The Waiting

Rev. Joyce Yanishewski

November 8, 2026

There are few scriptures that have caused as much consternation as this one. I have never quite understood all of the connotations, given the many ways it has been preached. And after hours of reading in preparation for writing this sermon, it is clear that no one fully understands this parable of the ten bridesmaids. Some scholars and preachers get focused on what the oil in the lamps represents, or the shut door, or the wedding banquet, or the bridegroom, or the wedding customs. Others talk about the foolishness of the ones who were not prepare with enough oil for their lamps. Some wonder why the five who had enough did not have the grace to share. It seems to me that one could go on any of those tangents and likely be correct in doing so.

This parable, the one before it, and the two that come after it in the Gospel of Matthew, are really tough ones. There appears to be little room for grace and there is a whole lot of judgement. And one would think that there is no room for error or you miss out. Depending on which parable of the four you are looking at, judgement is the outcome. In one parable the disobedient one is cut in two, in this one the door is shut and the bridegroom doesn’t open the door saying “I don’t know you.” In the next one the useless slave is thrown outside in the dark where people weep and grind their teeth, and in the last of the four we have people being separated as sheep and goats where those who are ignoring the needs of others are sent away into everlasting punishment.

If this is the only theology people have it is no wonder they think of God as the old man in the sky who judges and punishes people. There is no room for error, there is no forgiveness, and there is no grace. Not only that, everything is about going to heaven and not at all about how we live out each of our days in the present.

Good thing we get to put this in the context of a bigger picture and story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. We are only three weeks out from the first Sunday of Advent where we celebrate the hope, peace, joy, and love of God who sent his Son to be God with us. So, whatever you hear today, hear it from a place of grace, of a God who loves so deeply, who cares so much that God made a way for us to be in close relationship with Godself through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hear it also from the lens of the One who says in this same Gospel of Matthew at chapter 7 verses 7 and 8, “7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”[1]

With those thoughts in our minds, we approach these closed doors, the wise and the foolish, and the waiting game for the bridegroom.

N.T. Wright, a New Testament Scholar, encourages us to see these scriptures through the experience of wisdom literature, especially that of the Book of Proverbs. If you were to turn to those pages in your Bible you would read phrase after phrase speaking about the wise verses the foolish. As Wright puts it, “…this story is rooted in the Jewish tradition of contrasting wisdom and folly – being sensible or being silly.”[2]

As we listen to this story of the five young women or girls, the story invites us to decide who we will be. The struggle for me is that at any given moment I can be the well-prepared person or the very unprepared person. I don’t believe that any of us is all or nothing, we are a combination of wisdom and foolishness, of wise and silly. What all this is asking is, are we ready for the key moments in our lives? Are we living our lives with Jesus in our sights?

You will note that all the girls showed up to wait for the bridegroom. All of them fell asleep. All of them got up and trimmed their lamps when it was announced that the bridegroom was arriving. In many ways all of them were prepared and to boil this down to preparedness for the coming of Jesus at some unknown day or hours is to simplify the depth of this story.

Again, one could take many paths to what this parable means or is pointing to, but I wonder, given our human ability to get off track, to miss opportunities, to not pay attention, to get so many things wrong, if this could be a call to be alert. You can sleep; you need rest. You can go about your day…but what are you paying attention to? Who are you paying attention to? How are you spending your time? What conversations are you having? Is your life, your words, actions and thoughts centered around God in your life? Are you, waiting, watching and alert for God at work in you and around you?

I ask these questions of you and of myself. So how might one answer them. Of course that will be different for each of us. We will find ourselves with different people and in different situations each with their own possibilities and revelations. However, there is likely some principles that are similar for all of us. One thing that we can all do is ask, “Where is God in this?” Where is God when we wait in anticipation for a birth of a child, for the diagnosis, in the waiting room as surgery is taking place, when our children and grandchildren go to school and come home with stories of how they were treated with cruelty or they witnessed an injustice. Even if they would not be able to necessarily describe those things in those words.

Where is God in our moments of joy and our moments of fear?

I will say to you that God is present in all the moments of our lives. That is God’s promise. It doesn’t remove us from a situation, good or bad, but we can trust that God rejoices with us and that God is also with those who are suffering. Jesus suffered interrogations, betrayal, pain, and humiliation. Through Jesus’ life, God knows our pain and grief but also knows laughter and joy, friendship and kinship. God gets it.

I wonder whether a parable like this is a way to tell us that it is imperative to our well-being as a human being to pay attention. Stay attuned to the movement of God. It may not be immediately apparent how God is at work. Sometime it is only upon reflection that we can understand how God was with us and others at any given time or place in our lives. As Jesus says, “Keep awake,” pay attention to God and the work of God, as well as what work we are called to as Christians so that God’s redeeming love and grace is recognizable to this generation and generations to come.

The invitation, but also the caution, or more strongly, the warning, is to live as people who know and understand what it means to be followers of Christ. It is about what it takes to be alert, not because that it what it takes to be loved by God, but because our response to God’s love, care, compassion, and provision is to live everyday in a way that reveals all that we know to be true of God’s presence in our lives, in our church, in our community, country, and in the world as we wait for the fullness of God presence to come.

We live this as people who also know that though this door to the bridegroom appears to be closed, we are also promised that we can knock and the door will be opened to us. We live as prepared and unprepared, and always with the knowledge of God’s abundant outpouring of love for us in Christ, with Christ, and through Christ. Amen.

[2]Wright, N.T. Matthew for Everyone, Part 2, Chapters 16-28. 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide. Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville, Kentucky. Page 95.