I preached this sermon on Sunday, November 8, 2026 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 25:1-13, the parable of the wise & foolish bridesmaids.
I have to say, I feel bad for the foolish bridesmaids in today’s parable. Perhaps it’s because I, too, know what it feels like to stumble around in the dark fretting over the unfinished things on my to-do list. That’s most days of my life!
I want to say come on now, Jesus. So they forgot to bring some extra oil for their lamp and then it goes out. Is that a good reason for them to miss the party altogether? Maybe the Bridegroom should’ve been on time for his own wedding!
But so it is. You’ve heard me talk about Scary Jesus and Laughing Jesus, but I feel like this week we’re meeting Cranky Jesus. He’s tired of hearing any of our excuses, and I’ll warn you that he’s going to stick around with us for the next few weeks of gospel readings.
But nonetheless I empathize with those hapless bridesmaids and their empty lamps, especially because of something that happened to me several years ago.
Back while I was spending some of my seminary studies in England, I had a surprising opportunity come about. Along with some classmates, I attended the national pilgrimage event at the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Walsingham is a holy place in England where the Virgin Mary, as tradition goes, appeared to a medieval English noblewoman and instructed the woman to build an exact copy of the holy house in Nazareth. The location, not too far from the city of Norwich, has been popular with pilgrims for hundreds of years.
Now this national pilgrimage I went to included thousands of people from across the UK and beyond, and yet, because a friend happened to know the organizers, they asked me to be one of four people to fulfill a very special role: I had to march in the procession through the town carrying an oil-fueled torch called a flambeau.
Friends, they probably should not have picked me. I am not great fire–something always goes wrong. And I had no earthly idea what I was doing. First, they put the four of us in these big ornate vestments and then told us to go wait in the church for further instructions. But somehow we missed our cue and the director of ceremonies, who was rather cranky himself, came tearing down the aisle towards us, yelling and red-faced: “where are my flambeaus?!”
You know how Amos talks today about fleeing from a lion and being met by a bear instead? Yeah, this flambeau was shaking in his boots.
So we jumped up and got in line and made our way out through the town. And it went smoothly for a while, until about halfway through the procession I looked up and realized, with horror, that my torch had gone out. The other three were fine, so maybe I’d run out of oil. Of course!
I half-expected them, at the end, to shut the door to the festivities and say, “truly, I do not know you.” Thankfully, they didn’t.
But here’s the important thing: despite my utter failure at flambeau-ing, I just kept going. And it was still one of the most sacred experiences of my life. My lamp might have been out but I was surrounded by crowds of people who were themselves on fire, praying and praising God and really meaning it with their whole hearts. I was not perfect, but the moment was.
As I was reflecting on this experience, it made me think in a different way about those foolish bridesmaids: what if their biggest mistake was not so much that they forgot the oil, but that they wasted time running out to find more when it was time to go to the feast? In other words, what if their quest to be perfect kept them from being part of something truly good?
How many times in my life have I felt like a failed flambeau, trying my best but never quite having it all together? Have you ever felt that way?
Did you ever believe that if you could just check off ALL the things on your to-do list, if you could clean the house perfectly and cook dinner perfectly and manage all of your relationships perfectly and be the perfect spouse and the perfect employee and pray perfectly and fight for justice perfectly and look perfect and be perfect, then maybe you would finally deserve to be part of the party that everyone else seems to be having?
It’s exhausting! It’s impossible!
Because most days I do fall asleep without the oil stocked up. Most days I do feel a little bit foolish.
And Jesus knows that. He sees that. He loves us passionately anyway. He dies and lives again for all us who are just stumbling around in the dark.
So maybe the message of this parable is: do not waste your life trying to be perfect. Do not miss the party to which you are invited and expected, lamp or no lamp. Come to the door before it’s too late, rumpled hair and sleepy eyes, lacking the necessary provisions. Do we not trust that the Bridegroom will have more than enough of what we need?
If I look for grace in the story, as I always try to do, I think Jesus wants us to know that the greatest mistake we can make would be to miss the haphazard celebration that is life; or to pull out of the great procession moving towards the Kingdom of God; or to believe the lie that only the perfect are welcomed into the feast. No. The imperfect, the lampless, the forgetful, and the failed flambeaus: we are all welcomed in too, as long as we show up. And the One who is light will say, yes, good, come as you are.
So yes, this parable from Cranky Jesus does carry with it a bit of a warning. It’s just that the warning may be something other than we thought. It is Jesus saying:
Do not spend your whole life gathering oil so that you will look the perfect part. You will miss the party. Life is too short and too glorious and too full of grace to miss the party.
And, thankfully, this happens to be a parish that loves a good party in Jesus’ name. So in community together, I hope that we will continue to make space for one another’s less-than-perfect stories. I hope that we can be brave enough to share with each other the times when we don’t have it all together, and that we can laugh at them together, and find the ever-present grace in them, and maybe feel a little bit less alone. I hope we’ll be a people on fire, praying and praising God and really meaning it with our whole hearts.
My failure as a flambeau was not the first awkward stumble in my life. Nor will it be the last. But my imperfection was no barrier to God’s beauty. Sometimes, in fact, imperfection is the doorway. And so, without any oil to speak of, I carried that flameless torch and I sang to Jesus and God still showed up, as God always does.
Dear friends, behold the Bridegroom. He has come, and he will love you, and smile upon you and he welcomes everyone who doesn’t delay, who shows up anyway. Even if we have to stumble towards him in the dark.
In the Walsingham procession (far right), before my flame went out. Thanks be to God.
