What Do Bridesmaids Have to Do With It?

Sometimes the Biblical texts assigned for a particular day seem to go together easily, sometimes they don’t.  Our seminary intern,Val Veo, was faced with verses from the Older Testament book of Joshua and the Newer Testament parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids.  Read how she wove these together …

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Matthew 25:1-13

This morning’s older testament lesson contained the well-known proclamation by Joshua that “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” This is the self-same Joshua that led the post-slavery, post-wilderness Israelite people into the promised land and the famed battle of trumpets and marching at Jericho.

We enter the story long after this battle, long after all the battles that follow and the divvying up of the land and the rules for the different towns, to a time when Joshua was “old and well-advanced in years.” Joshua, about to die, gathered all the tribes and elders and leaders together, and pronounced to them what God had said to him.

The compilers of the lectionary have chosen to give you a truncated version of this speech that skips over about ten verses, but while those skipped verses may be a bit tedious to read aloud, they are not unimportant. In them, we hear that not only did God give the people Abraham, Isaac and the land of Canaan, but God brought them out of slavery, delivered them from the Egyptians, guided them out of the wilderness, gave them the land of the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and, of course, the citizens of Jericho. God turned the curse of a king into a blessing, and acted in response to their cries of anguish. As a result, in verse 13 (right before our lesson comes back in) God says “I have given you a land on which you had not laboured, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.” The people owe their income, their homes, their freedom, their very existence to God. The appropriate response to God’s action? “Now therefore revere the lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.”

So, is all of this a kind of divine guilt trip? Look! I’ve done this and this and this and this and now to repay me, you must abandon everything you’ve ever held sacred and follow me and only me and obey all of my rules and you have to do it with sincerity. What kind of a God demands such things? Is this a petty God? A legalistic God? A selfish God?

You can probably guess that I don’t think this text means to portray a petty God, and I don’t think this text calls for faithfulness out of obligation or a debt owed. At the heart of this story is a God quite the opposite: not petty, legalistic, or selfish, but rather engaged, committed and responsive. In the grand, cosmic scheme of things, it probably doesn’t make much difference who represented the different tribal factions and which plot of land they were assigned. And yet, this God was engaged in that process, in the daily living and working of the people. This God fed them, sheltered them, sent them leaders and legends to guide them; this God saw to their every need, and it is to this God that Joshua pledges his family and service along with all the people Israel.

Not to downplay the significance of Joshua’s proclamation at all, but the declaration is kind of the easy part. In the face of all the things that God has done and all the ways in which the Holy one is active and engaged in the lives of her people, in the face of God’s extravagant and unbounded love for creation, who wouldn’t say, “Yeah! That’s the God I want to serve!” The initial commitment, while it isn’t always simple and easy, is only the first step in what is a very long journey, as the bridesmaids in today’s parable found out.

In the ancient world, bridesmaids didn’t just stand up front holding flowers and looking pretty. An important part of weddings was the bridal procession that started at the home of the bride and traveled to the home of the groom where the celebration would take place. Before leaving the bride’s house to head to the party, however, the procession often had to wait – sometimes for quite a time – for the groom to finish negotiations with the bride’s family over dowries and presents and such things. It wasn’t until the groom emerged from those negotiations that the procession moved to his home and the party got started. These processions often took place at night, and the duty of the bridesmaids was to carry the lamps to light the way for the singing and dancing party-goers. This role was one of the most important in the wedding, and failure to live up to the obligation was regarded as a great insult to the newlyweds.

This story tells us that the failure of those “foolish” bridesmaids isn’t that they slept – all the bridesmaids slept (remember, the negotiations could take a long time, and there was a huge party waiting for them at the other end of this procession – I’d probably take a nap, too!). The error of the foolish bridesmaids was that they didn’t bring enough oil to light their lamps throughout the procession. The story doesn’t tell us why they didn’t bring extra oil – maybe they had a very good reason for not having the oil – just that these young women were not prepared. Oh, they had shown up on time and probably were properly dressed and remembered their lamps and were ready to march. They would have been ready for the bridegroom, had he not been delayed.

Edmund Steimle, seminary professor and the Lutheran voice of the mid-twentieth century radio program The Protestant Hour, suggests that the question of this parable is not “Are you ready for the bridegroom?” but rather, “Are you ready for a long delay?” Just like Joshua, when asked whom he would serve answered enthusiastically that he would serve God, the bridesmaids probably responded to the invitation to play this important role in the wedding with an enthusiastic yes! And they got the big stuff down: the dress, the shoes, the time, the lamps. The initial commitment was easy and probably exciting; unfortunately, the culmination of the celebration required a long wait and probably a good deal of tedium, and of course some extra oil for their lamps.

This same God to whom Joshua pledged himself has gathered us together into community, nurtured and sustained us, and this God calls upon us for our service. Pray and act for peace, seek out injustices and strive against them, work to build community in your churches, your cities, your nations and your world. These are causes we can enthusiastically agree to. Yes, we want peace! Yes, we want justice! Yes, we want community! Their realization, however, is not instantaneous, and in agreeing to working for them we must also be prepared for a long, long wait. The oft-cited quotation this week from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” It is, indeed, long, and we sometimes grow weary of praying the same prayers again and again, not because our yearning for their fulfillment has dulled but because it seems we have been praying for them for so long, so very long.

Our wait, though, is not without hope. This God, the God of Joshua, the God who nurtured and sustained the people Israel, will join the work of our hands and the prayers of our hearts with the hands and hearts of those who share in our journey. This God hears the cries of the anguished and intervenes on behalf of the oppressed and exploited. This God is engaged with the world, and committed to the well-being of the creation. Even when our wait seems stretch without end, it is this God who will answer our call. Amen.