November 6, 2011 | 8:00 a.m. | All Saints’ Sunday

Oil for Our Lamps

Hardy H. Kim
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 78:1–7
1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
Matthew 25:1–13

“The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! There will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’”

Matthew 5:8−9 (NRSV)

Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true
because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.

Stir us, O Lord,
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

Desmond Tutu

If you have been paying attention to the news at all, it is impossible to avoid the troubling stories about the economy, both here and around the world. The unemployment rate in this country, particularly in areas like the Midwest, is at historic highs. Because of an unstable financial situation, people are not just suffering from joblessness; whole families have lost homes and savings to decreased incomes and loans they can no longer afford to pay. If we look elsewhere in the world, things don’t seem much better—and it’s not just the usual trouble spots in developing countries or the global south. Situations like the crisis in Greece have Europe looking very shaky, and even Japan (rocked by earthquakes and broken industrial supply chains) seems unable to pull itself together. All this leads to uncertainty and anxiety, to sleep lost over worrying about the future; many of us might begin to wonder how much longer we will face times that look, fiscally at least, bleak and depressing.

So then it doesn’t come as much of a surprise, does it, to see protesters coming out onto the streets all over the world? There have been massive strikes recently in Greece and in Oakland, California. Even here in Chicago, our city has its own branch of the “Occupy” movement, a network of protests claiming to champion the cause of the average individual (the 99 percent) against the power and greed of the unjust minority (the 1 percent). These protests include persons from all walks of life, and together these protesters have made all kinds of demands related to things like the constitution, individual and global debt, taxation, sanctions against corporations and banks, the right to inhabit public space—the list goes on and on. In general, the “Occupy” protests seem to be a mass expression of frustration with the state of affairs—particularly when it comes to economics—fueled by a sense of outrage at societal behaviors and systems that result in relative wealth and power for a few and great want for the very many.

With all of this going on, I sat down some days ago to start preparing for this sermon. I knew that the lectionary was making its way through the book of Matthew, and so I was ready to start my reflection on a Gospel text. I was hoping for a good parable to give me perspective on the present situation. Maybe one where Jesus says something about the first being the last and the last being first; you know, the kind where the world gets turned upside down. Imagine my surprise when I was confronted with the story we just heard.

Things start out OK: Jesus is telling a story to help his hearers understand what the kingdom of heaven will be like. He says that it will be like ten bridesmaids—five foolish, five wise. I’m still with him here. Things get a little bit complicated: the bridegroom is delayed, the bridesmaids wait, they get tired, they fall asleep. Suddenly they are roused by a shout, “’Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’” It’s late, but still the bridesmaids hurry to greet the bridegroom, and since it’s now dark outside, they adjust their lamps (trimming their wicks and making sure they have enough oil to last through the celebration). And here is where the story goes more than just a little sideways for me.

Half the bridesmaids didn’t bring any extra oil. They’re scrambling and desperate. It’s not even their fault, really, is it? If the bridegroom had only shown up when he was supposed to, things would be fine, but now their plans to celebrate the night away are put at risk on account of a lack of fuel for their lamps. They do exactly what any of us might: they turn to the bridesmaids who have brought extra oil, and they say, “Our lamps are going out; we don’t have enough oil. He’s here and we don’t want to keep him waiting. Just give us some of yours, won’t you?” The response? “’No! There will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” Imagine their shock at the blunt refusal. And now they have to rush out into the night and search for someone who might sell them some oil. We know what’s going to happen. We’ve even been that person, at the last minute trying to find a store to buy the thing we forgot for the party, haven’t we? They can’t find any place to buy oil at that time of night. When they get back, not only do they return without their party supplies, they are greeted by a locked door. When they call to the bridegroom, “’Lord, lord, open to us,’” they receive the final injury: he replies to them, “’Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’”

At the first reading, the harsh unfairness of the story stings, doesn’t it? Is the kingdom of heaven a place where we can get blindsided by timing and events that take us by surprise? Is it a place where people don’t share, where those who have much are under no obligation to give to those who have little? Is it a place where a lack of resources can lead to the lord saying, “I do not know you?” Hoping for a text that would give me some way of making sense of our current state of affairs, I have to admit I was disappointed at what I found.

However, as I continued to reflect on the parable and as I pondered what it could reveal about the kingdom of heaven (that I was capable of receiving), I began to shift my focus. Though I was initially unable to stop wondering why the wise bridesmaids would not, or could not, share their oil (unable to accept the justification of such selfish behavior), I eventually began to wonder more and more about the response of the bridegroom to the bridesmaids when they returned later on and called to him from the door. How could he possibly say to them, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you”?

Scholars and theologians who have commented on this parable all seem to agree that in the story the bridegroom represents Jesus. This makes sense to me too. If this is true, then, it doesn’t seem to make his answer any less troubling. Except, what would happen if we accepted his statement on its face? I began to realize that I was interpreting the bridegroom’s response as a judgment against the foolish bridesmaids, but what if he was simply telling the truth: that he didn’t “know” (or recognize) the people calling to him from the door? It was late. The party had already started. It’s bright and noisy inside, and the bridegroom has probably had one, two, maybe a few glasses of wine. Outside in the dark, strange voices are calling to him. The bridegroom goes to the door, but the people there, they don’t even have lamps to light their faces, and so he doesn’t recognize them and sends them away. After all, who would want to welcome in a bunch of late-arriving wedding crashers?

What of the bridesmaids, then? Who are they to us? This seems less clear to interpreters. Some argue that the bride (who isn’t mentioned at all in the story) is implied—that the Jewish audience for Jesus’ story would have understood that Israel is the bride to God’s messiah and that the bridesmaids are to attend to her, that is, Israel. The wise ones have cared for her well and so enter into the celebration when the messiah and Israel are united; the foolish ones, they miss out. Others argue that the story was meant for the new Christian community, one that might have been in conflict. The bride (the church) is implied in the bridesmaids themselves. The wise ones have prepared for the renewing of creation and for union with Christ and will enter into the kingdom; the foolish have not and will remain outside in darkness.

Whichever interpretation we accept as accurate, it is clear that there is something to be prepared in order to be included in the community that reengages with Christ as bridegroom and to enter the new age. In that preparation, the images of the lamp as light and the oil as fuel are instrumental. I think our task today is not to decide whether this parable is a Jewish story about caretakers of Israel or a Christian narrative about true and false members of the early church. Instead, I believe that we are called to see ourselves in the position of the bridesmaids and to understand what the lamps and oil—the elements of readiness—might be for us today. If we are in some sort of end time, a moment where old things pass away and new things are created, when God’s Spirit might descend upon us again in Christ’s grace—how might we be included in that act of renewal?

Douglas John Hall, a theologian who has often been quoted by our pastor, John Buchanan, from this very pulpit, actually believes that such a moment is here for people like us who sit on a Sunday morning in churches like this one. Hall writes,

Christianity has arrived at the end of its sojourn as the official, or established, religion of the Western world. The churches resist coming to terms with this ending because it seems so dismal a thing. But in Christian thinking, endings can also be beginnings; and if we are courageous enough to enter into this ending thoughtfully and intentionally, we will discover a beginning the may surprise us. The end of Christendom could be the beginning of something more nearly like the church—the disciple community described by the scriptures and treasured throughout the ages by prophetic minorities. (p. 51)

Hall urges us, in belief and lifestyle, to disengage from the dominant societies, classes, and institutions we have so long courted, in order that we might serve those same communities even more faithfully than we ever could while being a dominant institution ourselves. What might this look like? Let me give you an example.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German evangelical pastor who served his church and society during the period leading up to, and including, the Second World War. The important thing, for our discussion, is that he did this by separating himself from the institutional structure of the church and the centers of power in German society. During the buildup to World War II and the rise of the Nazi regime, the German evangelical church was welcomed into the very innermost centers of power in the country. However, as Hitler and other leaders began to bind the church and its theology together with national ideology, faithful Christians like Bonhoeffer, understanding how faithfulness to Christ meant actually resisting the impulse to grasp at power and place, began to agitate for a different way of being Jesus’ body in the world. Bonhoeffer left the German evangelical church to help found the Confessing Church, a movement dedicated to proclaiming Christ above all else. He was a signatory to the Theological Declaration of Barmen in 1934, a document that boldly puts forth the claim that the church cannot be made subordinate to any government or national authority and that the Word and Spirit of God can never be subject to any church authority. We Presbyterians claim this profound statement as a part of our heritage, and it guides us to this day as a part of our constitution in the Book of Confessions.

Bonhoeffer’s sincere and unadorned faith, one that led him to reject a church that would build itself up as a center of power and national authority, can be seen in the letters he wrote from prison (where he spent his last two years for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler). A letter he wrote to a young follower the morning after a bombing raid rocked the prison provides a good example of this faith. He writes,

You may know that the last few nights have been bad, especially the night of 30 January. Those who had been bombed out came to me the next morning for a bit of comfort. But I’m afraid I’m bad at comforting; I can listen all right, but I can hardly ever find anything to say . . . and it seems to me more important actually to share someone’s distress than to use smooth words about it. I’ve no sympathy with some wrongheaded attempts to explain away distress, because instead of being a comfort, they are the exact opposite.

Faith at its root, for Bonhoeffer, was not about words and doctrines in the face of trouble; it was about sharing suffering and being present to others.

Another person, active today, who writes about the nature of faith and how churches might need to live in order to best address the realities we face today is Kenda Creasy Dean. Dean is a professor at Princeton Seminary, and she has worked with a team to accomplish one of the most comprehensive studies of young people and religion in American history : the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). She writes about her observations in a book called Almost Christian. Dean quotes the coauthors of the report based on the NSYR, who state, “Most American youth faithfully mirror the aspirations, lifestyles, practices, and problems of the adult world into which they are being socialized. In these ways, adolescents may actually serve as a very accurate barometer of the condition of the culture and institutions of our larger society.” If we follow the report’s logic and the results of the study, Dean argues, then the ending of church dominance and the fall from centers of power that Hall writes about have progressed much farther than any of us might like to believe.

Dean writes that, “American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith—but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.” And, according to Dean, the study shows that the church (especially the parents and adults who are engaged with the young people surveyed), and not outside factors, are directly responsible for the flimsy faith these young people possess. This watered-down, almost-Christian, faith that Dean warns against consists of the belief that (1) God exists, created and ordered the world, and now watches over it; (2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught by the Bible and by most world religions; (3) the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself; (4) God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem; and (5) good people go to heaven when they die.

This articulation of faith might sound nice, but Dean and others call us to pay attention and notice that as positive as this list of claims might be, being Christian—at its most basic level—is not at all about being nice. It’s not about the “wrongheaded” comfort in the face of difficulty that disgusted Bonhoeffer. Being nice won’t make the church a vital instrument of Christ’s mission in the world, and perhaps that’s exactly why young people, in addition to the rest of the world, are paying less and less attention to us. Dean, Bonhoeffer, Hall—all of these and many others—urge us to be more than nice. They remind us that being Christian is about following Christ. As Dean writes, “Imitating Christ makes people lay down their wallets, their reputations, their lives for the sake of others, which is why parents rightly fear it for their children. The cult of nice is so much safer; . . . [our current, substitute ‘nice’ religion] does not ask people to lay down their lives for anyone, because niceness does not go that far. Love goes that far—and true love is neither nice nor safe.”

The kind of faith that results in love for the sake of Jesus Christ—the kind of faith that led people, like Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, to risk even their lives to follow the one who calls us—Dean argues that only that kind of faith will save our church from permanently becoming just a shadow of what it has been in the world. Hall argues that only by returning to the root of this kind of faith, by stripping away our connections to the centers of society that call us to be “nice” —only in doing that can we truly be the salt, yeast, and light that Jesus called us to be in the world.

As we venture forth into new and uncertain times as a church, as we go to meet Christ, our bridegroom, in a different age, I wonder if it might not be this kind of faith that might serve as the oil to light our lamps. The problem is, however, that this kind of faith can’t be picked up at a corner store on the way to the party. It takes time and dedication to cultivate. Dean argues that this faith comes about when individuals cultivate an understanding of God as a loving, powerful, and active presence in the world; when they are engaged in spiritually and relationally significant ways with a faith community; when they have discerned a divinely appointed purpose for their lives; and when they can articulate a hopeful future for themselves and for the world. Bonhoeffer would add that in a world where the church has been compromised by its comfortable ties to power, “being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action.”

It is our task, as Jesus Christ’s people, to develop this faith; this fuel, this oil to light our lamps. We are to work at it continually, so that when Christ comes, we can shine this light of faith. So often we tell ourselves that we are exercising our faith when we do good things in the world, and though this is often a practical result of faith, I believe today’s parable about the kingdom of heaven tells us that the fundamental nature of faith in action is something different. If being nice and doing good things were the essence of the kingdom of heaven, then the wise bridesmaids would have shared their oil, and the bridegroom would have opened the door to those he did not recognize. Instead, the story from Matthew teaches us that devotion to the bridegroom, to Jesus Christ who is coming to be united with us again, causes us to prepare the fuel of faith, the oil for our lamps. It is when these lamps are lit, when our light shines, that Jesus recognizes us, sees our face, and welcomes us into his fellowship. Does this mean that our faith is only about our own inclusion and we are not to be concerned with casting light on the world around us? Is Fourth Church’s stated mission of being a light in the city simply an empty phrase? I don’t believe so, and let me close with one more story, one that presents a vision for my belief.

Every Christmas eve, here at Fourth Church, there is a moment when we pass the light of Christ through the congregation. People light their individual candles from the flame that is passed among them. Standing up in the chancel, as the music washes over us and the bulbs above us dim, the light grows in the sanctuary. One of my favorite things, an amazing thing I think, about this passing of the light is how I find myself being able to pick out, to recognize, faces that are far away across the Sanctuary, faces that get lost in the crowd with the Sanctuary lights fully on. These are highlighted, and I can see them clearly on account of the light held in front of them. At the end of it all there is a sea of faces, so many of them distinct and recognizable, glowing from the lamps held in front of them, and by these lights, miraculously, the once dark Sanctuary is awash with light, warmer and more Spirit-filled on that night than on most any bright morning.

In the same way, it is my fervent prayer that this church, our community, might continue to spread the light of Jesus Christ, one person at a time, through this city and throughout our world, so that each one who has been touched might come to their reunion with Christ with their lamp brightly lit by the fuel of their faith and so that all might enter into the celebration of God’s new kingdom to spread Christ’s light into all creation. Amen.