Something I'd never noticed in the story before hearing it on Sunday again: The bridesmaids are "sleeping" when the fanfare sounds, announcing the arrival of the bridegroom and the start of the party. It seems that while they were sleeping the oil ran out for half of them. There's another time that Jesus talked about sleeping in this gospel. In Matthew 9, when Jesus is brought to the little girl who's died, he says, "She's sleeping." Could it be that in Jesus' mind, the sleeping bridesmaids in the parable are stand-ins for sinners such as we are, lying in our graves? Could this parable be less about a wedding and more about a funeral?
And when the trumpet sounds on the last day and the dead are raised, all we'll be left with is the same word that Cleopas and his friend said burned within them in Emmaus Or will we continue to pooh-pooh the power of the word to give us light and life? Will we be off wheeling and dealing with the world's snake-oil sellers to find something to take us through the night of the grave? Whatever they have to sell, it simply won't last. It'll be like the grass that withereth.
What's more, the actual sorting in the parable (see also the parable of the sheep and goats elsewhere in Matthew 25) doesn't happen at the door with the bridegroom's rejection. It happens while this "sleep" descended on the bridesmaids. The sleep while waiting for the bridegroom is shows five people whose oil runs out.
Death sorts us. There is Christ, who has power to carry you to the new dawn. And then there's everything else. The sorting is not between people who made a wise decision and those who didn't. It's between those beggars who cling to Christ as their only hope and those who wouldn't stoop so low.
The gift of baptism is that it eliminates all the waiting. The bridegroom, crucified and risen, comes floating in with the water to haul you downstream to the party. There's a reason the Christ candle is lit for baptisms. It's the same reason for the graveside words, when we pray that God would grant our loved one "light perpetual." He is the Light of the World, who, in some quantum physics kind of way, is solid enough to go beyond mere light-giving to eternal life-giving.
Ain't no need to go knocking on the door, when you're already at the wedding reception with a fatted Lamb as the main dish waiting to nourish you.
