by Demi Prentiss

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells the story about the wise and foolish bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom (Mt 25:1-13). The five wise young women brought their lamps and flasks of oil. The foolish young women brought only their lamps. When the bridegroom is late in arriving, the five with no flasks of oil realize their lamps will go out soon. While they go to purchase more oil, the bridegroom arrives, enters the hall with the five lamp-bearing bridesmaids, and locks the door behind them. When the bridesmaids arrive with more oil, they are refused entry, and the bridegroom says he does not know them.

Hearing this parable, I’m worried about the oil. How much might the wedding party need? Why wouldn’t the wise bridesmaids share? How many lamps were actually needed? Why didn’t they extinguish all but one lamp, so their oil would go farther? Where were the oil-less bridesmaids going to find oil in the middle of the night? And as Diana Butler Bass comments in her weekly post, the wedding described sounds more like a parody, “the worst wedding ever”: no bride, no guests, and a rude, tardy groom berating the bride’s attendants and locking his party guests inside the hall.

Perhaps the parable is not about the oil, about being prepared, about being in control of the details even when the unexpected happens. Maybe the foolishness of the oil-less bridesmaids is not that they failed to bring extra oil. Maybe their foolishness lay in allowing a lack determine their actions, in seeing scarcity controlling their response.

What might have happened if, when their oil threatened to run out, the bridesmaids had decided that their being present for the groom’s arrival was more important than how many lights greeted him?  What if, instead of more light, they had offered a song, or a dance, or beautiful flowers? What if they had focused on the resources they did have, rather than what they did not have?

What might happen in our own lives – especially when we are facing obstacles or lack of resources or rejection – if we could sharpen our awareness of what we do have. Does concern over what we lack prevent us from being present and offering who we are?  What might God do in us and through us when we recognize the gifts at hand? Might what we perceive as lack of resources turn out to be a gift?