angels on the edge of my bed / been there half of the night

looked 'round, asked, 'you made this hell yourself 

/ well it's real nice'

A sermon on Jesus' perfect parable of the 10 bridesmaids:

On any given Sunday, more than a few of us walk through those doors, just barely hanging by a thread. And trust me, I’m not being dramatic here, either. 

Now I know we don’t come here every Sunday fresh off a crisis. However, I do know that plenty of us ARE here with some drama breathing down our necks as I speak. Aren’t we?

And what’s more, I know just as many of us staggered through those doors only recently touched by some calamity. And I know plenty of US here are trying to make heads from tails after life pulled the rug out from under our feet. And I even know there are not a few of us worried life will never be put a’right. 

And as for the rest of us, well, we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Aren’t we? It’s like Thoreau said, isn’t it? The majority of us lead lives of quiet desperation. Quiet desperation…

So if you’re having second thoughts about scheduling an appointment to talk and pray with me about your latest setback, DON’T! You can’t shock me. And you won’t change my perception of you, either!

And if you’re in the thick of it right now, welcome! You’re in good company! There’s not a one of us here who hasn’t stumbled through those doors knocked sideways by life. 

You can drop the act! We all know no one gets through this life unscathed. And anyway, there’s no need to worry about what any of us will think if we see your struggles. We all know better! Don’t we? We all know that it’s not for lack of effort that life gets on top of you. And we know your issues aren’t due to some character flaw, either.

Other than that congenital disease was all share, original sin.

Best of all, though, is the one who makes his fellowship here with us. And no, I’m not talking about myself! I know! You didn’t expect me to say that! Did you? 

But no, I’m speaking of the one despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. I’m speaking of, of course, Jesus, the Christ! (Is. 53:3)

It’s Christ’s presence here that MAKES this a safe space to bring all your troubles! And the reason for this is that Christ is right at home amidst all that makes life so unbearable. Christ could care less if you’re coming here short on glory! In fact, he prefers it that way! 

But he prefers it that way because that’s how it really is! What’s more, he prefers it that way because when WE’RE hard up for glory, Christ has more than enough to spare! Why that’s what makes Christ’s glory so blessedly glorious! 

Christ’s glory does not circle ‘round itself! No, Christ’s glory extends itself! Christ’s glory expands! Expands to encompass you and to me! You and me, regardless of what our week looked like!

As Luther said, God doesn’t love you because you’re beautiful. No, God loves you, and that MAKES you beautiful!

Beloved in the Lord, Jesus hasn’t welcomed you into his fellowship because you have it all together! AND he hasn’t even welcomed you here because you have the potential to get it together, either! No, Christ has welcomed you HERE because everything that’s got you coming apart at the seams is all that makes your life the perfect vessel to hold the fullness of Christ’s glorious Holy Spirit!

…You know what, though? That’s not even what I’m talking about! I’m talking about another kind of distress. I’m talking about a subtler form of anguish. I’m talking about a kind of misery that isn’t even cognizant of itself. As Kierkegaard said, what’s so besetting about despair is that it’s unaware of being despair.

I’m talking about, of course, the day-to-day straits we ALL regularly find ourselves in. I’m talking about all the mundane ways circumstance runs roughshod over our hopes and dreams. I’m talking about how, after one too many tough breaks, we stop bothering to expect anything more than the next darn thing. 

As unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, a life can shrivel up into nothing. Can’t it? In attempting to protect ourselves from the vagaries of life, we can harden into nothing more than a monument to the human we once were. In circling the wagons ‘round our tender hearts, we can all wind up with lives so small that there’s no room for anything to love anyway.

Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us are here running on empty. Aren’t we? Even MORE distressing, though, is the fact that many of us are HERE expecting even less.

This is the spiritual state Christians used to call acedia. Acedia is a numbness. An indifference. A death that takes hold of a living soul until they’re nothing more than a walking corpse. 

What makes acedia so dire, though, is that it appears so normal. The tragedy of acedia is that it destroys a spirit softly. Acedia is so blasted menacing because it seems so harmless. 

And that, that’s the real thread each and every last one of us is precariously hanging over right now. Isn’t it? We’re all here hard-pressed between vivifying faith and deadening indifference.

Now I pray none of you are in that grip. But I know how it goes. I know how, after one too many Sundays when absolutely nothing changes, a person might give up expecting anything. I know how a person might think it’s time to wise up and just get on with life.

After all, that’s what the foolish bridesmaids did in today’s parable…

I know. You didn’t expect me to say that either! Did you?

You thought this parable was a straightforward morality tale! Didn’t you? You thought the parable’s lesson is just that you should always be prepared. Or, if not that, you thought the moral is that you’d better have it in you to hold out until Christ returns.

That, however, is nothing more than the wisdom of the world! And as St. Paul said, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, GOD decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.” (1 Cor. 1:21)

In other words, we are not dealing with mere advice here! No, we’re being confronted with a strange wisdom. The wisdom of the cross. And that wisdom, sisters and brothers, is a wisdom that always comes across as foolishness to the eyes of the world.

After all, if all Christ came to do was tell us to get our house in order, Moses would have sufficed! Or, if not that, Jesus could have just started the very first Boy Scout troop in ancient Palestine! But that’s patently not what Christ did. Was it? 

No. On the contrary, for all intents and purposes, Jesus appeared to be caught off guard on the night of his arrest. When Sin and Death did their worst, Christ seemed wholly unprepared! Didn’t he? Because instead of going to battle with the dastardly duo, Christ simply breathed his last by them.

The real surprise, though, is that two thousand years later, WE confess the true victim that night wasn’t the lamb of God! Rather, we confess the actual sacrifice on that initial Good Friday was the power of Sin and Death itself! Don’t we?

…Now, admittedly, we’re deep in the mysterious weeds of redemption here. But that’s right where this parable wants us! That’s right where Jesus’ parable wants us because that’s where we REALLY live!

They say truth is stranger than fiction. And that’s right. Jesus’ parables, you understand, aren’t religious fairy tales. No, they’re roadmaps to the contours of redemption in this strange ol’ world!

For instance, notice how Jesus tells this parable. He begins by stepping on his punchline! Doesn’t he? Right at the start, Jesus tells us who’s who! He kills all the suspense by alerting us to who the wise bridesmaids are and who the foolish bridesmaids are!

But then Jesus does something strange. He describes the wise bridesmaids as acting foolishly! Instead of packing light for an immanent party, the so-called wise bridesmaids lug around a bunch of extra oil with them!

At the beginning of the parable, the wise bridesmaids don’t seem wise! Do they? On the contrary, they seem neurotic! They seem fussy! They seem overwrought.

The wisdom of wise bridesmaids isn’t proved as such until the bridegroom does something foolish himself! Namely, getting held up on his own big day. But it’s not until that happens that the bridesmaids are shown to be wise or, for that matter, foolish. 

After all, in other circumstances, we wouldn’t call the foolish bridesmaids foolish. Would we? No, we’d call them sensible!

The foolishness of the foolish bridesmaids isn’t that they didn’t bring extra oil. No, that’s called just being prudent. The foolishness of the foolish bridesmaids is that they suppose the world ought to run on time, according to schedule, and by expectations, too. 

But that’s not how the world runs! Is it? What’s more, it’s not how Christ operates, either! As we like to say around here, Christ is for real life! For real people living real lives!

Christ doesn’t mind getting mixed up in the messes of your life! In fact, he prefers it! Your messes are nothing less than the very manger CHRIST is born INTO every time! 

I know. It’s not Christmas. But that was just way too easy! But here’s some lenten fare if you prefer: the rocky path you took to get here is the holy ground Christ has turned into the peak of his Golgotha triumph! And if you don’t like me jumping around, here’s something that pairs nicely with today’s parable: everything in your life that isn’t going to plan is the oil Christ transforms into fuel for saving faith! 

…The wisdom of the wise bridesmaids is really a bunch of foolishness. At least as far as the world’s concerned. The wisdom of the wise bridesmaids is that they can’t help bringing everything to Christ! The good, yes, but more importantly, the not-so-good! 

And it’s no different for you! 

We all came here with more than our fair share of baggage. Didn’t we? And after a while, the temptation is to leave all that trouble by the door. 

Faced with all the unsolvable dilemmas of life, we feel pressure to come here acting as if we have it all under control. Don’t we? Eventually, though, the farce turns on you! After putting on an act for so long, your interior life can become nothing more than the parody you’ve been enacting!

That’s what’s going on at the end of Jesus’ parable today, ya know. The bridegroom has some harsh words for those foolish bridesmaids. Doesn’t he? He tells those bridesmaids he never knew them. 

But you know what? He’s just describing reality! Those bridesmaids foolishly tried to manage their lives for themselves. Christ never knew them because they never bothered to really bring their problems to him!

And that’s the real thread we’re all hanging by. Isn’t it? The real danger we’re all facing is the danger of holding back. The danger of self-sufficiency.

The wise bridesmaids, though, they know better. Or rather, they know they don’t have it in themselves to get by by themselves! In the upside-down ways of Christ, through, that’s the better part of real wisdom!

And that, too, is no different for you!

All of us, myself included, are here schlepping no shortage of; well, let’s be polite and call it stuff. Although we all know that’s not what it’s really called. Nonetheless, for Christ, the pioneer of our faith, all that dung makes for perfect fuel!

Christ’s passion burns hot for you! And that passion is so flammable, it alights EVERYTHING that comes into its contact! Including, but not limited to, your apathy.

Even your acedia is fuel for a real relationship with Christ! Christ is so nondiscriminatory that he will even take your indifference and use it to make all the difference! Now, even your emptiness is chockfull of Christ’s cross-shaped presence!

It’s Christ who brings the passion today! So if you’re all tapped out, that just means you’re positively bursting with everything Christ needs! Just like that wedding at Cana, empty vessels are Christ’s preferred receptacles for his work!

…Everything you dragged through those doors with you is really everything Christ needs to make real faith for you! Faith that will last through whatever dark night of the soul you’re going through. Faith that will catch Christ’s eye every time!

It’s the dregs of life that amount to your bid for a real relationship with Christ! For it’s all that, that compels you to go to Christ as he’s promised to be! Not merely as a helper, but truly your savior!

Whatever it is that’s got you all tied up is right where Christ tarries to meet you! And while it might not be fun to haul that into the party, when Christ turns all that into the pyrotechnics of saving faith, you will not be disappointed! No, it will not just be the better part of wisdom. It will also be one of the better parts of the party! 

And as such, we’re going to indulge in a little blessed foolishness. We’re going to sing an advent hymn! And you thought I was overdoing it when I referenced Christmas! Well, you can take this folly up with the hymn committee! 

But I’d be willing to bet that after you stand on the other side of all this imprudence, you’ll better grasp the wisdom therein!

Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers; ELW 244