32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 6:12-16 | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 or 4:13-14 | Matthew 25:1-13

Almighty and merciful God, graciously keep from us all adversity so that unhindered in mind and body alike, we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are yours. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Today’s readings are, like many of them that come at the end of a cycle of readings, are going over some core, main teachings of the scriptures, and this set of readings is loaded. What it’s talking about is, first and foremost, if I go to the second reading, I see in that a way of reminding everybody that this world that we live in is temporary. It’s hard for me to hold onto that at times and probably for you. We’re not made for this. If we’re looking for the world to be a place where we’re easily fulfilled and it’s all working together perfectly, that’s never going to happen. What seems to me is that we are in a place where we are working with both the truth and that which is against the truth, wisdom and the opposite of wisdom, which is, you might say, a lie. So what we have in this reading is a reminder that one day — we’re ultimately made, first and foremost, for union with God. That’s our goal, and we will one day be with him in this mysterious place, and we will have our bodies back. The teaching on the resurrection of the body, which is crazy, when you think about it in a way. How is it that all of us who have ever existed are all going to live with our bodies in this wonderful place? But that’s the promise, and when it doesn’t fit into our way of understanding, that means we’re too much stuck in the brain, and we have to move to the heart where things like this, mysterious things, can be embraced and understood and believed in.

So then we go to the issue of wisdom, and wisdom is so important to understand. What it means is that — wisdom could be interpreted, in my way of seeing it, as reality, knowing what is real, knowing what is true, and this truth is in us. It is all around us. It is speaking to us constantly, and I love the images of the feminine wisdom that is like, if you’re paying attention to her and you say, “I wish she was here,” you open the door, and there she is. She is, wisdom, this truth that we’re longing for, is everywhere. It’s reflected in everything that’s happening in the world if we have the eyes to see with the heart and not the mind. The mind judges things as good or bad. The heart is open to the mystery of what’s going on, and what is it saying to us? There’s one thing that’s going on in our world today, at least in our country. We’re looking at an election, and we’re looking at — the thing that makes our country so great is that the decisions that are made, as far as the direction of our country, are in the hands of the people, not just those leaders, and we can choose our leaders and make decisions. And that’s a powerful, wonderful thing to imagine, that we have that gift, yet what we’re realizing now is that there’s a split in the way this country is — the direction of it, and that’s disunity. And in a way, there’s something valuable about pondering that. What is this that separates us? And I wanted to go to this next. The separation, things that separate us, are the antithesis of what wisdom is calling us into. Wisdom is calling us into unity, oneness, oneness with God, oneness with who God intended us to be, understanding that our role here on this planet is to be connected and in union with other people, and through that union, to carry something that’s been given to us as our unique gift, amplified by the presence of God, divinity inside of us. We resonate that to one another, and the effectiveness of that is union, communion, oneness.

And we’re so aware, I think, in the culture that we’re living in right now, of the things that divide us, and the things that divide us are based in a mind that is filled with judgment. Then that judgment leads to a kind of acceptance/rejection of what is different, of what isn’t understood. We think about it in a way that, when I think about judgment, I think about it as living in a world that’s binary, and things are either good or bad. So a binary world is filled with judgment, and just think about it, how we judge people so quickly. Look at the decisions that we’re making over two different leaders and the judgments we have about them. We’ve decided one is good and one is bad, and that’s not true. They’re all a mixture of good and bad, and somehow wisdom is the one place where we can go to begin to understand that mystery. We’re called for unity, oneness, and that unity and oneness is a result of a heart that is open to wisdom, and it moves us in that direction.

So let’s go to the gospel, a powerful parable. What’s it talking about? Wisdom. What’s the image of wisdom? Oil. Oil is that thing that the ten women that were to guide the groom to his wedding, which is an image of the movement of the effectiveness of wisdom is to move us always towards union and communion with one another, with ourselves, with God, and that union can only happen if there is a kind of energy, a sense inside of us. It’s a sense of reality, the way the world really is, and when you have a sense of that, and it’s in you, and it resonates out of you, when you’re not quick to judge, when you don’t live in a binary world where somebody can be judged because of one action. I think so many people today, you can have a life of goodness and doing all kinds of things, and then something happens, and you’re judged by that one action, that one thing, that one picture on the Internet. And they write you off, because they say, “Well, goodness and evil can’t live in the same person. If you’ve done one evil thing, then you’re evil.” It’s insanity, that kind of judgment, and the oil is the wisdom of understanding reality, that we are this incredibly powerful, beautiful mystery of goodness and evil, and we’re struggling, and we’re moving. And what we need is less judgment and more understanding and more compassion for each other, and the more we can unify and become one, the quicker we will move into a world of fullness and the environment in which people truly flourish.

So let’s look at these women in the story. Their job was to get the groom, to get to the bride and to have a wedding, and the beautiful thing about weddings — I’ve done a zillion weddings in my life. They’re the best parties ever. I know in Italy, where I’ve spent a lot of time, a wedding is usually in the afternoon on Saturday, and then they gather usually in a place, if it’s out in the country, they have a big tent by their homes, and then they party from late afternoon until the morning. It’s — why — we don’t do that at birthdays or anniversaries or even Christmas or Easter. Why are weddings so enthusiastically embraced if they aren’t some archetype or some metaphor for something that we’re all longing for, unity and oneness? When two people find something within each other that is life-giving and they recognize they each have a unique gift for each other, and they fall in love, we call it, and that means they are convinced that this person is someone that they’re going to receive something wonderful from, and they’re going to want to give something wonderful to. And it’s called — that thing that we give each other is understanding, wisdom, reality checks over and over again. I’ve never been married, but I know if I was, there’d be so many decisions I probably wouldn’t have made the way I would, because somebody would be saying, “Are you sure that you want to do that?” And right now, in my personal stuff, I make my own decisions, but there’s something about a loving presence of someone else that knows — the goal of union — I’d say the unity is a means of a goal that is a flow of life and love and truth between two people. And what a gift that is, and if we understand that this beautiful call to unity and oneness is at the heart of what it means to be alive, to be here, then the knowledge of how the world works, the knowledge of an aspect of God, called the Spirit of God, which is feminine — I think it’s so fascinating. And this feminine wisdom is seeking you and me and not looking at us like a judgmental male figure that is sort of saying, “Unless you shape up, I’m not going to be even interested in giving you any information. Clean up your act, and then we’ll treat you with dignity and respect.” No. Wisdom looks at you and says, “You are filled with potential. You’re filled with something that is uniquely yours, and you’re here in the world to share it with someone else in a group of people. That’s reality, and this oil I’m trying to place in your heart is this knowledge that I, and only I, wisdom, can give you.” And those worthy of this great gift are just simply the ones who sit there and say, “I want to know. I want to see. I want to know who I am and why I’m here.” And that’s so different than living in a world of simply walking around and judging everyone and separating people because of judgment, and anybody that’s different is considered to be suspect and a little bit scary to some people. And we categorize people and divide people, and it’s the sin of the world, disunity, separation, isolation.

So finally, this pandemic is creating an artificial separation, isolation, just to give us a sense of what it is like to lose that union and communion that we so long for. All right, so now we’re doing it to protect each other from a disease, but think of it as — the pandemic is a teacher, just like everything is a teacher. Wisdom works with every single thing in the world to give you and me a better perspective on what we’re here for and what this world is about. So if we live in a world, where we’re consciousness of protecting one another from that which harms us, that makes us sick, that could even kill us, if we knew that that was the judgment that we have toward each other, that feeling of being right, when you can point to everybody else as being wrong, that addiction is a disease, because what it does is it kills the uniqueness in every person that God has created. We need to live in an environment, in an atmosphere of radical acceptance, of differences and stop judging people over one action. Stop saying, “You have a life of service to everyone, a marriage that’s long and been wonderful, and if there’s one mistake made because of a drunken night or because of some — I don't know — some mistake, some misjudgment, then you’re written off as some kind of predator, some kind of adulterer, whatever.” Mistakes, mistakes, they’re made, and yeah, we pay attention to them. But we don’t judge the person as if they are the mistake, because we want somehow to be a vehicle of wisdom to this person who is struggling to us as we struggle. In a way, it seems so simple, when you understand the goal of religion, unity, oneness, togetherness, and that’s because we have this gift of truth given to every individual. And that beautiful image at the end of that parable, when these foolish people come and say, “Hey, God, I’m here. Let me in,” and he looks at them. He says, “I don’t recognize you.” Well isn’t that a perfect image of what it’s like to live in a lie? You aren’t yourself. You aren’t who God made you to be, because you’re afraid of that, or you don’t know that yet. What a horrible thought, that you live a long life on this planet, and you don’t become who you are, and therefore you can’t be the source of life and truth and wisdom you’re called to be.

The gift of your wisdom is the greatest gift you have offered us.Open our hearts to embrace the mystery of life, the mystery of why we’re here and what you call us to be, and let us focus on those things that bring life to us and to one another.It’s called the kingdom.It’s called Christian community.It’s called family.It’s called love.So bless us with wisdom as we seek this gift, and help us to bring it to everyone, everyone on our planet, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.