TALL TALES

June 10, 2007

Scripture  Matthew 13:10-13, 16-17                             

from The Message

The disciples came up and asked, “Why do you tell stories?”  He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom.  You know how it works.  Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them.  Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely.  But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears.  That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight…. But you have God-blessed eyes – eyes that see!  And God-blessed ears – ears that hear!  A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had a chance.”

Message

            Let me start with a real simple question… who here has ever read or heard one of the parables of Jesus?  Okay, another question… which parable is your favorite? 

            “There once was a man who had two sons….”  “The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who….”  Parables are small stories with big messages.  Over the next few months of summer, on the Sundays when I am not a camp (next Sunday) or leading the Volunteer-In-Mission Team to Louisiana (the first two Sundays of July), I want to spend some time thinking about both the genius and the daring of the parables of Jesus. 

            So open your Bible… I mean it… pick up the Bible that is front of you and open it up to Matthew 25 on page 28 of the New Testament!  Keep it open.  We are going to do this together.

            But before we get started I want you to relax.  This is just a story.  We don’t have to ask if this really happened… if this is really true.  We just need to remember that it is a story.  We don’t have to get caught up in the discussion about whether or not we are to take this part of the Bible literally.  Jesus did not intend for anyone to think that his parables were factual. They are stories.  We don’t have to question whether or not it was God’s hand that wrote this down.  Parables are stories told by Jesus remembered by the listeners and written down by the Gospel writers..  So relax and enjoy the story.

            Let’s read it together… “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this.  Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise.”  Now, in good, ancient Jewish rabbinical and modern late-night talk show style, we should immediately be asking “And how foolish were they?!”    You see, there was a Jewish custom in Jesus’ day… the custom of midrash.  The rabbis would get together and join in the study of the scriptures by reading and discussing in order to better understand God’s claim on their lives.  They would fill in the gaps in the biblical story by asking questions.  This was so widely practiced in both the Jewish community and then in the early Christian church that Bible scholars today believe that some of what we know as our Bible can be traced back to this practice of midrash, when the rabbis or the early Christian leaders literally wrote their responses in the margins of the original texts and those marginal writings, known as “gloss,” became a part of the scriptures we read today.

            Okay, back to the parable… “… the kingdom of heaven will be like this.  Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise.  When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.”  Now, before we go any further, is anyone here an expert on the marriage customs of first-century Palestine?  Do we know why the bride was never mentioned?  Do we understand why the bridesmaids would be going out to meet the bridegroom in the first place?  Guess what?!  It doesn’t matter.  Remember, it’s a story and stories don’t have to be factual to be true! 

            Let’s keep going… “As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.” ------- It makes you wonder doesn’t it, if this is a story from the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine and these ten bridesmaids were the reason that the wine ran out in the first place!   Midrash can be fun! ------ Back to the actual text… “As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.   But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look!  Here is the bridegroom!  Come out to meet him.”  Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.” 

            Okay, up until now the parable hasn’t really been all that interesting.  At this point in the story the genius or daring of Jesus leaves a lot to be desired!  Sure, the groom is late and we might be speculating that he has gotten cold feet.  Sure, the bridesmaids are a mess, being hung-over and having slept in their dresses and all!  ----- Are you beginning to see how this midrash stuff works? You get to add to the story making it much more interesting!

But the real stuff of the parable is next… the stuff that makes us pay attention and nod our heads in agreement or shake our heads in dismay.  The story goes on and we see ourselves and maybe we get the point! 

Reading on… “The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ (Yeah, right – serves you right for being lazy in the first place!)  But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ (You think we’re stupid enough to share?) And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.(Yes, being perfect is paying off big time!)  Later the other bridesmaids came also saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’” 

Get the point?  The truth is, sometimes we don’t.  But parables, like jokes, really aren’t meant to be explained.  The truth is, parables call out to us to see ourselves in the story and find there our relationship with God.  We are invited to enter the story in the place and with the character that makes most sense to us. 

So let’s look at the two groups of bridesmaids.  Who here can identify with the plight of the ones who ran out of oil? ------------------  How might we describe them? --------------  How about the bridesmaids that came with more than enough oil?  Do we have anyone who identifies more strongly with them?  What words describe them? And what about the bridegroom?  Is there anyone here who finds themselves identifying with the bridegroom?  What is his role in this whole thing?

            In my mind, I can go lots of places with this story.  I can imagine the wise bridesmaids getting pretty upset with the foolish ones, saying things like “Why didn’t you plan ahead?  You had just as much time to get ready for this wedding as we did?  We even had to take our shoes and have them dyed to match our dresses and you showed up with shoes from Goodwill!  What makes you so special?  When will you ever take responsibility for yourselves?”  And of course, it is equally as easy to imagine the foolish bridesmaids saying things like “We’ll only ask this one time. We were so busy right up to the wedding – getting our nails done and all – that we didn’t have time to get to the store for more oil.  Besides, you are so much better at this sort of thing than we are.  Please, please, please, just this one time and we promise you that for the next wedding we’ll even take care of the bachelorette party! ”   And what is the bridegroom’s response to all this?  Well, I can imagine him saying, “We should have gone to Vegas!”

            But of course, the parable is a story.  There wasn’t really a wedding with ten bridesmaid, half of them with Type A personalities!  There wasn’t really a bridegroom who arrived late and then locked the doors at the reception.   The parable is simply a small story that Jesus told to make a big point.  Do we get the point?

            Barbara Brown Taylor, at a lecture that I heard several weeks ago in Nashville, suggests that for us to really understand these parables it is important for us to enter the story and move around in the story with the character that we most identify with AND THEN move to the opposite character.  If we find ourselves identifying with the wise bridesmaids, more than a little disgusted with the foolish five who are always unprepared, maybe we need to spend some time looking to see when and how in our own lives we have run out of oil.  And vice versa. If we find ourselves feeling sorry for ourselves because, once again, we didn’t plan ahead, we need to imagine ourselves with it all together in order to really get the meaning of the parable.  Taylor goes on to say that parables require something of the listener.  Parables require us to be transformed in the listening. 

                In Matthew’s Gospel, when the disciples asked Jesus why he was telling them these stories in the first place, he responded saying,  “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom.  You know how it works.  Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them.  Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely.  But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears.  That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight…. But you have God-blessed eyes – eyes that see!  And God-blessed ears – ears that hear!  A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had a chance.”

            We have been given God-blessed eyes and God-blessed ears.  We have a chance to see and hear and maybe even be transformed by the parables of Jesus.  Go home.  Read this story over and over again until it begins to make sense in your life. If you don’t have a Bible at home, take one home from here and bring it back next week.  Step into the parable through whatever door opens to you.  God is ready to nudge us all into lives transformed by God’s love.