Texts: Matthew 25: 1-13; John 21: 1-14
“Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning”
You may or may not see it. You may not notice it Sunday by Sunday. But every time we gather in this space, a small flame burns just below the pulpit for the duration of our services. It’s a peace lamp, and it burns with a small amount of oil that’s placed in the hollow of the lamp long before you arrive, and sometimes long before I arrive. Bill Slivinski rises early, and he comes into the Meetinghouse when the light is still faint. He offers a prayer, and then he strikes a match and lights the lamp. Usually it burns unobtrusively in this little corner, a way of symbolizing who and what we’re called to be as a community, a way of reminding us who and what we’re called to be as individuals. Every week, Bill Slivinski helps to keep the lamp of our community trimmed and burning.
But it reminds us of so much more. In the Bible, the world of the Spirit is signified by a flame. I believe such a Spirit exists, a generous life force, a flame if you will, residing at the core of the universe. It’s a Spirit that goes by many names, a trustworthy and gentle flickering of love that wishes us well, and that intends us to flourish and to thrive. What’s more, I believe that same Spirit, that same flame, exists not only outside of us but inside of us as well. It exists as the deepest and truest part of who we are as human beings, calling us toward moments of kindness and compassion with one another, awakening what we call a moral conscience, stirring us toward lives of connection and responsibility. It’s possible to nurture that aspect of who we are, to care for and to stimulate that portion of our lives – the way we would if we were tending a fire, stirring it, keeping it well fueled, protecting it from the wind and the cold.
But I also believe it’s possible to lose that capacity. It’s possible to ignore that inner core within ourselves and within the world. It’s possible to let the flame go out. When we do, it renders us shrunken and cold, small of mind and small of heart. When we do, it renders us passive, docile, acquiescent, and oblivious. Too often, when the flame dies, we become lonely, depressive, and anxious, trapped in a narcissistic shell of materialism devoid of meaning. It’s possible to ignore the life of the Spirit, but when we do, a part of our very humanity slips away as well.
We nurture that flame through prayer. We nurture it through study. We nurture it through friendships, and connecting to the natural world. We nurture it through bodily practices, like walking or running or playing a sport. We nurture it through public advocacy and a commitment to the least of these. And we nurture it through creative expressions of art. I wonder how you nurture the flame of your spirit.
I love the symbol of that lamp, and that tiny flame, burning at the front of our Meetinghouse. It turns out a lot of blues musicians loved that symbol too. Beginning at least as early as 1928, but likely long before that, some of the blues masters began recording versions of the song we heard Dan sing earlier: “Keep your lamp trimmed and burning, keep your lamp trimmed and burning, keep your lamp trimmed and burning, this old world is almost gone, this old world is almost gone.” Throughout the sermon this morning, I’m going to invite Dan to sing that refrain a number of times, and I’ll invite all of you to sing along as well. It will be a way of inviting us all to keep the lamp of our spiritual lives trimmed and burning, alive to the Spirit of Life that animates us, alive to the Spirit of Love that connects us, alive to the Spirit of Hope and Joy that calls to us from other people, and from animals, and from the earth itself. Today will serve as a call to keep our lamps trimmed and burning. Let’s sing that refrain together now.
(Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning…)
Consider the blues. Once upon a time, gods and giants walked the earth, and they possessed names like Blind Willie Johnson, and Mississippi Fred McDowell and the Rev. Gary Davis. Many were blind, but they possessed a clarity of vision about human beings and the world that was nearly biblical in its expansiveness and depth. They knew what it meant to remain morally and spiritually alert in the world, for in the land where the blues began, failure to stay alert might cost you your life. And they knew what it meant to nurture the light of their soul, for in the land where the blues began that light was too often extinguished – through hard labor, through prison, through poverty, through violence. And they knew what it was to hope and dream for a new world, for the old world, the one that ensnared and degraded them – that world just couldn’t stand long. That old world would soon be gone. Here and there, now and then, I suppose that old world hasshifted. Here and there and now and then, that new world hasblazed forth. But the old ways have a way of reasserting themselves. That old world, that old dispensation, where the value of a human life is determined on the basis of race or class or gender or religion or – this must be said as Fourth of July celebrations are prepared – on the basis of nationality….that old world, that old dispensation, has a way of reemerging. Generation by generation, the task of human beings is to create the conditions for the emergence of that new world, the one that prophets and messiahs, dreamers and blues singers gave voice to. We can hear them still. We can hear them singing….
(Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning….)
The song, of course, comes from the parable we heard earlier, one that Jesus tells toward the end of the Gospel of Matthew. The parable itself urges listeners and readers to keep their lamps trimmed and burning, but it does so through a trick. “Keep awake,” Jesus tells his listeners, words that apply to readings and interpretations of the parable itself, as well as realities that people are likely to encounter throughout life. The first and most important meaning of keeping one’s lamp trimmed and burning is actually one of reading carefully, interpreting the story against the grain.
Consider the details of the story, from which the song emerges. Ten young women wait outside a gate for a bridegroom to arrive, at which point a celebration, a party, will begin. The groom is late, very late, and the wait gets long, and the hours slide by. Five among the waiting party simply don’t have enough oil, and the lamps that they’re using for light go out. And so they slip away to find more oil, in order to reignite their flames. While they’re gone, the bridegroom arrives, to find five individuals with their lamps lit, ready for the party to follow. They enter the house, the doors close, and those who went to replenish their supply of oil are left outside. When they try to get inside, no one opens the door, and the groom is brusque with them. “Get away, for I never knew you,” he says.
The meaning of the parable has been clear to many, so clear that few people who read it bother to think about it. The bridegroom is Jesus. The waiting bridesmaids are the followers of Jesus. To sing “keep your lamp trimmed and burning” is to be ready for the moment when Jesus arrives, whether literally, as some believe, or metaphorically, as others have understood it. To be found unprepared is to be left out in the dark, disinvited from the celebration, and disowned by the host. Many have understood that it implies God’s abandonment of those who were unprepared. Others even believe it implies a fate of eternal damnation. On that understanding, keeping one’s lamp trimmed and burning is a high stakes enterprise.
Except questions keep forming as long as we linger with the details of the parable. Why don’t the five bridesmaids who possess enough oil share what they have? Wouldn’t that be in keeping with the words that Jesus has spoken all along – it is more blessed to give than to receive, for example? Don’t they behave in a way that seems, upon reflection, a little greedy, lacking in generosity, lacking in thoughtfulness? Not only that, after five of their companions disappear to find more oil, why are the remaining ones, the so called “wise” ones, oblivious to the outcome of the evening for their companions. Why do none of them insist on waiting until the others return? The so-called wise individuals seem uniquely self-absorbed, concerned solely for their own fate. To put it in contemporary terms, they behave like those whisked into a club to sip Hennessy and champagne, while the common folk wait outside. They don’t seem wise so much as privileged and entitled.
And what about the five who run out of oil? Don’t you feel a little sympathetic to their plight? Oil was a precious commodity, after all, and perhaps they simply didn’t have enough money to buy it. Or perhaps they simply miscalculated how much they would need. But why should they be punished for not having enough when it was the groom who was tardy, not them?
And then of course there’s the groom, late to his own party. Why does he divide the women the way he does? Why does he create a series of expectations and then punish those who fail to live up to those expectations? Wouldn’t courtesy demand that he wait a little before starting the party so that the absent bridesmaids might return? Wouldn’t ordinary decency suggest that when they did return, he open the door for them? Is there not something cruel about the way he treats the bridesmaids who have little? He’s vindictive, punitive, inflexible, exclusionary, divisive and mean, just the opposite of the figure we encounter in Jesus.
And yet generations of interpreters have identified the bridegroom as…Jesus. Those same interpreters have encouraged us to believe that this is how God will treat us if we don’t keep our lamps trimmed and burning. Is it any wonder that so many people come to distrust that God? Is it any wonder that so many people feel such animosity toward churches, when the God we worship has qualities like those of the bridegroom?
Jesus tells his story, but there’s something so deeply off about it that it’s as though he’s playing with his listeners, toying with his readers. Or perhaps training them, training us, to keep our wits about us, to keep our mental lamps trimmed and burning. With those sly bluesmen, Jesus stands beside the story inviting us to see through the appearances, to see and interpret past the veil. If you listen carefully, you can hear him singing:
(Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning…)
What would he have us see? What would he have us know? Perhaps the meaning is this: don’t follow the wrong god home. Don’t be lured by the power of the bridegroom, don’t be cowed by him, don’t be seduced by his title, his position, his wealth, his power. Don’t fall for it. Be alert to the divisive tactics the bridegroom practices. Be mindful of the ways he excludes those who find themselves in need, shutting them out, driving them away. Guard yourselves against the self-absorption and greed of the so-called “wise,” and learn to see through their self-justifications. Begin to imagine the lives of others, and begin to identify the mechanisms by which some people are marginalized. Human beings are creatures who worship, who will spend their days and nights waiting for the appearance of one who will invite them into the banquet feast, into the scene of splendor they’ve been dreaming of. Perhaps the meaning of the parable is this: Don’t be seduced by such blandishments. Don’t follow the wrong god home.
It’s no accident that in the previous chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus warns about false prophets and false messiahs, who are all too eager to seduce people with their promises. “Do not believe them,” Jesus counsels his followers. The parable of the ten bridesmaids follows soon after, as if to test his listeners, as if to demonstrate just how easy it is to be seduced by wealth, by power, and by arbitrary social rules. The parable, I would suggest, is a way of saying: “Do you see how this works? Do you see how easily you slide into the assumption that God, or morality, or the right and the good, is somehow identified with positions of authority, with money, or with social belonging? Stay awake. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, because as often as not, those things are an impediment to the life of the Spirit, an impediment to the sort of love that Jesus came to demonstrate. It’s so easy to be seduced by false messiahs, to follow the wrong god home. Just look at the way we’ve been conditioned to read this story.
But it’s also not an accident that in the very next chapter, a scene unfolds quite a bit like the parable of the ten bridesmaids. Shortly before his arrest, Jesus asks his disciples to stay awake, and to pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemene. He asks them, to borrow a phrase, to keep their lamps trimmed and burning that night. Instead, like the bridesmaids, they fall asleep. And then recall those who do finally show up in the garden, late at night, after a long delay: soldiers and the temple police, come to arrest Jesus. The absent bridegroom of the earlier parable, it would seem, is most closely identified with the arresting authorities – not Jesus.
You know how the story unfolds – the arrest, the crucifixion, the resurrection. But then there’s that beautiful scene of reunion that we read in John’s Gospel, where Jesus does precisely the opposite of the bridegroom in his story. Instead of berating his disciples, he loves them. Instead of excoriating them for their failures, he comes to where they are, and embraces them. Instead of excluding them from his life, he cooks them a meal. And get this: there’s a little fire burning where he is. He’s lit it, for them. Is it one more way of saying, “Don’t let your light be extinguished?” Is it one more way of saying, “Let your light so shine”? Is it not one more way of saying: There exists a Spirit in the world, one that wishes you well, one that wishes your flourishing. There exists a Spirit within you that connects to the deepest parts of who you are, and that connects you to other people. There exists such a Spirit within and without you. Trust it. Nourish it. Cultivate it. Care for it. It will help you see through the deceptions of the false prophets. It will help you unmask the idolatry of power, prestige, and authority. It will help you to bring a new world into being.
If we listen carefully, is he not singing that old, old song?
Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning, Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning, Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning, This Old World Will Soon Be Gone.
