Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Text: Matthew 25:1-13

Dear friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you today and always. Amen.

Jesus tells this parable: the bridegroom is late. The 10 bridesmaids are waiting for him to arrive. It’s late at night, so they need their lamps. 5 of the bridesmaids are Type A personalities—Js on the Meyers-Briggs—and they decide that *just in case* the bridegroom takes longer than they expect to arrive, they’ll bring along extra containers of oil for their lamps. The other 5 bridesmaids neglect to bring the extra oil. We don’t know why they aren’t prepared, but I wonder if it’s because they can’t imagine the bridegroom being late—or maybe they decide that he’ll never arrive. They don’t hold a vision for a different future than they imagine, so they don’t prepare.

Last Friday, Gloria Dei held an event for middle schoolers in partnership with Immanuel and Pilgrim Lutheran churches. I worked with pastors and staff from those churches to plan the event. We decided to do bowling and pizza, something that felt pretty simple.

-When we first started planning, we thought 20 kids would be a good number.

-We reserved spots at the bowling alley for 20. We planned for take and bake pizza and special popcorn.

-*I didn’t even publicize a registration deadline because I thought we’d be looking for more kids to participate the end of last week.

Then the registrations started coming in. And we ended up with 55 kids at the event, almost 3 times the number we were aiming for.

I had to find enough parent drivers to get 55 kids to the bowling alley and back. Thankfully the parents immediately stepped up!

We had to frantically call the bowling alley to find more lanes. We ordered delivery pizza because we didn’t have enough room in the ovens to cook take and bake pizza.

All I can say is, thank goodness for my wonderful colleagues in ministry at Immanuel and Pilgrim, who helped make this event happen despite the chaos.

-The kingdom of heaven will be like 55 middle schoolers in a room, eating pizza and making more noise than you thought possible, with a few stunned church staff scrambling to keep some sense of order. But where the kids have fun, and they’re safe, and they connect with each other.

I was not prepared, because my vision for this event was too small. So many times in ministry I’ve had smaller numbers than I expected for events, or been disappointed by the turnouts for something I’d planned. This isn’t to say smaller events or gatherings can’t be powerful and important and just as God plans them to be. But I’ve been so used to less that I didn’t even imagine that I’d have too much when it comes to ministry.

Jesus’ parable about the wise and foolish bridesmaids is all about the need for preparation. The unprepared bridesmaids assume they won’t need the extra oil. Maybe they don’t anticipate waiting long, or maybe they think their lamps don’t matter. If my lamp goes out, they might be thinking, there are 9 other lamps that can take over. My little bit of light isn’t going to be missed.

Falling asleep isn’t even the problem. All the bridesmaids doze off while waiting for the bridegroom, and none of them get punished for snoozing. The problem is the lack of vision for what God will do.

While some forms of preparation are acts of dread, Jesus calls us to prepare as an act of hope that assumes God is acting, and we need to be ready for it. When God’s command seems ridiculous. When we don’t think our one lamp will matter. When we see a vision of God’s justice rolling down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream; we are those waters—we are that stream. Hope leads to justice.

Byran Stevenson is a public interest lawyer and has dedicated his life to helping people who are poor, incarcerated and on death row. He’s also the author of Just Mercy, a book that tells the stories of people on death row and their families. In an interview with Krista Tippett 3 years ago, he shared a story about his great-grandfather that has shaped his family, his work and his own life. Stevenson’s great-grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia, and learned to read while he was enslaved. “I never really thought about that until later,” Stevenson said, but I just started thinking about that kind of hope, the kind of vision it took to believe that one day, you’re going to be free, even when nothing around you indicates that freedom is likely for enslaved Black people in Virginia in the 1850s.”

Stevenson’s great-grandfather had no concrete reason or evidence to help him believe that he would one day be free. Yet he prepared himself for freedom by learning to read. He loved reading so much that he wanted to share it with others. Stevenson’s grandmother would talk about how, after Emancipation, other formerly enslaved people would come to their home, and his great-grandfather would stand and read the newspaper to them every night. Stevenson talked about how his grandmother would sit next to her father, because she loved the power he had to engage people, to make people feel calmer and more informed.

“My grandmother had the long view,” he said. “She knew the power of the eternal witness, and she interacted with us in this way that was meant to be eternal.”

What does it mean to interact with someone in a way that is meant to be eternal? Bryan Stevenson says his grandmother assumed her words and actions would affect him for the rest of his life. What would it mean for you to assume your words and actions will affect others for the rest of their lives and beyond?

God gives us commanding visions. Isn’t that what we have as faithful people, a life-changing vision of what the future will be in Christ? A future that is already here, breaking into our world and our hearts, God’s kingdom in our midst? God’s dream is ours.

How can we have hope for peace when the violence in Israel and Gaza takes our breath away?

How can we have hope for those struggling with addiction when we know the high probability of relapse?

How can we have hope in people working together for solutions when all we see is polarization?

How can we have hope for equity when we all participate in systems of oppression?

How did one enslaved man hold to his vision of freedom, even when nothing around him gave him evidence that it would happen in his lifetime?

This morning’s music is full of hymns of hope and vision, spirituals that carry deep trust in God even in the worst of circumstances. They’re a gift that allows us to be a part of a long-standing vision of freedom, of trust in a God who saves.

Even if the bridegroom is late, we still keep an extra container of oil so our lamps can burn as long as they need to. Our faith doesn’t give us the luxury of hopelessness or despair. We buy extra pizzas and reserve more bowling lanes.

Hope is not optimism or positive thinking. Hope is trusting in God’s future promises that are already with us. Hope is an eternal vision, a confidence in God’s eternal redemption of all creation, which we participate in here and now. Prepare extravagantly for the eternal kingdom, and hope for visions unseen.

Thanks be to God. Amen!