Dancing in the Dark

READ HERE! Matthew 25:1-13

If I had been one of those “bridezilla” brides, my wedding would have been considered a disaster. It rained the whole day. The chicken was dry. We ran out of White Zinfandel. My "mistress of ceremonies” got drunk on that White Zinfandel before we even entered the building, and one of the groomsmen accidentally drove over another groomsman’s foot with his car. One of my bridesmaids burnt her dress with a too-hot iron, and my siblings started a minor food fight with that same dried out chicken. The ceremony was way too long, complete with hymns and songs and poetry and reflections and communion. I didn’t have enough money to pay for the flowers, and my parents had brought up my dress from Indianapolis, only to unwrap it and find that it was missing some pretty important pieces. People got lost on dusty back roads trying to find the reception. The night ended with all of Dan’s friends skinny dipping in Lake Michigan, a clump of white wedding cake in my hair, and everyone taking home these tiny little pine seedlings that wouldn’t survive the weekend. Seriously, we handed out over a hundred of those things, and not one of them survived.

It was one of the happiest days of my life. 

Everything, it seemed, went wrong that day. We’d made all these intricate plans, and things still fell apart, but somehow, it was amazing. Somehow, we threw a great party.

 I was twenty-two, broke, and a poetry major. Dan was twenty-three, also broke, and a religious studies major. We had no idea what we were getting in to, we were stepping in to the great unknown, into the deep dark, and we wanted whatever that was with all our hearts.

Our plan after the wedding was to housesit for a family who was taking an extended trip to Kenya for three months, then camp out at Dan’s family’s cottage for the summer. And that was the extent of it. We had no savings. We had no master plan. We were just going to figure it out. And we did, I mean, sort of. We got a lot of help from Dan’s parents, but we figured it out. We made it work. For sixteen years we navigated moves and degrees, home ownership and births, mental health issues, unemployment and shelter dogs and backyard pet burials. 

And then things got hard. Things got pretty…dark. We separated for over a year. I lived in a crappy apartment that I couldn’t afford while Dan juggled his job and the house and primary responsibility for the boys. Finally, we met with a mediator. It was time. She was going to help us through the divorce process. We wanted to be fair. We wanted to do what was best for the boys under the circumstances. Dan wrote her a check for $300, just for that first fifteen minute meeting, and as he signed his name and slid it across the table to her, all I could think was ‘No.’ “No.” “No.” I don’t want this. What is going on here? Why am I here? How did we get here? What have I done to my life?

We left the meeting in silence. A few days later, I asked Dan to go with me to some marriage counseling. He didn’t see the point of it. He didn’t have much hope about it. But he said yes. I’m not sure why. Maybe just curiosity. But he showed up to that first appointment. We sat in silence across from each other as we stared at our shoes and waited for the therapist to call us back to her office. And then we just kept coming back. We spent a gazillion dollars on therapy copays and babysitters and Starbucks drinks so that we’d have something to hold through all the hard awkwardness. I’d come over to the house to help put the kids to bed and then we’d sit together on the porch, in the dark, sometimes talking about hard things, but mostly just sitting, wringing our hands, staring at our feet and the cracks in the cement steps. We spent hours just sitting in the dark, not saying anything. One night I timed it. We spent forty-eight minutes straight in silence, not saying a word to each other. We sat in the dark. We didn’t know what to do or where to go or what to say. We just sat there, breathing together. Silent. And then I’d go back to my apartment and he’d go back into the house and I’d come back the next night and we’d do it all over again.

We didn’t have hope. We didn’t have light. We had no oil left in our lamps. So we just sat. We sat and we waited. 

I’ve always been the kind of person who runs on fumes. I am an expert procrastinator. I’ve pulled all the all-nighters in college and I wait until the last minute to finish my sermons. I don’t plan ahead. I’m not one of those moms on the playground who packs the extra snacks and the water bottles and those little bottles of hand sanitizer. I always wait until the gas light comes on, and stays on for awhile, before I fill up my tank. I let my house get filthy and I let the laundry pile up until it’s an emergency and it’s midnight and I’m waiting for the oh-so-important Spiderman socks and the Ninja Turtle t-shirt to be done in the dryer. I usually spend my paycheck in the first week and then we live off of rice and ketchup packets the next. Ok, I exaggerate a little. I do get the work done, eventually. My kids haven’t had rice and ketchup for dinner, at least, not in awhile. And anyway, it was their idea.

So we’ve got these ten bridesmaids. Ten young girls in their fanciest dresses, their hair perfectly set, their feet crammed in the daintiest of shoes. Ten girls waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom.  They’re waiting for the haggling over the gifts to be done. Waiting for the groom and the bride’s relatives to come to some sort of agreement. The night begins with anticipation and excitement. It’s a celebration!  A party! But then the waiting comes. And more waiting. Ten anxious and excited young girls get tired, and they fall asleep.  The bridegroom is delayed. And the excitement dwindles. And the doubt comes in. Will he ever come? Where is he? What has taken him so long? The lamps grow dim and the darkness descends. 

Imagine the deep darkness of a town before electricity and streetlights, before light pollution and headlights, before the glow of television and computer screens through living room windows. Imagine the heavy, deep darkness. The girls’ eyes are straining to decipher every shadow in the darkness, their ears aching over every crack of a limb underfoot, every shift in the wind that might indicate that their groom is coming. 

But their limbs grow heavy and their eyes grow weak. It’s too much to ask that a group of young girls stay awake any longer. 

And they all fall asleep.

And the bridegroom comes and they all startle awake, scrambling to smooth their dresses, tuck their hair back with their bobby pins, and grab their lamps, ready to escort the groom to the party. 

And five have enough light. And five do not. 

Five planned ahead. They were responsible. They double check their blindspots and they research all the car warrantees and they save for college. They have retirement plans and endowments and use day planners and get their taxes done on time. They have contingency plans. They hire wedding coordinators and serve better wine and would never, ever, offer their guests a dried out chicken breast.

But five don’t. Five are in the dark. Five don’t have enough. They’re contemplating divorce or they’re living on food stamps or they have these great jobs with great benefits but just can’t make themselves happy anymore. They’ve made mistakes. They’ve hurt each other. They’re sitting on cold porch steps in silence, waiting for the next hard thing to be said out loud. They don’t know what is going to happen next, they have no light with which to see what’s ahead, so they wait it out, or rush recklessly into the next thing, or scramble around in all the wrong places to find what they need.

I think there are lots of us, maybe even more than half of us, who have found themselves out of oil, who have found themselves in the dark. Sometimes it’s our fault. Sometimes it’s not. But we come to a point in our lives when we’ve got nothing left. We’re all out of whatever it is that we need to give us light at that moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that not all of us can be the wise bridesmaids.

Some of us just aren’t built that way. 

Some of us are just foolish. 

Some of us do our best to conserve our oil and we still run out.

Some of us just recklessly use it all up all at once.

Some of us had our oil taken from us.

Some of us never had any to begin with.

Some of us wasted it. Poured it on the ground. Let it soak into the soil.

Some of us planned and planned and thought we’d have all we needed and then we suddenly find ourselves without.

Some of us are going to run out of oil.

I am no wise bridesmaid.

I’m wandering in the dark.

I’ve run out of oil and my dress is wrinkled and covered in dried leaves and moss and my hair is ratty and I have no idea where I’m going.

But you know what? 

The wise ones have it a little bit wrong, too.

Maybe they have it all together and they have planned for the future and they’re the patient ones who brought the steam iron and the extra bobby pins and their faith is just right and they can stand up and say the Nicene Creed without flinching over the virgin birth, but they, too, have forgotten where light comes from.

The wise are busy - busy making plans and lists and lists of plans, busy plugging every possible hole and making every possible contingency. They worry about filling the pews and printing the programs. They worry about having enough pot roast at the pot luck and enough bakers for the bake sales. And these are all really important things. Boy, do we need those wise bridesmaids. 

But that’s not where our light comes from. 

Most scholars claim that this is a simple “parousia” parable - a parable about the end times and the waiting for when Jesus comes back. Jesus is praising the wise ones and rebuking the foolish ones. Matthew wants to tell the Christians who are still waiting for Jesus to come back to wait a little bit longer, to be ready, to do good works and fill up their lamps with love and kindness and faith and justice. And that’s all good and well. It’s great even. It’s wise. We should do these things for as long as we can. 

But it's been 2000 years, and we’re still waiting. And it’s still dark. And now the parable means something else for us. It means that we’re all running out of oil. We’ve all started to forget where our light comes from, and we’re all running low, and we’re all rushing from one thing to the next trying to keep our lamps full, trying to do the right thing and say the right words and come up with the perfect program that will finally get people in these doors. 

But I don’t think it’s about all the stuff, or the plans or our perfection. It’s not about the oil anymore.

Maybe it’s not about having light at all. Maybe it simply about being able to dance in the dark. Being able to trust that the Bridegroom is there, leading you, instead of the other way around.

Jesus has been gone for 2000 years. And he’s coming. Someday. 

Or. 

Maybe he’s already here, dancing with us in the dark.

What if the bridesmaids’ - and our - biggest mistake is that we think we need oil to make light. Maybe we really just need to trust that the bridegroom is the light, and has been the light all along. 

Can we trust Jesus enough to dance with him - even in the dark?

I’m out of oil, but I’m not going back in to town. 

I'm not going to get stuck waiting in the checkout line at the 24 hour convenience store.

I’m not going to miss it when the groom comes by.

I’m going to sit here in the dark, and feel it deep into my bones.

I’m going to wander and feel lost and a little bit scared in this heavy darkness.

I’m going to breathe it in. I’m not leaving this place to find some artificial light to light my way.

I’m going to stumble over tree roots and uneven sidewalks and fear all that unknown all around me. 

I’m going to sit in the dark with the one I’ve hurt and I’m going to wait and listen and hold the space. I’m going to be present for when the light shows up.

Jesus said he was coming, and I guess he still is. 

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to dance in the dark.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep searching for the bridegroom even though I have no idea where I’m going. I’m going to follow the glimmer of the ones ahead of me, the ones who did bring enough oil, and I’m going to make it to the party.

I’m going to sit on the porch in silence with Dan for hours and hours until we work this out. I’m going to wait in the dark. The light will come. It will. It may not look like a perfectly repaired marriage or a full sanctuary. It may not erase all of your mistakes and your lack of planning and the big iron mark burnt into the back of your bridesmaid’s dress. The chicken will still be dry and the wine will still be cheap. But it’ll be a party. A really great party. We’ll smile so much our cheeks will hurt. We’ll pose for pictures and plant dying saplings and we’ll go skinny dipping in the dark. We'll step into the unknown without a plan, but with hope. It’ll be the start of a long, hard, mistake-filled, joyful, life-giving relationship.

So for those of us who are a little bit foolish, for those of us who have run out of oil, can we learn to dance in the dark? And if we can’t dance, can we, at least, just sit and wait and watch? 

So that when the bridegroom comes, we’re not off on some wild goose chase for some fake light. We’re out there, wandering, searching for God, dancing in the dark because we know that we’re already in, we’re already at the party, and there’s been light all around us this whole time.

Thanks be to God.

And if that sermon didn't do it for ya, go here: