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Reflections from Our Pastors
Tuesday, November 14th, 2023
This past Sunday Gospel was the parable of the ten attendants with their lamps either lit or not lit, depending on their oil. We may remember this passage as the ten virgins, five are prepared to wait and five are unprepared. The focus of the waiting is for the Bridegroom.
John J. Pilch* tells us that at the time of Jesus, Eastern Mediterranean marriages were arranged by the parents when the girl and boy were children. When the time came, there was a marriage. The wedding did have attendants but they were not virgins; they were the groom’s sisters and cousins. Their purpose was to wait for the groom who would be bringing the bride from her house to his father’s or his house. Families married within themselves and the ideal marriage partner was a first cousin.
The parable begins here with the attendants waiting for the groom to bring his bride to his father’s house where they will consummate their marriage and live. The attendants are the Welcome Ministry at this point in the marriage ceremony and then there will be a party! Seems excitement is all around with everyone feeling expectation and joy!
So let’s move our minds back to the fact that this is a parable. Let’s say the lamps are our souls and we are waiting for someone to appear. This is our desire; we await an experience of God.
We are energetically on the lookout for God. Our lamps are lit with oil. Let’s say the oil is our spiritual life, our intentional spiritual life and the lit lamp is the spark of the Divine within us.
The Divine wants relationship, exists for relationship. The Trinity is relationship and Jesus is in relationship with his culture, his Jewish families, his Gentile people. God is waiting for us to wake up to the Divinity within ourselves.
The attendants whose lamps or souls had sufficient oil, in other words a strong spiritual life, were able to meet God in God’s moment. The attendants whose lamps or souls didn’t have enough oil or spiritual strength to remain aware, missed the moment. Because this is a parable, the attendants knew they had missed the moment but for most of us, we don’t know that we missed it.
What do we think happens to the attendants without enough oil and their light goes out? Let us consider that there is a time-space element between a flame that is energetic and the same flame as it slowly fades. When we remember that our inner being experiences the Divine as
Flame, it can’t go out completely. It is impossible. It can be imperceptible and covered up with negativity and illusion, but we are immortal so the flame cannot go out entirely.
If we are aware and reflect upon our spiritual life and our spiritual practice, one place our oil starts to fill the lamp, then we can see how these practices help deepen our relationship with the Divine. As our oil fills the lamp and our flame slowly grows brighter, we may hear our hearts, our deepest yearnings. As our flame slowly grows brighter, are we being called to another party? Are we being called to awaken? Do we have the will and desire to decide our time with God, our time in prayer, our time in stillness, our time filled or not?
If we are the attendants whose flames went out, or became so dim we could not see, did we miss the wedding party too? Yes.
Did we miss the open door to the party, the invitation that God extended? Yes.
Are we blocked from ever attending a wedding party again, from ever finding our way to God, to ourselves, to our love? No.
God is our deepest self. God is Love, our sustaining force. We are made from God. How could God, Creator of All that exists, seen and unseen, abandon and punish us? Doesn’t seem possible! Rather God gives another party to which we are invited, hoping we will be ready. If we are not, God gives another party to which we are invited, hoping we will be ready this time. And so it goes, another party another door opens to which God invites us, until we have filled our oil lamps enough to see the beauty that is WE, and we are ready to go to the party!
God, self-emptying, self-giving, unconditionally loving, comes again and again, always ready to welcome us. This parable points to Advent, three weeks away, a season of expectant waiting for our Savior who is coming. How much more oil can we put in our lamps?
Peace within,
Pastor Jane
*John J. Pilch. The Cultural World of Jesus: Sunday by Sunday, Cycle A. 1995.
Used with permission by Storyblocks.
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