Oil for the Long Night

On Sunday, November 8, 2026 our homily was written by Lee Williams and delivered (because Lee was ill) by Pippa Mahoney. Thank you both.

Readings: Wisdom of Solomon 6:12–16 · Wisdom of Solomon 6:17–20

· 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18

· Matthew 25:1–13

In the name of the God who seeks us, the Christ who comes to us, and the Spirit who keeps our lamps burning. Amen.

I. Everyone falls asleep

There's one small detail in today's Gospel that we hear almost every time and almost never notice.

Ten bridesmaids go out with their lamps to meet the bridegroom. Five are wise and five are foolish. We know this story. We know how it ends. And because we know it, we tend to picture the wise ones as the alert ones: sitting up straight, eyes open, keeping watch through the night while the foolish ones nod off.

But that isn't what Matthew says. Matthew says: "As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept."  All of them. The wise ones slept too.

[pause]

That's good news before we've even gotten to the good news. This parable isn't a contest of willpower. It doesn't ask who can keep their eyes open the longest. Jesus knows we get tired. He knows the groom is late, and the night is long, and sooner or later everyone's head drops.

And friends, it is November. The days are getting shorter. Many of us come into church this morning tired: tired from grief, tired from worry, tired from the news, tired from simply carrying on.  So the question this parable puts to us isn't "Can you avoid getting tired?" We can't. The question is: “What are you carrying with you into the night?”

II. A lamp without oil

Here's what separates the wise bridesmaids from the foolish. It isn't whether they show up, because all ten show up. It isn't whether they have lamps, because all ten have lamps. It isn't whether they belong to the wedding party, because all ten belong. The difference is oil.

The wise ones brought what the lamp needs to keep burning. The foolish ones brought the lamp and nothing else. And I want to say this gently, because it applies to me as much as anyone: It is possible to have the lamp without the oil. It's possible to have the outward shape of faith (the pew, the prayer book, the familiar words, the coffee hour) without the inner supply that keeps us going when the night runs long and the groom is late.

Then comes the hardest moment in the story. The cry goes up at midnight, "Look! Here is the bridegroom!" The foolish bridesmaids look at their sputtering lamps and turn to their friends: "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out."

And the wise ones say no.

That sounds harsh. It sounds like the opposite of everything Jesus teaches about sharing. But listen to it again. The wise ones aren't being selfish. They're telling the truth: some things can't be handed from one person to another. 

·        I can't give you my prayer life.

·        You can't lend me your trust in God.

·        A parent can't pass on their faith to a child like a set of car keys.

·        No one can share the deep, slow knowledge of God gathered over a lifetime, that lets a person stay steady at a graveside.

The door seems shut in this parable. But I don't believe it's the last word, and neither, I think, does Scripture. Because today the Church gives us another reading to sit beside this parable, and it tells us something wonderful about where the oil comes from.

III. Wisdom is looking for you

Listen again to the Wisdom of Solomon:

"Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her."

The oil isn't hidden. It isn't rationed. It isn't kept in a vault for the spiritual elite. Wisdom is radiant, easily discerned, and in a hurry to be found.

Then this: "One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate."

Sitting at the gate. Not on a far mountaintop. Not at the end of a long pilgrimage. At the gate: the ordinary place of the ancient town, where people bought and sold, settled disputes, and greeted their neighbors. Wisdom is waiting where we already walk every day.

And then the word that ties this reading to the Gospel: "To fix one's thought on her is perfect understanding, and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care."  One who is Vigilant. It's the same call that Jesus makes at the end of the parable. Keep awake. But notice what Wisdom says watchfulness brings: not anxiety, not dread, but freedom from care. Watching for God, it turns out, isn't the tense, white-knuckled vigil of someone afraid of missing their chance. It's the steadiness of someone who knows who they're waiting for.

And then the most beautiful line of all: "She goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought."

[pause]

She comes looking for us. Before we've lifted a finger, before we've lit a single candle, Wisdom is already out on the road, looking for us.

Christians have long heard in these verses something of Christ himself. Saint Paul calls Christ "the wisdom of God." The one we wait for in the dark isn't a stranger who may or may not turn up. He's the one who has already been walking our paths and meeting us in our thoughts, long before we knew to look for him.

So yes, we must seek. But we seek because we are already being sought.

IV. How oil is gathered

How then do we get the oil? The very next verses of Wisdom give us something like a ladder:

"The beginning of wisdom, is the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of her, and love of her is the keeping of her laws, and giving heed to her laws is assurance of immortality, and immortality brings one near to God; so the desire for wisdom leads to a kingdom."

Notice where the ladder begins. Not with achievement. Not with expertise. Not with being good enough. It begins with desire: "the most sincere desire for instruction." If you've ever simply wanted to know God better, if you've ever wished your faith were deeper, you're already standing on the first rung.

And oil isn't gathered all at once. It's gathered drop by drop.  The oil is gathered in small, faithful, mostly unseen ways:

·        A few minutes of reading the Daily Office in the morning, or Compline before bed.

·        Reading next Sunday's Gospel slowly, more than once, and listening for the word that catches you.

·        Coming to this table, to be filled again (as we were last weekf).

·        A moment of silence (as we observed at the start of this service).

·        A word of thanks.

·        A quiet kindness that no one but God will ever know about.

None of these is dramatic. But each one is a drop of oil. And over a lifetime, drop by drop, our lamp is filled.

V. Hope at midnight

But what about the people who didn't make it to the morning? What about those whose lamps, it seems to us, went out in the night? 

That was exactly the worry of the church in Thessalonica. They had expected Christ to come back soon, and in the meantime some of their own had died. They were frightened that those they loved had somehow missed the groom.  And Paul writes to them, and to us: "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope."

Not that we won't grieve. We will, and we should. But not as people without hope. "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died." "The dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever."

Do you see what's happening? In the parable, the bridesmaids sleep, and they're woken by a cry at midnight. In Paul's letter, those who have died sleep, and they're woken by a cry from heaven. It's the same cry: ”Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”

So gathering oil isn't a desperate effort to avoid being locked out. It's getting ready for a wedding. We aren't preparing for an exam. We're preparing for a feast that we've been invited to, by a host who wants us there and has come looking for us to make sure we arrive.

VI. Start tonight

The night may be long. We will get drowsy. All of us. That's no cause for shame.

But Wisdom is sitting at the gate this morning. She's radiant, and she's easy to find. And she's been looking for you all along.

So here's an invitation. Choose one thing this week. Just one.

·        Ten minutes of prayer before the house wakes up.

·        A psalm at bedtime.

·        A walk in silence. Seek her early, and see if she isn't already there waiting.

Our collect this morning puts it better than I can. We prayed that, "having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom."

Having this hope, we prepare. That's the order. Hope first, then readiness.

So keep awake, dear friends. Not out of fear of the shut door, but out of love for the One who is coming, and who has already come looking for you.

Amen.

NOTES FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO KNOW MORE:

 Wisdom (Sophia) in the Book of Wisdom a person, a metaphor, an angel, a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, or something else?The short answer:  she is a literary personification — a metaphor given personal attributes — not an angel, not a literal person, and the book never identifies her with the Holy Spirit  (though later theology would read those verses that way).What the text itself presentsThe author (a Hellenistic Jew, likely in Alexandria, c. 1st century BCE) personifies Wisdom as a female figure with a paradoxical nature:

·         A "breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty"** (Wis 7:25) — using the Greek concept of emanation (ἀπόρροια), a stream flowing from a source without diminishing it

·         "The unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness"** (Wis 7:26) — a reflection, not a separate being

·         Present at creation**: "she is with him" and "holds all things together" (Wis 1:7; 7:24; 8:1)

·         A master worker/craftsman** beside God at creation (Wis 8:6, echoing Prov 8:30)

·         She “seeks a dwelling among humans”, enters holy souls, and makes them friends of God and prophets (Wis 7:27)

·         She “sits by God's throne”, is "more beautiful than the sun" (Wis 7:29; 8:3; 9:4)

·         She is sought as a “bride”: "I determined to take her to live with me, knowing that she would be my counselor in prosperity and my comfort in care" (Wis 8:9)

So which category fits?A personification, not a being.  The author's Sophia is the philosophical abstraction of God's ordering intelligence, clothed in feminine imagery because Hebrew ḥokmâ (wisdom) is grammatically feminine. This continues a biblical tradition running from Proverbs 1–9, Job 28, Sirach 24, and Baruch 3–4 — all of which speak of Wisdom as a woman who calls, dwells, and feasts, without anyone supposing a separate goddess exists.The categories on your list don't quite capture her:

·         Not a person — she has no biography independent of God

·         Not an angel — the book has a developed angelology (Wis 10, where "Wisdom" acts in patriarchs' lives, is sometimes confused with this, but she is never numbered among angels; angels appear elsewhere in the book, e.g. Wis 18:15)

·         Not identified with the Holy Spirit — the text distinguishes rather than equates; Wis 1:7 ("the spirit of the Lord fills the world") is about God's presence, and the author never says Sophia is that spirit

What she became laterThe ambiguity was too rich to leave alone:- Church Fathers (Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Augustine) read Wis 7:25–26 as a proto-Christological text — Sophia as an Old Testament manifestation of the “Logos/Christ”, a reading still official in Catholic and Orthodox tradition- Others (Orthodox hymnography, some Latin writers) identified her with the “Holy Spirit”- The Orthodox Church even built a cathedral — Hagia Sophia — under her nameSo: within the book, she is a metaphor — divine immanence personified as a radiant woman seeking a home. But she is the kind of metaphor that later readers could not resist reifying into a doctrinal statement.