“Expectant Waiting”
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
Matthew 25:1-13, p. 807 in your pew Bible
What a delight it is to be with all of you this morning. I don’t know how many of you are, like me, bemoaning the shrinking of the hours of daylight, especially now at the end of the day when soon we will be turning on the lights at 4:30! When this happens, as it does, of course every year, I have an even stronger than usual need to be around lights of hope in a community of faith. So thank you for your lights!
Today’s parable and the reading from The Wisdom of Solomon center for me on expectant waiting for the One who is seeking us. Expectant waiting can be really hard, especially when what or who we are waiting for (like the increase on light!) is not quick in coming. I was reminded of this by Reverend Suzanne Guthrie who writes about how impatient she is when she does not get an immediate response. She writes:
“When I click on a website, or Facebook, or an email, or Wikipedia, or the NYTimes online, I expect an immediate response. If I’ve been clicking around for a few hours, I notice that life offline is a bit clumsy. I get up from my desk and it actually takes a couple of minutes to boil water for tea, and the toaster seems to taunt me, biding its time. I’m frustrated that the doctor’s office takes a day or two to call back with results from a test. Only when I work in the garden do I settle down again, letting time take its own time, through years, through seasons; the cycle of new blades, and buds, and blossoms, and seeds unfolding at just the right time, nourished from the dark secret life underground.
Suzanne continues:
I am both the prepared and unprepared maiden sleeping on the steps. When I am wise, my disposition is more like a gardener who knows that winter’s dark delay is not only necessary but rewarded. When I am foolish, I expect an immediate response to my desire and miss the slow-motion reality of the eternal present in which dark and light are one. And so I am continually like a child learning to tell time again. Be prudent. Slow down. Go deeper. Love the darkness. Expect delays.”
This morning I want to thank Katie for sharing what is like for her to do what Suzanne Guthrie and the waiting bridesmaids try to do. Slow down. Go deeper. Wait in expectation for Love to show up.
I am grateful to be one of the newbies in this contemplative prayer group. Knowing we will be meeting every couple of weeks helps me during the weeks to practice trusting that Wisdom, the Light, the Good News, whatever you want to call it, comes in its own good time.
But here is the thing. Most of us, including all of the bridesmaids in the parable, foolish or wise, fall asleep. We get discouraged about the state of the world, our church and of our own souls. Many of us don’t keep our souls filled up for the long journey of waiting.
Refueling can be showing up for Sunday worship, or for a prayer group on Thursday, or regularly turning off our phones and computers, standing in a leaf strewn garden in the dark of night and looking up at the most amazing starry sky.
The Good News is that Divine Love is here and is already changing us even when we can’t see change at all. According to Solomon, who asked only for wisdom when he became a king, a deep wisdom is on the move searching us out and meeting us in our thoughts. Even when we are in the dark there is a place for all us in what our parable calls the “wedding party” or what we call “the Beloved Community.”
I heard that deep timeless searching last Sunday when 6 of you stood told us, as Katie told us today, and something of your story of finding a joyful welcome at this church. Even when some of you said “no thanks” to name tags for a long time. Even when some of you wandered away from this or any church for years before stepping in. Even when you were so overwhelmed by your own dark night of the soul and you had no hope that anyone would want to see you, lo! folks pushed over in the pews and made a place for you, just as you made a place for me.
Parables and wisdom teachings are not commandments or bedtime stories to lull us to sleep. They are intended to wake us up to something unexpected and even troubling; like today’s parable that ends when the bridegroom arrives and tells the ones who arrived at the wedding banquet late and asked to be let into the banquet, that no one recognized them. “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you; I do not know you.”
When I heard that statement it was like a gong going off in my head. It woke me in a fit of protest and insight – No Way! This is not a tall tale about the coming of the kingdom of God. The extravagant God that I know does not slam the door shut on our faces when we come to God and neighbor ashamed or in need or just really late.
This must be a parable that invites us, as Wisdom searches for us, to a deep experience of being seen as we are, and loved, no matter what.
This week I read a twist on the parable about the foolish and wise bridesmaids (sometimes called virgins or maidens) that made me laugh out loud. It shook off all the shame I sometimes feel about not waiting with a totally faithful expectation that God is always on the move.
This twist came in a poem by Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic monk and Zen master.
There were five howling (or scatter-brained) 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.
And there you have it,
There were five noisy virgins
Without gas
But looking good
In the traffic of the dance. (but well-involved in the action of the dance)
Consequently
There were ten virgins
At the Wedding of the Lamb.
Welcome everyone to the party. Come even if you are totally out of fuel. Even if you don’t think anyone will recognize you or if we do recognize you, you think we might turn you away. The truth is that the wise ones are often foolish because there is plenty of fuel to go around. The reception door is never slammed in anyone’s face.
Take a seat, dear foolish and wise friends and quiet your soul. Wait with us for as long as it takes. Truly God is with us, lighting the Way.
