I admit that I have a reoccurring nightmare where all of a sudden it is Sunday, and I don’t have a sermon ready. In my dream, I panic and get mad at myself for a complete lack of preparation. I wake up from the nightmare breathless as I try to remember what day of the week it is. Don’t worry, I’m not living out that nightmare today. But have you ever had something like that happen to you? Have you ever dreamed that you have forgotten that you have a test? Or forgotten that your deadline for a report is today?

I can remember on the first day of school, when I was in about 5^th grade, the teacher told us to take out our pencils and get ready to take a test. It was the first day of school! How did she expect us to take a test? So we grumbled and told her that it was not fair for her to give us a test on the first day of school when we haven’t even learned anything yet. Well, she gave us the test anyway and told us that from that test she would see how much we had forgotten over the summer and how much review she needed to do. But as I took out my pencil, I felt vastly unprepared to take this test. It is hard to prepare for something you don’t expect.

In the parable that Jesus told his disciples, he tells about ten bridesmaids whose job it is to go out and meet the bridegroom. It is their assignment to light the way for the bridegroom to come into the wedding feast. The bridesmaids knew the bridegroom was coming, they just didn’t know when. They also knew what their job was – to light the way.

All of the bridesmaids knew the bridegroom was coming, the distinction that is drawn between the foolish bridesmaids and the wise bridesmaids is in their preparation. All the bridesmaids are prepared for the coming of the bridegroom, but the wise bridesmaids are ready for his delay. The foolish bridesmaids are ready for the coming of the bridegroom only if he comes within the allotted amount of time that the oil in their lamps will last. They are indeed ready for the bridegroom to come, but only if he comes in about the time they expect him to come.

Now many of the commentaries I read went to great pains to talk about wedding traditions during Jesus’ time and I have to tell you that each of them talked of different customs surrounding weddings. But the parts they all agreed upon was that it was the responsibility of the bridesmaids, who would have been the 10-12 year old girls in the town, to light the way for the bridegroom to come to the feast.

There were many reasons that the bridegroom could have been delayed. The parable offers no explanatory reasons, so I won’t speculate either. Nevertheless, the feast cannot start without the bridegroom. The feast of celebration at a wedding would have lasted quite a while – up to a week! No one would have wanted to miss out on the celebration. But that’s exactly what happens to the foolish bridesmaids. They find themselves locked out of the feast of celebration because they didn’t have enough oil to light the way for the bridegroom.

When Jesus was telling this parable to his disciples they were teetering on the edge of major change. Jesus had entered Jerusalem for the final time. Among the shouts of hosannas there were undertones of what was to come. In just a few verses, the plot to kill Jesus will be closing in and the disciples will find themselves in the position to discover what they are made of. The darkness of the world is fast approaching the disciples. The question the disciples and other hearers of this parable is, "Are we prepared?"

Are the disciples prepared for the arrest that is coming their way? Are we prepared for the events that are coming in our lives? The disciples are about to face a grim reality in their life – the Messiah is about to be taken from them. What will they do? Are they prepared for the delay in the bridegroom’s return? All around us we are faced with grim realities. From war ripping apart countries, killing the innocent beside the guilty, to the hollowed face of a child starving from lack of adequate nutrition – there are grim realities all around us. Are we prepared?

There is a key difference between the way the secular world views the reality we find ourselves in and the way that we as Christians view the reality we find ourselves in. The secular society looks at all the awful and terrible things going on in the world and despairs. The church looks at the awful and terrible things going on in the world and also weeps for those in danger or despair. But we do not stop there. We cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the situation around us. We do not weep as those who do not have hope because we know that the bridegroom is coming. The wait may be long but in the midnight of our world a cry will go up and the way will be lit.

I must admit that I, like many of my colleagues, am uncomfortable with all of this talk about the second coming. I admit that when I read this passage, I wondered if I could preach on something else this week. But I have found that it is those texts which give me the hardest time that turn out to be some of the most enriching texts in my life.

There are those Christians who will study the scripture in hopes on unlocking some code to be able to figure out when Christ will come again. There are those Christians which will look at the atrocities going on in the world today and try to link these events with events in scripture that foreshadow Christ’s second coming. I am not one of those types of people. I don’t think that we can figure out when Christ is coming again. I don’t want to spend my time trying to look for indicators of a coming apocalypse. Instead, I want to be about the work of the kingdom in the world right now.

Let me be clear. I do believe that Christ is coming again. There is no doubt in my mind about that. The bridegroom in this parable and indeed in many parables in the Gospels is a metaphor for Christ. Just like in our parable, there is no doubt that the bridegroom is coming, there is no doubt in my mind that Christ is coming. However, like the foolish bridesmaids, I am not going to try to say that I know when the bridegroom is coming. I’m in it for the long haul.

Many of you have fireplaces or woodstoves in your home. What do you have to do to keep the fire going? Sometimes you have to poke it a little bit. I knew that I was growing up when I was allowed to poke the fire. Tending the fire was always dad’s job but I remember when I was old enough to be able to poke the fire. I took the heavy iron rod and poked some of the burning logs that were dying down and immediately they took flame again. Then dad would add some more fuel to the fire and warmth would radiate throughout the room again.

The wise bridesmaids in the parable knew how to tend their flames. They knew that in order to keep a good light they would need to trim their wicks and ensure that they had enough oil to keep the flame going. Are we ever like those flames? We are in this wait for the long haul. As we wait for the coming of Christ, sometimes we will need to trim our wicks, poke our fires, or simply shake things up a bit in order to rekindle the flame within us. Then we will need to continue to add more fuel.

Just like you need fuel to keep a car going, we need spiritual nourishment to sustain us as we wait for Christ’s coming. But you can’t run a car by just adding more gasoline, eventually you need to change the oil. Sometimes we need our own spiritual oil change. Like the bridesmaids had to trim their wicks, we need to continue to get new perspectives. Ever so often we need to get a spiritual oil change and try something new so that our engine doesn’t lock up and we find that we have to go into the shop for a while and possibly miss out.

This parable isn’t about promising that Christ will come again. That part of the parable is a given – Christ will come again. This parable is more about what we are doing to prepare ourselves for the inevitable. Will we have enough fuel for the delay? No one can share their homework with you when the time comes to turn it in. So we must continue to prepare and be nourished; fueled by doing what God calls us to do.

The kingdom of heaven will be like this: The bridegroom is coming. This much is inevitable. In the darkest part of the night, a cry will go up that the bridegroom is approaching. Are you prepared to light the way? The bridegroom is coming. Are you prepared for the delay?