I don’t know how many of you hear the Gospel passage that I just read and feel a sense of vague anxiety or maybe even stronger – a sense of indignation or anger about who is in and who is out.  I wonder how many of you hear a message of judgment and divisiveness that has so often characterized the Christian Church.  That message is, “stay awake – keep watch – be good.  Be very good so you don’t miss out – so you don’t get left behind."  Even in a church as progressive as the Episcopal Church can be, there is a considerable lack of confidence or assurance in the goodness of God – a considerable lack of compassion for the limitations of scripture texts.  And so, if you felt some of that anxiety or some of that anger, I want to invite you into a reading that is more hospitable – more welcoming.

       The kingdom of heaven will be like this, Jesus begins.  And I want to say over and over that as far as I can tell, Jesus was not talking about some never-never land after death place.  Jesus’ ministry was all about inviting people to know the kingdom of heaven – the realm of God.  It is close, Jesus would say again and again.  It’s very near you.  It’s all around you.  It’s in you.  You’re in it.

       When I was a little girl there was a commercial on TV that I remember vividly.  I didn’t watch much TV, but this commercial captured my attention.  It’s funny because it wasn’t for a toy or something else related to children.  It was for dish soap.  The scene was a beauty parlor at a manicure table.  The client was talking to the beauty operator (as they were sometimes called) about “dish-pan hands.”  That term frightened me.  I didn’t know what dish-pan hands were – but I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere near them!  I certainly didn’t want to have them!  The beauty-operator named Madge was describing the dish soap that was very gentle and mild and she said to the client “you’re soaking in it!”  And in response to the startle of her client, Madge says, “relax!”  “You’re soaking in it…relax” is what I often think of when I imagine what Jesus was saying to the crowds of fearful, weary, and possibly even annoyed and angry  people about the realm of God.

       I’m drawn to stories about how we are soaking in the realm of God.  There’s one about the student who travels to speak with a great teacher.  When the student arrives, the teacher asks what she can do for the student.  The student says, “I want you to show me how to find God.”  The teacher replied, “I cannot show you where God is any more than I can show a fish where the water is.”  Or I think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry about how “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes – the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”

      So the realm of God – the kingdom of heaven – is going to be like this (and it’s been like this and it is like this):  people (bridesmaids in this case) are waiting for a big celebration and some are prepared and some are unprepared.  In Matthew’s Gospel, the good and the bad are always all mixed up together in the realm of God – and indeed, one cannot tell which is which except in hindsight.   That’s one of Matthew’s themes.  They’ve all fallen asleep – that is, they are all unaware – unawake.  The wake up call comes and it’s apparent that some are ready for the party and some aren’t.  The ones who are ready seem very wise and the ones who are not feel quite foolish.  This is how it is, how it has been and how it will be in the realm of God.

       So then what?  The ones who have enough don’t share and the ones who don’t have enough leave.  Here is where the trouble is as I read it.  This is where the dramatic tension enters the story.  And I want to ask what makes the people who have resources not share?  What makes the people who don’t have resources leave?  They go off searching in the pitch-black darkness of midnight for oil dealers.  Of course this is futile – it’s completely ridiculous.  And by the time they come back they are unable to get into the banquet because they are simply unrecognizable.  

      I’ll tell you what I think makes human beings who have resources not share.  Fear.  Fear of scarcity.  (Perhaps the experience of scarcity.)  Fear of running out.  Fear of not having enough for themselves.  And I’ll tell you what makes the human beings who don’t have resources leave.  Shame.  Shame is what keeps people from asking for help.  (I don’t actually think it’s pride – I think it’s shame.)  Shame is what keeps people from insisting (and from believing) that the community can give them what they need.    It occurs to me to tell you that this story that Jesus is telling is directed privately to his disciples.  He’s not speaking to the crowds, not to religious authorities or other teachers.  He’s trying to communicate something to his followers.  Here’s what I think is going on.  It’s foreshadowing.  Do you remember anything about Jesus’ followers falling asleep?  It’s at the end in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is praying just before he was arrested in the middle of the night.  He told them to stay awake and when he needed them the most, they didn’t.  They couldn’t do it.    

       And even though they completely failed at keeping Jesus company in his last free hours, somehow they managed to carry on or we wouldn’t even have this Gospel.  I think it’s because they learned how to keep watch.  They learned something about staying awake – and being prepared.  The thing is, one person cannot stay awake all the time.  One person cannot keep watch indefinitely.  But in a community, we can take turns staying awake.  In a community, we can share the responsibility of being prepared.  In a community we can share the resources that we have.  In a community no one person may have enough – but all of us together can have plenty.  In a community everyone can participate in the banquet if those who have resources share and those without resources don’t walk away into the darkness.  Of course I’m talking about resources in the broadest sense – financial, spiritual, physical resources of time and energy.  Everyone can participate in the banquet if those who have resources share and those without resources stay.   It’s a stretch of course – stretching beyond the fear of scarcity in the coming year; and stretching beyond the shame of unpreparedness or lack.  The best way to stretch of course is to relax and remember that we are soaking in the realm of God.

       It’s a stretch that I am asking each of you – all of you –  to make for the sake of building up this community for ourselves and for people we don’t even know yet.  Perhaps you know the poem printed anonymously on the cover of the constitution of the American Miners Association in 1864:

      Step by step the longest march
      can be won, can be won
      Many stones to form an arch,
      singly none, singly none
      And by Union what we will,
      can be accomplished still
      Drops of water turn a mill.
      Singly none, singly none.