For the past eleven-hundred years the church on the first two days of November has remembered all those who have died in our Christian faith. We continue that tradition here at Good Shepherd by inscribing in our Book of Life the names of our beloved ones who have died, especially those who have gone home to the Father during this last year and whom we remember in a special way this month. Officially the liturgies this Sunday are to celebrate All Souls Day which occurs each November 2nd. The feast of All Saints, or All Hallows is, of course, November 1st.
For the thousand members of Christ the Good Shepherd who have been actively involved in our Renew Program, this is the fourth week of Renew. The focus of the small-group discussion this week is to be on justice and injustice. So somehow in the next few minutes, I need to tie together All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and the Renew theme of justice and injustice, along with today’s readings. To attempt to do this, I’ve combined all of these themes under one question: what is the relationship of justice with preparedness and with mercy? There are four keywords for today: justice, preparedness, mercy and light.
To begin with, we need to take a closer look at justice, and injustice, especially as we see them in our gospel story. In doing that, we need to take another look at the story itself. Let’s begin with those ten young girls who were servants in the bridegroom’s house. They had been preparing for the wedding celebration for quite a long time. And tonight was the big night. The groom had gone off to the bride’s home for the wedding ceremony, itself, and then he would bring her to his home for the celebration which would last for several days.
It’s early evening, about dusk. The ten girls gather in the entrance room of the villa to wait for the groom, their master, and his new wife. They don’t go out into the street. It gets cold after dark. It’s dangerous out there. So, they huddle down on the cushioned seats around the walls, the seats where clients wait when they come to visit their master. For a while they chat about the party which will begin that evening. But as they wait, they get drowsy. It’s been a hard week, getting ready for the wedding celebration. They all knew their master would get home late; but it’s later than some might have guessed. They fall asleep.
Suddenly, the outside guard cries out that the wedding party can be heard down the road. It’s time for the ten young girls to take their lamps and hurry outside to greet their master and their new mistress. It’s dark and they don’t want their master to stumble, especially as he crosses the threshold with his new wife. Their lamps are important to his welfare. That’s why they had them ready. Except for five of the girls.
These five were known for years as the “foolish ones.” They were never ready for anything. When they saw their own oil lamps begin to sputter out, they asked the other five for more oil. You recall the rest of the story: the five are told to go off to their local 7-11 and buy more oil. They do but get back too late. They never seem to be on time. And their master refuses to let them in, even when they bang on the solidly locked doors.
That’s the parable. There might be two main questions we could raise about it: what does this story have to say about our treatment of others? What does this story have to say about us and the kingdom of God? When we hear this parable now in 1986, especially on this fourth Sunday in Renew, the question we each might ask is: were the five with oil acting “justly” when they refused to share their oil with the other five?
To get a contemporary view on this parable, we might take a look at some people in our own lives who are like the five so-called “foolish” bridesmaids. It’s important, first of all, to realize that they were known to be foolish, not because they didn’t have enough oil that one evening but because they were habitually unprepared. For a moment I’d invite you to think about some ‘foolish” people you know.
For those of you who are still in school, what about those fellow students who never have their homework? Once more they show up on Monday morning without it. Should you allow them to copy yours? Or how about the friend who never has change for a coke, should you always buy her one? Or what about the man who doesn’t ever have his part of a group project done by the deadline, should you cover for him again with your boss?
Perhaps in thinking about our own response to these people who are habitually unprepared, we can take a clue form the five bridesmaids who had enough oil for their own use. The five “sensible” bridesmaids did not lecture or scold the five “foolish” ones. They did not be-little them. Instead, they suggested a positive alternative to put the responsibility right back where it belonged. The five sensible ones urged the other five to go and buy some more oil. It was not an unreasonable suggestion: the five did manage to find an all-night oil dealer and get back. In my opinion, the five sensible young girls did not treat the five foolish ones unjustly. I believe they exhibited justice with the five who habitually were never prepared.
I would offer, for your reflection three definitions.
● First: injustice, which is treating a person in a way that is not merited by that person’s action but on the basis of unmerited conditions.
● Second: justice, which is treating a person exactly on the basis of his merits. To reward or punish someone in proportion to his actions, to give him exactly what he deserves.
● But there is a third word we must look at: mercy. Mercy, which is to treat someone with forgiveness, to treat a person better than he or she deserves or merits. On this basis, the five sensible bridesmaids treated the five foolish ones with justice but not with mercy.
When we hear this parable today, we tend to focus on the questions of justice and of sharing. But when Matthew wrote about this story which Jesus told, it was not about sharing or about justice that their audience was thinking. That audience of nineteen-hundred years ago would immediately have focused on the other question this story raises: upon the kingdom of God and the need for individual preparedness at all times.
In our modern society we tend not to concentrate on our need for preparedness to join the wedding feast of God’s kingdom but rather, we rely on a God of love and mercy who will open the door for everyone. He will not leave us knocking on the locked door, but will open the gates even before we knock. Without in any way minimizing our belief in a God of mercy, I think the church does call us this weekend, on the Feast of All Souls, to reflect for a moment on a God of justice who does ask each of us to take an individual responsibility to be prepared.
I said that November 1st is the feast of All Saints and November 2nd is for All Souls. Why two different days? What’s the difference between “all saints” and “all souls?” Yesterday, All Saints Day, was the day set aside to commemorate all those who have died and are completely at home with God. We are all called to be saints and while we won’t have a special day which the church officially sets aside for us, each of us is called to be part of that communion of saints we remember each time we profess our faith.
Although we each are called to return to the Father, there is an ancient belief that those who die in God’s grace may still need a period of purification before their souls can be completely with God. Historically, we thought of the afterlife in terms of physical places, with physical locations: heaven above and hell below. And so we were taught about purgatory as a “place” where souls suffered before going to heaven. If you were in purgatory, you were assured of going to heaven but you had to wait.
Today, we no longer tend to think of heaven or hell or purgatory as physical places. (In fact, if the truth be told, we may not reflect much at all about heaven or hell or purgatory.) Yet, if we don’t look at heaven or hell or purgatory as places, it might be possible for us to look at three different conditions.
Would it not be “heaven” to know absolutely, positively, in every atom of my being that God exists, and I am completely with him? And could there be any suffering greater – or hell more painful – than to know with equal positiveness, with absolute assuredness, that God exists, and I would never be with him? As for purgatory, would that be a condition of knowing that God exists, but I cannot yet be with him but will be at some future time?
In the terms of today’s gospel, would the five foolish girls waiting outside the gate be in purgatory, knowing that the party has started, that it will last forever and that their good, merciful master will open the door the next morning and let them into the feast?
Once more we return to the master – the master who urges each one of us to be prepared. Am I one of the sensible ones or one of the foolish ones? And if I’m one of the foolish ones, what prevents me from being prepared? Why do I wait with a sputtering lamp and no extra supply of oil?
Do I have the attitude that I can’t make a difference; that no matter what I do, it won’t be enough; so why bother? Since I’ll be caught napping, why begin? Do I believe that my light is not needed? Or is it the case that my light must be added to the light of others; that I should not be concerned about standing alone, since I will be standing with others. After all this is a story of ten bridesmaids, not one. How great would have been their welcome to the master if all ten had held high their lamps? How can I realize that my light is important, that I, too, must be prepared to greet him? To be prepared, I need to begin.
To begin to change my attitude or my behavior, I may need to overcome a fear of failure or a fear of the darkness, itself. Sometimes I just worry about the darkness without doing anything about it. I worry about my fear without dealing with it. I allow my lamp to go out and do not try to get more oil for it; let alone try to have sufficient oil before it goes out.
Being prepared is important; yet being prepared is not enough by itself. I must also act. We are called not merely to wait for the groom to come. We are called to join him at the wedding feast. The purpose of our lamp and our oil is not to be held only in readiness; it is to burn brightly, to light the way, to greet him and to be part of the celebration of the wedding feast of the kingdom, the wedding feast which has already begun, and to which each of us is invited.1
All Souls Day; November 2, 1986
Lam 3:17-26; Rom 6:3-9; Mt 25:1-13
- It seems that when people provide written comments about homilies, the tendency is to be on the “negative” end of a critique. For example:
“Pat, you tried too hard! As you stated in your intro, you attempted to combine the readings, the Renew theme & two feast days into one homily. (I don’t know any person on earth who could do that. Jesus – as well as he preached, never sat down & tried to do that!) Consequently, ideas were jumping around & presented, but they didn’t fit together (& really could not, no matter what you did!) There were also several results that I will write to share w/ you only on paper. The main one is that you had to dig & “add to” the Gospel reading a bit to get it to say what you needed to preach on. God’s Word is strong enough to stand on it’s (sic) own – our job as messengers [is] to just to find out what it is saying & discern how it can apply to our lives. The parable was about getting our lives ready for Jesus 2nd coming – being prepared for that event – it was not intended to teach a lesson on justice and mercy. We must make sure we present our interpretations of scripture in the light of their context! Since it did not have exactly what we needed to say on the renew theme, we had to take the story & change it. God tells us in the Book of Revelation that we must not add to or take from His word – in doing that, there is no way we can find the truth & preach on it.
“Sorry for this sermon, Pat! I care deeply about you & our community, & I know we all long for the truth of god’s word. Let’s keep reading, studying & trying! He’s got lots for us in there!
“The other result I want to mention is the whole heaven/hell/purgatory thing. That is such an important topic – it really should be preached on by itself, backed up w/ scripture on what God says about them (I do not think there is any scriptural reference to purgatory, however!)”