Friday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
The other day, I went out for a walk - it was a contemplative walk, a time for me to recharge while Joel took care of the kids. When I got back, I found my 1.5 year old patiently waiting by the door. "Mama walk!" she said. "Wait Mama." She'd been waiting for me by the door, eagerly, and I can't fully express the kind joy you get knowing someone's been waiting for you like that.
I remembered this when I read today's gospel (Matthew 25:1-13), because I think the parable of the ten bridesmaids is a lesson in wisdom, foolishness, and waiting. Jesus clearly has a particular kind of wisdom and foolishness in mind as he tells the story. The wise bridesmaids are the ones who have anticipated that the wait might be long, and they are the ones who will stand and wait, however long it takes, and they bring the extra oil to back up their sense of things. The foolish ones, on the other hand, presume that the wait will be short, and they don't bring the extra oil that is required.
Jesus' sense of wisdom and foolishness here is NOT much like our own sense of wisdom and foolishness. I think for us, the fact that my 1.5 year old would wait for me is cute, but childish, and maybe foolish. We expect that as she grows up, she'll realize that waiting is "dead time" that could be made more productive. Thus, by the time she's an adult, she'll be filling in waiting minutes with housework, or emails or telephone calls, and so on.
The difficulty with this apparently "wise" busy-ness is that we might miss something we wouldn't have missed if we were waiting with anticipation. Like the foolish bridesmaids who run off to get oil and are thus busy when the Bridegroom comes, our busy-ness overtakes our lives and prevents us from seeing where and when God calls to us. God wants us to be exuberant waiters, a bit like my 1.5 year old.
God's wisdom is not like ours, as Paul patiently reminds us in today's first reading (1 Corinthians 1:17-25). We are prone to thinking that wisdom shows itself in well-polished speeches and good looks, but Paul is trying to remind us that this is foolish. It is foolish exactly because the cross looks foolish to those who think they are wise! Why foolishly believe that a death on a cross could save? Why foolishly believe that a man could rise from the dead? There are many in our society who would say they know better.
The thing about following Christ is that we are asked to be humble enough to accept that we might not know better. We're asked to look foolish, but God's promise to us is that this kind of humility is precisely what makes us wise.
Today, let us reflect on ways we can invite purposeless waiting into our lives, where we can wait for God with anticipation and humbleness and not just miss God because we were too busy.
- Jana M. Bennett