The ten who waited

A word for the week

Picture the night. Ten young women are waiting for a wedding to begin, and in that time and place a wedding began whenever the groom finally arrived, which could be late, and often was. Their one job is to keep their lamps burning, so that when he comes they can light his way in to the feast. Five think ahead and bring extra oil. Five do not. That is the whole difference between them, and the story turns on it.

The groom is delayed. See that the delay is not a trick or a punishment; it is just how it goes. Weddings run late. And in the waiting, all ten of them fall asleep. This is worth saying plainly, because we tend to read the story as if the foolish ones were the sleepers. They were not. All ten slept. The wise slept too. Being tired is not the failure here. Even the faithful nod off in a long wait.

The cry comes at midnight. He is here; go out to meet him. Now the difference shows. The five who brought oil trim their lamps and are ready in a moment. The five who did not are caught with the flame guttering out, and there is no time left to fix it. They ask the others to share, and the others cannot, not because they are unkind but because oil is not a thing you hand over at the last second. You either brought it or you did not. Off the five go into the dark to find a seller at midnight, and while they are gone the door opens, the ready ones go in, and the door shuts. When the five come back and knock, the answer from inside is the saddest sentence in the parable: I do not know you.

It is easy to hear that as cruel. Give it a moment longer, though, and it is the nature of the thing rather than cruelty. Some preparations cannot be borrowed and cannot be rushed. You cannot cram for the end of a marriage the way you cram for a test. A whole life of small faithfulness, the daily oil of prayer and kindness and keeping the watch, is not something anyone can lend you at the last minute, and not something you can suddenly manufacture when the cry goes up. You bring it, drop by drop, over long ordinary years, or you arrive with a cold lamp. And notice that Jesus does not reopen the door at the end of the story. He could have told it with a second chance, and he chose not to, because he loved his listeners enough to warn them plainly while the night was still young.

So what is the oil? He does not say, and that silence is deliberate, but the whole of his teaching answers it. The oil is the life actually lived his way. It is the forgiveness you practiced when it was hard, the hungry you actually fed, the prayers you said on the nights you felt nothing, the quiet fidelity no one saw. None of that is dramatic. All of it gathers. And it is the gathering, the reserve laid down over years, that lets you meet the moment lit instead of scrambling.

The wise were not smarter than the foolish. They were only readier. They had spent the boring months getting ready for a night they could not predict. That is the whole counsel of the story, and it ends where the last one did: keep awake, for you do not know the day or the hour.