day or the hour—tomorrow, or 10,000 years. But to know that He is coming is already to possess Him.

And so the desire for Wisdom leads to a Kingdom.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.