There is a lot of beauty and goodness in life.
Times of joy and passion; times of peace, happiness, goodness, and laughter. Times when we discover new interests and have opportunities to exercise our creativity and our imagination. Times when dreams are fulfilled, when hopes are realized, when relationships are in good shape, when all of our loved ones are healthy, and when we find nothing but encouragement and support in the words and actions of others. There are many times when life is marked by light and love.
But then there are the other times.
Times when we find ourselves in circumstances and seasons of life that seem to rob us of any sense of confidence or joy or hope.
And we find ourselves descending into the deep, dark grip of dread and despair; touched by times of anxiety, of uncertainty. The devastations of war and conflict surround us and make us fearful of the future. We wrestle, in our own lives, with profound emotional pain, with financial difficulties; with a lack of purpose, and even complete uncertainty about what we are doing with our time in work, in leisure, in relationships, even in our faith; tensions and struggles warp relationships between individuals, between communities, even between nations; we are confronted with difficult news in our physical, our mental and our emotional health. In such times, it is almost as if all of the light and love that we once knew is gone, snuffed out by what spiritual writers of the past have called the dark night of the soul.
Times of deep darkness, when all light seems to be extinguished.
But more about that in a moment.
Today’s suggested reading from the Gospel of Matthew presents us with one of Jesus’ wonderful little stories about the kingdom of God, in the form of a parable about ten bridesmaids
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this,” Jesus said.
And the story unfolds from there.
Ten bridesmaids were awaiting the arrival of a bridegroom. We, as readers, are informed that five were wise and five were foolish. However, all ten of them – wise and foolish alike – get drowsy and fall asleep when the bridegroom does not arrive at the expected time. When he does arrive, at midnight, all of the bridesmaids wake up and prepare for the celebration. And it is at that point in the story when we realize how the wise were distinguished from the foolish — the five wise ones had brought some extra oil, so were able to allow their lights to shine, even in that midnight hour; while the foolish bridesmaids had not brought any extra oil, so had to head out to find more oil so that their lights could shine and, somewhat strangely, ended up being barred from the party when they finally made their way back.
But that is not the only strange detail in the story.
Rather, there are other questions that we might ask as well. Why, for example, do the five wise bridesmaids refuse to share their oil with those who had run out? Isn’t generosity supposed to be a wise virtue?
And even the concluding words of the passage are strange when we read them carefully. That is, we read, “keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
Keep awake — which sounds fine, and which certainly resonates with some of Jesus’ other commands and instructions about staying awake as a metaphor for spiritual vitality — but it is actually a strange conclusion to this parable.
Why? Because all of the ten bridesmaids – both wise and foolish – had fallen asleep. Keeping awake might be good advice in the spiritual life – but the story itself seemed to be trying to tell us something about keeping oil in our lamps.
Ah, Jesus and his stories. Just when we think that there is a simple one, we read it a bit closer and it reveals itself to be a bit more complicated than we originally thought.
And a lot more amazing.
In order to ponder the story and some of its strange twists, it can be helpful for us to pay a bit closer attention to a few of the details.
For example, it is interesting to notice when the bridegroom actually arrived.
We are told that the bridegroom arrived at midnight. And midnight, as we all know, is more than simply a time on the clock. Rather, midnight is the deepest, darkest part of the night; it is the time when we are equidistant from the light of the evening past and the light of the dawn that is yet to be. We are at a point that is farthest from the light of day. At midnight, the sun is gone. There is no longer any lingering light from the setting sun of the evening, but neither is there any promising, optimistic wisps of light from the rising sun of the new day. All is darkness.
Midnight is the time of deep darkness, when all light seems extinguished.
But for those whose lamps were still burning, for those who had the light to see, it was at that very moment, in the story, that the bridegroom appeared.
Yes, they had been waiting for him since the daylight hours. And yes, they had grown tired waiting for him. So tired, in fact, that they had fallen asleep and their lights had started to flicker and grow dim.
Which left them in a very difficult predicament. Because that time of deep darkness, when all light seemed extinguished, was the moment that they needed the light the most.
Much like life.
Yes, life can be wonderful and good. And when we in times of light and love and joy and hope, we should be grateful. But we should also realize that life will not always be like that. There will be times, yet to come, when the light will grow dim, when difficulties will arise, when challenges and struggles will seem insurmountable.
And we might actually find ourselves in a metaphorical midnight hour, a time of deep darkness, when the light seems extinguished.
The good news, of course, is that there is One who comes to us in the midnight hour, just as the bridegroom came in the depths of that dark night.
But his presence does not excuse us from our own responsibility, our calling, to keep our light shining. In fact, if we wait until that midnight hour, if we do nothing to prepare ourselves for the spiritual struggles of those midnight hours, if we fall asleep and think that we’re doing fine, but have taken no steps to grow stronger when light is shining into our lives, we might just find that when we find ourselves in those deep dark times when the light seems extinguished, we will feel that we – like those foolish bridesmaids – might have to wander out into the darkness rather than relax and join the party. Because not only does the light allow us to find our way in the darkness, but it allows helps us to see the One who comes to us, who appears to us, who is revealed to us, who is with us in the midnight hour.
So what does all of this mean?
The story is a call to avoid apathy in the spiritual life. There is a dangerous tendency, in our spiritual lives, to pay less attention to matters of faith and of the soul when the light is shining and life is good. When everything is going well, when grace seems to be shining on us and on everyone we love and on everything that we do, we have a tendency as human beings to allow ourselves to be lulled into states of spiritual complacency. We lose the disciplines of our faith, prayer becomes irregular, worship becomes something that we do if do not have anything better to do, spending time reaching out to others and seeking to serve those in need seem less important than taking care of ourselves and reveling in the good things of life.
And we neglect the responsibility to use those good times to also take steps to prepare for different seasons and different circumstances – and even for the midnight hours yet to come. And it is as true in our personal lives as it is in our life together in community and in the world. If we wait until a time of war to start working for peace and justice; if we wait until we are sick before we start taking steps towards good health; if we wait until a time of social chaos before we start building the bonds of friendship and community…well, it might be possible to find our way back to the party, after we wander for a while in the dark, but if we had made the necessary preparations ahead of time, the light never needed to go out in the first place. Rather than drift into spiritual complacency – or as Jesus’ parable described it, rather than get drowsy and fall asleep — it can be wise for us to seek out opportunities to strengthen and to cultivate those habits and disciplines of discipleship, to attend to the rhythms and attitudes of prayer and worship and study and service, to deepen those habits of the soul that can help us to be more ready for when the light begins to dim, and hope recedes, and confidence wanes, and faith is challenged, and the midnight hours come upon us once again.
But, one might ask, is the end of the story too harsh towards the bridesmaids who were unprepared?
Perhaps. But even in this there may be a glimmer of hope.
And the hope is this – what happened in the story took place one night. It was not forever; it was not even the only night of the bridesmaids’ lives.
On that particular night, and in that particular midnight hour, the unprepared bridesmaids were not ready to shine their light. But they were being given the opportunity, nonetheless, to learn what they needed to learn so that they would never again be unprepared. And if they learned what they needed to learn, they would never again have to journey through the darkness unprepared.
Yes, for that one night they would have to journey through that darkness rather than join the party. But one can be sure that they would be better prepared for the next time that day turned to night.
That night, they had found themselves in a time of deep darkness, when all light seemed to be extinguished.
But the good news was that for both the wise and the foolish, for both the faithful and the unfaithful, for both the spiritually alive and the spiritually complacent, for both the prepared and the unprepared, the midnight hour was not going to last forever.
The new dawn would come.
For all of them – the wise and foolish alike — the sun would rise.
Thanks be to God.
