November 8, 2026
I felt for a moment this morning like we had exited the linear version of time.
If that sounds a little crazy to you, or if you wonder whether I might have found some mushrooms on the side of 81 on the way up here, let me explain. As our children took up the offering and as our choir sang the songs of old, I thought for a moment, "Look at this. Past, present, future, all existing here at once. The kingdom of God is like this."
In Jesus' parable this morning, he tells a story of people being ready or not being ready. There are a lot of ways you could go looking at this parable. Maybe we don't share as much as we think we should. I don't know. The wise ones didn't share with the unwise ones, but I don't think that's the point of this parable. Instead, Jesus is talking about a readiness both for right now and for a time to come.
The community in which the Gospel of Matthew was written down was in a weird place. It was a transitional moment for the church overall, a transition away from an expectation that Jesus really is going to be back right about now. Okay, right about now. Okay, right about now.
They knew his return was imminent, and they lived with that expectation, but it kept not happening. It wasn't like we've seen in modern times, where somebody says, "Oh, I've read through the whole Bible, and I've come up with the exact day and time that Jesus is going to return." Instead, it was an expectation that it could happen at any moment, because Jesus had told them it could happen at any moment.
But the temple had been destroyed. Wasn't Jesus supposed to come back before this happened? Weren't we supposed to know that he was here? The community was starting to wonder what was going on.
And this story, in that context, speaks to a community in the midst of a deep anxiety about what is not yet and what has been. They don't know what's going on, and it tells them, you don't get that. Instead, be ready. Have enough oil. Make sure that you are prepared, so that when the shout goes out, "Behold, the bridegroom is here," you're ready to go.
Because that shout might come at any time. Not because Jesus is going to come back during our lifetimes. Why do we think our lifetimes are more important than the lifetimes of any of those who have gone before us in the last 2,000 years? But because that shout is coming up every day.
You see, Jesus tells this parable not just about some future event that will happen maybe during our lifetime and maybe not, but about our very lives. Jesus tells us today how to be stewards not just of our possessions, not just of our gifts, but stewards of our time.
In his parables, Jesus often says the kingdom of God is like a feast, like a wedding banquet. That's exactly what this parable is about as well, except it's about entering the wedding banquet. They're going out. They're waiting for the bridegroom. And what the bridegroom is coming for is the wedding banquet. And it says he was delayed. Two thousand years later, that delay seems to carry a little bit more weight.
But Jesus goes on in his teachings, next week and the following week, to keep talking about the kingdom of God. In a couple of weeks, though we're not going to study that gospel lesson, he tells the parable of the judging of the nations. And he says to them, "Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done also for me."
Throughout the centuries, the Church has interpreted that to say that Jesus doesn't return one time somewhere in the future, but that Jesus is always appearing to us. If only we have eyes to see. If only we have ears to hear. Behold, the bridegroom. He's here.
But do we live with that kind of expectation? Do we live expecting the call to go out? Because the trumpets that herald Jesus' coming might not be quite as perceptible to ears that are stuffed with social media, ears that are stuffed with the news, ears that are stuffed with all kinds of other things.
Last Sunday on the way up here, we stopped at a red light. Sitting there, one more light and then we're on the interstate. There's a man holding a sign: "I'm a carpenter, fallen on hard times, need help."
I looked over. I looked at him. I nodded. I wasn't ready to help. And Oliver looked over and said, "We should help that man."
Then the light turned green. At that point you're doing the calculations in your head, at least I am. Is it more dangerous for me to stay stopped and invite him to come over while there's traffic moving, or to just get moving? But I had plenty of time from the time I saw it.
A carpenter, y'all. Need help.
We can get focused on these kinds of parables that talk about the end times, or seemingly the second coming of Jesus, and think, "What does it mean for then?" But what if each time the trumpet sounds, we are being invited into that banquet? We are being invited in, but are we ready? Are we ready to hear? Are we ready to listen? Are we ready to steward our time, not for our own benefit, but for the kingdom of God?
This is one of the challenges of doing stewardship. What do we do with God's stuff? Time is also God's. Do we offer our time? Do we take the time to say, "Yes, I can help right now"?
This doesn't mean we have to do everything all the time. But we have to be ready for the call of Jesus, the herald trumpet saying, "Behold, the bridegroom," at any moment, at every moment.
It's not just the person on the side of the road needing help. It may be someone inviting you over for dinner, and gosh, you've had a long week, and do you really want to get out of your pajamas this weekend? But then you go, and you remember why you like to go to things like that.
The call of Jesus Christ interrupts our lives, interrupts our time, and calls us to something different. And it is a call that goes down through the generations.
The bridegroom was delayed, Jesus says. And we think about who has answered that call in our lives, who reached out and helped us, who invited us into the banquet of the kingdom of heaven down through the ages. Those who sat in this choir loft before this particular iteration of the choir. Those who have taught our kids. Maybe even those who taught Sally, before Sally taught our kids.
Each generation, the psalmist says, has a responsibility to take a view that moves beyond just this moment. We are called to live in a paradox. Right now the call of Christ may be going out, but we also need to plant some small seeds. I didn't ask Sally to leave this up here, but I'm glad she did, because we don't know how long those trees might take to grow and bear fruit.
There's a parable that says what a blessing it is when an old man plants a tree whose shade he may never sit under. That is also a stewardship of our time: using it now, knowing that we may not benefit, but that others will.
The trumpets continue to sound. They continue to invite us to listen, to know that there is so much we don't know, but we know what we can do right now. We have an opportunity always before us, an invitation, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and we're willing to make the time.
It may be friendship. It may be parenthood. It may be childhood. It may be any number of things that we're invited to spend our time doing, rather than what we do to pass the time.
Do we live so that our time is used intentionally? Sometimes that may mean time to get away. I need to go spend some time by myself to reconnect with God for myself. But other times we may need to use that time not in the ways that we intended, not in the ways that we thought we would, but in the ways that God is giving us a gentle nudge, in the ways that the voice of a child says, or a voice from the past says.
Because the beauty of the kingdom of God is that once we get in that door, it's not just the people we expect to see there, who are still living and dwelling among us. On the other side of that door we hear the voices of those who have gone before us. When we answer the trumpet's call, we will commune with the saints, and not just the saints who lived a thousand or two thousand years ago, but the saints who taught us, the saints who cared for us, who made it so that the news of God, the story of God, might be passed down generation by generation by generation.
Whatever it is that we do to answer that trumpet call, we walk through that door again.
Do you have a voice in your head sometimes? Not that kind of voice. The voice of a grandparent, or an aunt, or an uncle, or the voice of a teacher or a friend that says, "Hey, I'm here."
That's what we see when we walk in the kingdom of God. It is far more than just what is right here and right now. That is the beauty of what we have already experienced here this morning. We can see those kids start to learn what they can say, how they can be part of the worship, while we also listen to the songs of old that our parents' parents sang to us. God can transport us into the past and into the future all at the same time, so that we might truly know what the kingdom of God is like.
Let's keep our ears open. Let's have eyes to see, so that we might know what it is that God is up to in the world and be able to respond where we are called. Do what we are able. Slowly but surely we'll get a bigger picture. We'll get to know a little bit more.
The reason the bridesmaids can't share the oil is not because we're not supposed to share with each other, y'all. It's because it is within our own hearts that we refill. We have been listening in the past so that we can hear in the future. It is that spiritual discipline of being attentive to what God may be saying in this moment that will help us be ready to hear it again in the future.
Let us continually be refilling our oil, listening for the word of God, looking for the light of God, being prepared to answer that call. Amen.