Wake up!

Proper 27 A 2008
(Wisdom 6: 17-20; Ps 70; 1 Thess 4: 13-18; Mt 25: 1-13)


“Breaking up is hard to do.” Waking up is even harder.

There used to be Tom Peterson furniture commercials, on TV about 11 PM. Tom literally knocked on the inside of your TV screen. “Wake up!” he’d shout. You may not have bought the furniture, but you remembered the commercials.

Today the church is the glass screen and the Bible is Tom Peterson. We hear Jesus repeating one of the most common “Biblical values,” far more common than anything the mega-culture shouts to us as it uses and misuses that term. The value is simply this: “Wake up!”

Today ten young women are part of a wedding party. Their job is to wait for the bridegroom, and then bring him into the celebration. They carry oil lamps, part of the ritual and also needed since the bridegroom may come after dark. They wait. They fall asleep.

When we wait, we fall asleep, in many ways. Yesterday I drove back from Salem after two days straight of church meetings. That alone would make a monkey on caffeine drowsy. On top of that, I stayed out til the wee hours with a group of younger people, church leaders who had a lot to say about their lives, the church, and the problems and hope they see. That was worth staying awake for. God is doing new things among us, and I hope I have the trust and courage to see God at work and support those in whom God is working. But the whole ordeal was too much for my middle-aged constitution, and I crashed when I came home.

We fall asleep when we are weary. We fall asleep when we are discouraged. No one can stay on the mountaintop for ever, no one can stay in the giddy rush of spiritual or emotional elation. We come down, into the reality of our lives, the seeming ordinariness or even boredom of our days. We fall asleep spiritually when faced with too much challenge or too much tension or too much disillusion. It’s human to fall asleep. Jesus seems to know that.

But he also tells us that the time will come to wake up. Hope will dawn, joy will dawn. Suddenly change and fulfillment and healing will seem possible, within grasp. “Wake up!”

But when we wake up, we’d better have enough oil for our lamps.

Today’s Gospel story always bothered me a little. I was raised to always share. Break the cookie in half, share the sandwich, share a lick of your ice cream. The young women who wouldn’t share their oil always struck me as selfish.

But I think the world of this Gospel says that our light is our own responsibility. We cannot carry someone else’s spiritual life. No one can seek God for us, no one can drink in wisdom and light for us. Our search is our own. It may seem cruel, but it is what it is.

Where can we look for fuel and light? The first reading holds the key. Ask for Wisdom—she is generous and always on hand. But we must ask and we must seek. Seek Scripture and prayer, worship and sacrament, service and a healthy spiritual discipline, and just listening, listening for the still small voice of God. Live as a partner of God’s, generous and open. In Gospel-life, we only get to keep what we give. Live closed and asleep both, and nothing but a cold dry wick on the lamp will remain. Holy Wisdom wants to flow into us and through us to the world. Ask Lady Wisdom for light and illumination, ask her now, and she will come, she will meet us, and when we do wake up we’ll have enough oil to light our way. We’ll even have enough oil to light the way for Christ.

When I wake up, will God find enough oil in me to strike a light?