Notes from the Wayside: Perspective: Party of the Year

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Party of the Year

The wind blows all around us as if it has a will of its own; we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up. Life in the Spirit is as if it were the wind of God.

John 3:8 (The Voice)

The freedom to be in the moment

The reason for making a memory

Never wasting all that comes my way

As I take in what I see

From "Somewhere in the Sky" by Kutless

Jesus once told a story about ten bridesmaids who were waiting with a bride for the arrival of her groom. Five of them were prudent enough to bring extra oil for their lamps, but the others weren't quite so prepared. Unfortunately, the groom was late. When word came in the middle of the night that the groom was on his way, the five prudent bridesmaids got their lamps ready so that they could go out to meet him, but the other bridesmaids had already run out of oil. The foolish bridesmaids asked the others if they could borrow some of their oil, but the wise bridesmaids said that there wasn't enough and that they would have to go out and buy their own.

By the time the foolish bridesmaids were able to buy some lamp oil, the groom had already arrived, the wedding reception had already started, and the door to the venue was locked. Their lack of preparedness had cost them the party.¹

I've never really understood the Parable of the Bridesmaids. I've always realized that this parable is meant to teach us that we should always remain alert and be prepared so that we don't miss out on what God is doing. What I've never really understood is the parable itself. To someone like myself who was lives in a modern context, the details of this story don't really make much sense. I have been to a number of weddings in my lifetime, but I have never been to a wedding that didn't start on time, nor have I ever been to a wedding reception to which people needed to bring their own lamps. Whenever I read this story, I am always left with a lot of questions.

Why did every bridesmaid need her own lamp?

Did the wise bridesmaids really not have any oil to spare?

Couldn't the foolish bridesmaids just walk beside the wise bridesmaids so that they could share the light of their lamps?

Why didn't the wedding planner set up some lanterns so that everybody would have plenty of light?

Obviously Jesus lived in a culture that was very different from my own, so the significance of the details in this parable is lost on me. To gain some much-needed perspective on this parable, I decided to consult biblical scholar William Barclay. Though this parable seems rather contrived from my point of view, Barclay writes that the scenario Jesus describes might have actually happened to somebody in first-century Palestine.

In Jesus' day, marriages were arranged either by parents or by matchmakers. After a bride and a groom were officially engaged, there was a year-long engagement period, during which the two lived apart from each other. Though they lived apart, their marriage was already legal. Once the engagement period was over, the groom and his entourage would travel to the home of the bride's parents, and the groom would finally take his bride home with him so that they could begin their life together. When the groom arrived, there would be a massive week-long celebration to which the whole town was invited, and the bride and groom would be treated like royalty. It was an event nobody wanted to miss.

Though the groom was culturally obligated to send a messenger ahead of him to announce that he was on his way, there was no way to know for certain when the groom would actually arrive. He might arrive during the day, or he might arrive during the night, so one must be ready for his arrival at all times in order to get in on the celebration. It is also worth noting that nobody was allowed outside at night without a lamp and that to be absent when the groom arrived was a mistake that would exclude you from the festivities.²

(If you are a preacher, a Sunday school teacher, or a Bible study leader who feels led to discuss the Parable of the Bridesmaids, then I recommend that you share this information.)

According to Barclay, in the same way that it was difficult for the bridesmaids to buy oil that night, there are just some preparations we cannot make at the eleventh hour. Furthermore, like the scarce lamp oil, there are some things in life that cannot be borrowed from another person, like faith and character.³

I affirm what Barclay writes about this parable, but, when I read this story as someone from a culture very different from that of the original audience, I begin to think about people's priorities. I wonder if maybe the foolish bridesmaids were foolish not because they ran out of oil, but because they were so concerned about their lamps that they missed the party. I wonder if maybe the wise bridesmaids gave the others bad advice when they told them to go out and buy oil when they knew that the groom could arrive at any moment. I wonder if the foolish bridesmaids would have come up with a solution that wouldn't have cost them the party if they had been as focused on the celebration as they were focused on their lamps.

In Jesus' culture, things like lamps and oil were necessary, so they represented important things. In an age of electricity and street lights when people actually complain about "light pollution," lamps and oil aren't quite so important. I've been downtown after sunset a number of times, and I've never needed a lamp or a flashlight. Today, maybe such things represent nothing, and by "nothing" I mean all the trivial matters that occupy our minds. Nowadays, the five foolish bridesmaids seem even more foolish, for it would be utterly ridiculous for a person to miss out on the party of the year because he or she was out looking for flashlight batteries.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the minutiae of day-to-day life that we miss out on the bigger picture of what God is doing all around us. In other words, we don't see the proverbial forest for all the trees.

In Jesus' day, the Jewish people looked forward to the day when the long-awaited Messiah would arrive to set everything right in the world. Similarly, Christians, who believe that Jesus is this Messiah, look forward to the day when Jesus returns to do the same thing. Sometimes this coming age of peace is compared to a wedding celebration - the party nobody wants to miss. One day, somebody asked Jesus why His disciples didn't observe ritual fasting when other religious people did. Jesus replied, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?"⁴ Basically, He was suggesting that people were so wrapped up in their religious rituals that they didn't realize that, through Him, God was already working to put the world back together again.

After Jesus compared Himself to a bridegroom, He said,
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.⁵
I think that maybe Jesus was saying that the new thing God was doing through Him was bigger than the religious people's traditions and expectations. According to Richard Rohr, "The last experience of God is frequently the greatest obstacle to the next experience of God."

Some things, like faith and character, are timeless. They will always be important because they transcend both time and culture. Other things, like cultural conventions, social norms, traditions, "just the way we do things," certain personal interests, and even some aspects of religion are not quite so timeless. Such things can actually come between us and God, for God does not always act in ways we might expect. May God give us the wisdom to know the difference between what is trivial and temporal and what is essential and timeless so that we may always be ready to celebrate the amazing things God is doing in our midst.

Notes:

Matthew 25:1-13
William Barclay. The Parables of Jesus. 1999 reprint, West Minster John Knox Press. pp. 133-135
Barclay, pp. 136-138
Mark 2:18-19 (NRSV)
Mark 2:21-22 (NRSV)