Wisdom 6:12-16, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
The parables that Matthew presents to us this Sunday and next Sunday are hard for me to figure out. They just don’t sound like something Jesus would be saying. He seems to be condemning of individuals who maybe could not do any better. The Jesus I recognize in the Gospels is usually the person who is compassionate and concerned about someone who is having a hard time. The Wisdom reading this morning sounds more like Jesus, who, as Wisdom does, “meets them with all solicitude.”
But this is the Gospel passage we are given today: 10 virgins, or another translation, 10 bridesmaids, waiting for the groom, who is very late. He is probably waiting for the father of the bride to give the woman to him, from her father’s house to his house. But nothing is said about the man making the others wait.
We know the story well. The bridesmaids all fall asleep. Their lamps run out of oil. Five had brought oil with them; five had not. It seems to me Jesus could have suggested that the bridesmaids who had planned ahead could say to the foolish ones who were not foresighted: “Come, each of you, walk with one of us who has oil and we will all arrive safely.”
Thomas Merton had another view of the parable in the poem called “The Five Virgins.” The first part of the poem reads, “There were five howling virgins who came to the Wedding of the Lamb with their disabled motorcycles and their oil tanks empty but since they knew how to dance, a person says to them to stay anyhow.”
I realize that the point of the parable is to instruct the listeners to be ready, to be alert, to stay awake. Be like Wisdom, we might say, who will be ready “sitting by the gate,” or who “makes her rounds … meeting others with all solicitude.”
The bridesmaid image does not work for me. But I can see someone here being awake and being aware of another and saying, “Walk with me, hang on to my arm.” That is the compassion of Jesus or the attentiveness of the one who seeks Wisdom.
There are many ways to hear the Gospel mandate to stay awake. Community members and employees are awake and alert to others who need a visit or a ride to a doctor or nursing care and advice, or a tray carried in the dining room, and much more. Wisdom is making her rounds, meeting people with all solicitude.
“Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour” when someone near you will need oil in her lamp or a touch of wisdom from you.
