2 billion Christians travel through Lent each year.
This is a sample chapter of Our Lent’s second edition from Day 24 …
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“THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is like 10 young women, who took their lamps and went forth to meet a bridegroom. Five of them were wise; five of them were foolish.”
That’s how Jesus begins today’s startling new story in this cycle of lessons about the kingdom he envisions. Just listen to his language here. He wants us to sit back and really think about this tale. It’s classic storytelling, even in the cadence of its opening: Five of them were wise; five were foolish. It sounds almost as though we’re in the midst of Jack and the Beanstalk, or perhaps Little Red Riding Hood. It’s a story of suspense in which a potentially devastating event is looming that will affect the lives of both the foolish and the wise.
Jesus continues: Those who were foolish took their lamps, but took no oil with them. The wise took oil in their vessels along with their lamps. While the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. At midnight, a cry went up: “Behold, the bridegroom comes! Go out to meet him!” Then all those young women arose and tended their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: “Give us some of your oil; for our lamps have gone out.”
Here’s where this story takes a very odd turn, if we assume that Jesus is talking about himself as the bridegroom in the center of this kingdom that he sees emerging. Listen carefully to what happens next:
But the wise replied: “No! There is not enough for us and for you; so go to someone who sells oil and buy some for yourselves.” And, while they went to buy oil, the bridegroom came; those who were ready with their lamps went in with him to the marriage and the door was shut.
Afterward, the other virgins returned, saying: “Lord, Lord, open to us!”
But he answered: “Truly, I say to you: I do not know you.”
Therefore, keep watch, for you do not know the day or the hour when the son of man will come.
At this point, after the Alfred Hitchcock ending to our little tale, aren’t we scratching our heads and murmuring: “Whaaat?!?” In this new story, the young rabbi is taking wedding etiquette a giant step further than the story in Matthew 22 about the boorishly inappropriate party guest. If you missed that one, jump back to Chapter 15 in our journey to read about the fate of that poor jerk. At least in that story, we could nod our heads knowingly at the end and say to ourselves: Well, it was his own fault! The guy was acting like he was entitled to the celebration, but he was deliberately flaunting the call for a top-to-bottom transformation in his spiritual life. Served him right!
But in this new story we’ve got a bunch of innocent young women cast into the outer darkness as the banquet hall’s heavy wooden doors boom shut. Some translations refer to these young women simply as bridesmaids or virgins. Whatever they’re called, it’s hard to identify a flaw in this group of hopeful young women. They all showed up properly equipped. The worst that can be said about the foolish five is that they weren’t as obsessive compulsive as the wise five about lugging along a spare tank of oil.
What’s wrong here? Why doesn’t Jesus’ wedding party decide to pool the oil—or do without oil entirely? Where’s that host who Jesus described earlier who’s so generous that he throws open the doors of the banquet hall even to social outcasts? It’s a troubling tale, no question, and only Matthew shares it with us. One wonders whether it wasn’t just a little too challenging for the other Gospel writers, who left this one on the cutting-room floor.
The best reading of the tale we can envision, prompted by looking over an array of commentators who have pondered this scene down through the centuries, is that this is a story about the discipline of spiritual mindfulness. Barbara Brown Taylor likes to call lit “reverence.” Consider: In this cycle of stories in Matthew, the rabbi has taken us from a stern warning over the spiritual fog that can come in an atmosphere of fear and “rumors of war”—to a plea for the need to clear our vision by taking a fresh look at the natural world around us (“See this fig tree sprouting”). And, now, he’s driving home the conclusion—a lesson about the life-and-death nature of spiritual mindfulness.
If we don’t prepare ourselves in each waking moment, the rabbi seems to be saying, we’ll completely miss the banquet—and there’s no easy way to make up for that lack of preparation by, at the last minute, desperately trying to siphon off a little spiritual oil from the next person’s jug.
This must have been a puzzling lesson for Jesus’ followers. These were men and women with a pragmatic view of human life. In their world, people were people—not esoteric, multi-layered creatures with separate realms of mind, body and spirit. Here was Jesus talking to them about a transcendent potential in their daily spiritual disciplines—a hard concept to grasp. But, he isn’t alone in delivering this kind of teaching. Actually, some of the wisest prophets through the centuries have stressed this same principle.
The Buddhist monk and author Geri Larkin talks about this frequently. “Mindfulness is the surest path to happiness,” she says, meaning that it’s essential to live our lives fully alert to the world around us—so that our spiritual awareness is developing day by day.
One of the greatest practitioners of spiritual mindfulness in our present age is South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a sage who I’ve interviewed several times since the 1980s. My most memorable encounter with Tutu, however, was an entirely unexpected one that came during the worldwide Anglican Communion’s gathering at Canterbury Cathedral a couple of decades ago, when reporters from around the world came to cover the bishops’ historic debate on women’s ordination. That particular conference opened with all the pageantry the British could muster—with long lines of Anglican bishops from all around the world marching into the vast nave of the cathedral in their vestments. The bishops from the UK in particular looked like a cast of characters from a Dickens novel, many with florid cheeks, severely cropped hair and a lofty tilt to their chins.
The opening session featured several talks in which bishops threw down verbal gauntlets on either side of the debate. And, when the bishops were ready to file out of the cathedral, the press corps hit the church doors first—hoping to rush back to the press center and write the latest news stories. However, as those of us in the press corps rushed for the doors—trying to outdistance the bishops who also were rising from their seats and forming up in their long rows to march away through those same doors—we wound up nearly colliding at the exit. And, as the very last member of the press corps, pushing open the heavy cathedral door—I recall the embarrassing moment: I was stuck there! I was the last reporter holding the door as the first of hundreds of bishops reached the exit. They rumbled and rustled past, chins high, eyes still aloof from the non-episcopal classes—no one even attempting to reach out and shoulder the door’s weight.
And then … then a firm hand came down on my shoulder; the weight of the big cathedral door was pushed free—and another shoulder was set to patiently brace the doorway. Looking into my eyes was Tutu. His chin was down. His eyes alert. Unlike most of his colleagues, he clearly was mindful of every soul in the crowd, even a journalist caught in such an awkward situation.
“You did not travel all this way to serve as our doorman,” Tutu said warmly. “I will hold the door for the rest of them. And you? You have important work to do, now. Go. Write your story. I will stand here.”
Now, that is spiritual mindfulness, even in the midst of a historic, international gathering with such major issues to contemplate. Tutu had trained himself not to miss even the smallest detail in lives on the periphery of his episcopal world. It is that same mindfulness—expressed in such a tiny way that day in Canterbury—that has shaped Tutu’s entire approach to life. His daily discipline gave him the capacity to expand that compassionate vision to an amazing degree a few years later in 1995, when he was asked to chair the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now celebrated as a model for dealing with crimes against humanity in a just and compassionate way, Tutu’s three years with the commission sorted out claims from more than 7,000 people. These were confusing claims that came from both sides in South Africa’s long struggle toward freedom.
Perhaps Tutu’s light was a divine gift in those years—but the truth seems to be that Tutu had carefully tended his lamp day after day, year after year, until it held the power to glow brightly under any circumstances.
So, how are our lamps doing at this point in our journey? Are they glowing? Have we packed enough extra fuel for such a long pilgrimage? Perhaps it is time to check our oil—and make sure we’re preparing ourselves for the climactic scenes looming just ahead of us down the Lenten road.
REMEMBER: You can buy Our Lent, 2nd Edition, via the links in the upper right corner.
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