A Right-Brained Bridesmaid at the DMV - Sermon for 24th Sunday after Pentecost

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - November 12th, 2023

Wisdom 6:12–16 | Psalm 70 | Matthew 25:1-13

Through the written word and the spoken word, may we come to know your living word. Amen.

If you woke up this morning before the alarm, feeling refreshed and invigorated, ate a balanced breakfast and then put on the coordinated outfit you’d ironed and laid out the night before, and then got here in time to hear our choir practice while putting your heart and mind in the right place for worship, congratulations, you pass. You can skip ahead to page eight in your bulletin to complete today’s Sudoku puzzle, assuming you haven’t already.

If, however, you skidded in behind the choir… or later… because you or someone in your direct care could not in an entire two-story house find one pair of matching socks, then lean in… I see you.

Our Gospel this morning creates a dichotomy through society between those who have their act together, and those who do not. One group is ready and waiting when the bridegroom arrives, but the others are caught off guard with not enough oil for their lamps. With a somewhat uncharacteristic harshness, Jesus spins a rather bleak ending for them. Their peers, not willing to share, send them off to refuel, and in the meantime the wedding begins without them. By the time they get back, the tardy to the party are forgotten and shut out.

While in reality it’s likely we could fall into either group at different times in our lives, I suspect most of us instinctively saw ourselves in one or the other, and the people who love us would also have a ready opinion about where we would land. And if we do see ourselves in the latter group, it comes across as a stinging rebuke from our Savior.

“So, um what exactly are we to take from this parable?” puzzles Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber, “That we should not rely on others? That we should not give to those who ask of us? I mean, that would be weird wouldn’t it, if Jesus just suddenly took back everything he said about generosity and self-giving and instead gave us a parable about how we should be stingy and self-reliant?”

But, she argues, and I agree, that is only if you assume that Christ intended us to view the outcome of the story as just and meant to be taken at face value. Surely the prepared women were “good” and the unprepared women were “bad” right? I mean, they are called “foolish” right there!

But what if instead of using those terms, we looked at them as not good or bad, but just different? We are big fans of a now-deceased humorist from North Carolina named Jeanne Robertson, whose affectionate name for her husband was “Left Brain”. Left brained people, she explains, are analytical and like things in order. They like to color within the lines and would never think about doing otherwise. They’re happy in that box we’re always being told to think outside of, and will measure it to make sure the sides are all even. Right-brained people, on the other hand, don’t even know where the box is!

Those of you who know me and my other half well, probably have a pretty good idea who in our house would land where. Many of the long-timers have received a binder from one of us with your name on the cover, at a meeting with a clear agenda that started and ended exactly on time. Many of you have also warned… repeatedly… a certain Chaos Muppet that his shoe was untied as he scuttled past, likely about to drop something

In case you have any doubt who is who, I will risk telling you this story. A few years ago, we had appointments to get “Real ID”. I guess what we had before was “Fake ID” although it’s been a long time since old santa-beard here has been carded by a bouncer. In the instructions, they listed what kinds of documents would be acceptable to confirm your identity with enough certainty to earn that little star on your new licence. These were hard appointments to get and we had to drive to Elizabeth in the middle of a work day.

Within moments, we fell into our usual roles because we have the brains we have. One of us breezed through the line, found the Wifi and was soon happily working until his name was called. The other had read the instructions at home and decided that surely a security alarm bill, which, um, HE already had, should count as a statement from a utility… isn’t an alarm a utility? We don’t get a paper bill from Public Service anymore because I struggle with clutter and you can pay it by replying to a text message. And I… okay fine, it was me… don’t want to upset the Green Team by wasting paper. They also wanted “a statement from a bank”. I get a paper statement for long-term care insurance from Prudential even though I’ve repeatedly asked them to email it. Isn’t Prudential a bank? They give out mortgages. But I digress… you can see how we got here.

You can probably also guess what happened when I got to Miss Congeniality at Window #6. My papers were definitely not in order and she was not interested in a debate about it. At that point I lost my usual cherub-like demeanour and went outside to cool off. Much like our bridesmaids, I was shut out and facing the prospect of having to start this process all over.

Fortunately for me, a more sympathetic DMV employee heard all this and kindly told me, “you know, you can go to the library down the street and print stuff out on the computers there.” Excitedly I went there and did just that. One left-brained thing I have done is set up a secure password manager in my phone so that I can get into these accounts anywhere without a lot of memorizing. I found what I needed and queued them up to print… only to discover that they only take cash, and I didn’t have any. “Will it still be there in the printer when I get back?” I asked hopefully. “Probably not.”

Nevertheless I hustled BACK to the DMV to grub some cash. Unlike the stingy bridesmaids, the Wise One (I still have to call him that for four more months, per the terms of the loan) provided me with the three bucks to get my documents out of hock. By some miracle they had not been eaten yet, and in due course I was back on the line. When it was my turn, I saw I was teed up to my old nemesis, and told the person behind me “you go ahead” so I could get back to the nicer one, and this time made the grade.

While waiting for them to process our stuff, I couldn’t help but overhear some of the stories around me. And it made me wonder why we’re content to live in such a dog-eat-dog world, not that much different than the one in which our bridesmaids found themselves. Struggling with the old computers in the library, I had felt bad for the folks I saw trying to apply for jobs and do other tasks because so much of life now requires access to technology they don’t understand or can’t afford to own. What amounted to a minor annoyance to me was a much bigger problem for the young male couple being told a similar problem with ID meant one of them, who is chronically ill, would not be getting SNAP benefits that month. They had taken two buses to get there and weren’t going to make it back before the office closed

So perhaps Jesus was describing the world that is, not the world that should be. By telling us “stay awake” maybe he’s telling us to pay attention to who we are, and what gifts we have, and what we can afford to share, and when to do so. Pastor Bolz-Weber points out that five lamps were probably plenty for the groom--who was also carrying some sort of lamp or they wouldn't have known he was coming--to see where he was going. The right-brained bridesmaids’ sin, if you can even call it that, was not running low on oil, it was focusing on that lack and allowing it to distract them so much that they ended up missing out by trying to do the “logical” thing to fix it. They didn’t know what would happen if they had instead started singing or doing cartwheels or contributing in whatever way they could to the festivities of the groom’s arrival. Awkward, perhaps, but definitely memorable.

And so it can and should be with us. We can’t all be in the choir, as much as George would like that. We can’t all be the treasurer or the Sunday school teacher or write a big check when something breaks. We can’t all preach, either, and right now you may be thinking some of us shouldn’t. Yes, we are different, but in ways that complement and can learn from and sustain each other. If we put together all the bits and pieces we do have and are good at, the family party that is St. Mark’s will continue to shine with more than enough light for ourselves and all those out there in the dark, trying to find their way in.