What is the problem?
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.
This has always been a difficult story for me. It was the Gospel lesson for today? The preacher gave me an different way of looking at it.
But I am not going to answer the question directly--I am giving it to the hive to discuss.
Is the problem about the oil? Or is it something else?
This has always been a difficult story for me. It was the Gospel lesson for today? The preacher gave me an different way of looking at it.
But I am not going to answer the question directly--I am giving it to the hive to discuss.
Is the problem about the oil? Or is it something else?
Comments
We were always told the oil symbolised the Holy Spirit.
Remember the old chorus, 'Give me oil in my lamp, keeping me burning ...'?
I've always thought of it as a warning against complacency and getting too embroiled with 'worldly cares'.
And now I have “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning” running through my head.
It is one of a group of parables (at least in Matthew) that are about keeping steadfast in the Christian living.
I will read the contexts in the other gospels and post again.
I do hope if you fall asleep, you remember to put out your lamp first!
...
I was told (possibly in error, nobody gave me a footnote on this) that the way it worked was kind of like trick or treat in the States--young women could get into to any wedding feast whether you knew the family or not, provided you showed up at the appropriate time carrying a lamp or torch to light the bridegroom in to his bride. Show up after that ceremony and no wonder he says, "I don't know you." That ceremony is over, and given the bridegroom in the story apparently comes from some other village and isn't likely to know the girls (though his bride would).
I guess partly because it is at least partly the bridegrooms fault, they did have oil, just not spare oil.
It is a parable not an event, but of course it is also a parable about a future event). So in some senses it is like and unlike the text saying "and Jesus, the good shepherd said get lost"
I do like lamb choppeds explanation. Aside from taking the sting out of it, it feels culturally very believable.
And fwiw, I’ve heard the same thing you have about young women getting into the wedding feast, but like you I have no citation.
But doesn’t Jesus tell us what the problem was? “So you, too, must keep watch! For you do not know the day or hour of my return.”
The foolish bridesmaids weren’t shut out because they didn’t have enough oil per se. They were shut out (or left behind), because they weren’t ready when the bridegroom was coming, and in their scramble to get ready they missed his arrival.
Was one of them supposed to end up as the bride, or was the bridegroom going to marry any/all virgins who managed to get inside before the door was locked?
Would they consummate their marriages together in some kind of deflowering assembly line?
Although there is a context of cultural practices and so on, of course.
Oh, I know the Church Fathers came up with elaborate allegorical interpretations of the Parable of The Good Samaritan and so on.
Generally, though, there's a simple, single point - in this case like the Scouting motto.
'Be prepared!'
Trim your wicks. Ensure you have oil.
The bride may have been there, and this ten girls could have been all the possession but wouldn't be escorting themselves.
Or maybe every side street had it's girls at the junction.
And I'm guessing at each wedding the other families are hoping that some patriarchal figure comes to make a formal introduction (modern equivalent meet a very eligible bachelor), or that they will behave sensibly and have fun.
And no doubt there'll be cases where some poor girl was convinced that the new bride "didn't understand the groom".
https://www.instagram.com/p/DfZ4P34CDZY/?rpxt=MWJ6emM4MWY1YXAyZA==
As a sidenote, Tom Lehrer’s song “be prepared” is stuck in my head now…
Also chapter 25 follows chapter 24 (obviously, and of course the chapters were put in later) which ends with Jesus saying that no one knows the day or the hour, even he himself, only the Father. So those who think they do and who live accordingly (in the sermon I heard it was framed in ecological terms, burning the oil, polluting the oceans, etc., but you could say in terms of sinning now because you think you know you can repent later) are foolish, even though they might think themselves clever.
So the bridegroom does nothing until he thinks everyone is ready. And in the same way God may seem to delay - in the second coming, the end times, or in answering prayer, or some other thing - but it is God’s decision when to act, not by our notions of promptness, but by his determination of our readiness.