The First Sunday of Advent
November 8, 2026
The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
Advent comes with a wake-up call,
a door slammed shut,
and selfish hoarding of oil.
Or at least that’s how this parable appears
at first glance.
Even before anything happens,
already the young women are divided up:
five “foolish,” five “wise,”
before they even do or say anything.
And through no fault of their own,
they fall asleep –
all of them –
because the bridegroom is “delayed.”
Why? What kept him?
When he finally shows up,
the young women scramble,
with half realizing they don’t have enough oil,
pleading with their more prepared friends,
“Give us some of your oil!”
No. There won’t be enough,
they respond,
selfishly hoarding for themselves
out of the all-too-real fear of scarcity.
And when the others go off
to buy some more for themselves,
they eventually return –
the door slammed in their faces,
locked out of the wedding banquet.
Where is the good news
or the hope
in that?
Parables are not so simple.
They are not pure allegories
or direct explanations
of the kingdom of heaven.
Parables use finite, tangible, earthy things
to describe eternal, intangible, divine truths –
and no one example could ever encapsulate everything.
Which is why Jesus has been offering
example after example:
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to…
The kingdom of heaven is like…
The kingdom of heaven will be like…
Here is but one more imperfect, incomplete example
in a series of imperfect, incomplete parables,
leaving us with a host of unanswered questions:
Why did half the young women not have enough oil?
Why was the bridegroom delayed?
Who shouted?
Why couldn’t the other half share?
Would the “foolish” have been turned away without their lamps burning?
At the heart of this parable
is a simple invitation:
“Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”
Nothing about lamps.
Nothing about oil.
Just the invitation:
Look… come… meet…
There is so much that clutters the invitation –
the expectations we place on ourselves
and the expectations we place on others.
But the invitation comes without any expectations,
and I keep coming back to the question:
Would the “foolish” have been turned away without their lamps burning?
At midnight, there’s a shout,
a wake-up call in the dead of night,
while everyone – “foolish” and “wise” alike – is asleep,
a jolting invitation amidst their drowsiness:
Look… come… meet…
The voice doesn’t tell them to light their lamps
or to go buy more oil –
the other half of the group says that.
And therein come the complications –
distracted by not having “enough,”
distracted by not being “ready,”
distracted by not having it all together,
that the “foolish” miss the invitation
and miss out on the party.
The kingdom of heaven
is an open invitation:
Look… come… meet…
The young women in the parable
superimpose their own expectations.
The “foolish” are consumed by their lack of preparedness.
And the “wise,” instead of echoing the invitation to “look… come… meet,”
reinforce their friends’ expectations:
“Yes, you should definitely go buy more oil!”
That’s definitely the important thing right now.
How is it that we, like the “foolish,”
inhibit ourselves from encountering the kingdom of heaven?
How is it that we, like the “wise,”
inhibit others from encountering the kingdom of heaven?
We hear the invitation –
Look… come… meet… –
and immediately we scramble,
preoccupied with whether we have enough,
or are ourselves enough,
that we miss the invitation
and miss out on the party.
Would the “foolish” have been turned away without their lamps burning?
The parable never says.
What it does say
is where they are when the bridegroom arrives –
off buying more oil,
distracted by their own doing,
and when they return,
they find the door shut
and the bridegroom’s rejection:
“I do not know you.”
It can feel like a harsh word of judgment,
devoid of hope,
but then there’s Jesus’ final, familiar, Advent encouragement:
“Keep awake!”
Not to never sleep or rest –
because there’s absolutely no good news in that –
but to watch and wait
for the one who comes to meet us
in our weariness,
freeing us from our own unrelenting expectations
that our worries, our work, our doing
can somehow save us.
Because none of those things can save us.
We do not make the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven is
and is coming,
and the kingdom of heaven
will hold us,
no matter what.
This is what I hear in the parable this year:
an invitation to look and behold,
a promise to be and be held.
“Look! (Behold!) Here is the bridegroom…”
shouts the midnight voice.
“Look! (Behold!) Here is water…”
exclaims another voice,
much later in the book of Acts.
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
the Ethiopian eunuch asks Philip,
as the early church expands its scope of who gets to be included.
Look! (Behold!) Here is God’s invitation…
around this table of mercy,
in bread and wine,
calling each of us to take our place.
What is to prevent us from encountering
the joy of the kingdom of heaven?
Not. One. Single. Thing.
Not our own expectations.
Not the expectations of others.
Look… come… meet…
Behold.
Be present.
Be open.
Be held.
In Advent,
we look with hope
to the coming reign of Christ
who has saved us
and is saving us –
from our weariness,
from our divisions,
from our expectations,
from our worries,
from our fears.
Look… come… meet…
Encounter the living Word made flesh
who meets us here,
where we are,
bringing a thrill of hope
to a weary world.
