Chris Winward November 6th 2011

This sermon was preached at the baptism of baby Oludamilola  on November 6th and the last part is addressed to her parents, but speaks to us all.

It was a great occasion. A wedding; and in the late evening the guests are being entertained in the bride’s home. Sometime, during the night, the bridegroom will come and fetch the bride to his own home where the marriage will take place. There is often a long delay in the bridegroom coming, sometimes because agreement cannot be reached about the presents due to the parents and relatives of the bride(bargaining in the east can be a lengthy process. Waiting at the bride’s home are 10 girls, suitably dressed, who have been chosen as bridesmaids to accompany her and the whole village in a floodlit procession through the streets to share in the festivities at the bridegroom’s house. We can see them sitting and waiting, with their clay oil lamps shaped like gravy boats.
Five of the girls, anticipating that the coming of the groom might be long delayed have had the foresight to bring not only their oil filled lamps but a refill container too. But the other girls, being thoughtless, had brought no extra supply. During the long wait, they all doze off but then a man comes running up the street  shouting ‘lookout the bridegroom’s on his way’. The bridesmaids wake with a start and as they have been dozing for some time discover that the oil in their lamps is virtually used up-the flame on the point of dying down. Then the 5 girls with foresight snuff their lamps removing the burnt wicks and refuel their lamps with oil from their containers so that they burn brightly once more. But the other 5 girls, who had made no such preparation for such a crisis, try, too late, to make good their neglect by trying, to no avail, to borrow oil.
Whilst they go off to get oil from the dealer, the groom arrives and the procession moves off in a blaze of light. They enter the groom’s house and, according to tradition, once the groom has arrived and the door has been shut, late-comers to the ceremony are not admitted. 
This is a parable told by Jesus, yes, but here is no synthetic story but a slice of life from a village in Palestine which describes a crisis in the lives of the 10 bridesmaids. 
In our lives, there are many times of crisis and in each one we are being tested and asked ‘did you prepare for this?’
When I say times of crisis I don’t just mean times of hardship or suffering because the word crisis also means  a crucial stage in life. After all, the crisis in this parable was the sudden coming of the groom to take guests to a wedding banquet, a crisis of joy. But, in every crisis of life, whether in joy or in pain we are tested. 
Think of some of the personal crises in life; falling in love is a crisis, getting married is a crisis, the birth of a child is a crisis, being baptised or confirmed is a crisis, adolescence is a crisis, starting school, going to university, retirement,  the sudden onset of a severe illness is a crisis, a quarrel with a friend, being made redundant, the death of a loved one-all these are crises.
And there are national and international crises too. During the last week I lost count of the number of times I heard the word used in the news. The crisis outside St Pauls, the energy price crisis, the European debt crisis and quite possibly the latter two may impact upon our personal lives.
Just as God is concerned about how we cope with such crises in our lives, so Jesus was concerned about people in his day. His parable, before the coming of Advent, is a crisis parable and we can see in his advent teaching the various crises that Jesus had in mind. His very presence was a time of crisis for his listeners for they were the chosen people and their whole history should have been preparation for his coming. Instead, they were not ready and risked being shut out. On a more personal level, Jesus knew that his own impending death would be a shattering crisis for his disciples and he sought to prepare them for it.
So, the central beam of light that shines through this parable is the wisdom of readiness. Its a story of 2 groups of people; those who were ready and those who were not. And from almost every aspect of life we could illustrate the folly of the 5 thoughtless girls who attempted to get ready for the crisis when it was already upon them. 
Picture a student called Mary at 8. 30 am on a Monday morning in June. She has come to sit her GCSE Maths exam. She is chatting nervously with her friends in the ante-room and in half an hour’s time, the doors will open, she will enter the exam room, sit down, turn over the exam paper and. . . . . For Mary, the crisis is 30 mins away. Can she use those 30 mins to prepare for the exam?  Wouldn't she be thoughtless if she hadn’t started to prepare for 10 years beforehand? In April 1982 , I was on Blackheath at the start of the London marathon and there jogging was an RAF mechanic from Wales called Steve Jones who went on to win the race in a British record time of 2hrs 9mins.
I hasten to add that it was the only time I saw him during the race!. Now  Steve Jones didn’t prepare for that race by jogging at the start. He had spent years training and preparing his body for such an important event. Now, for all the crises in life to which I referred a moment ago, it is, in one important sense, possible to prepare so as to be ready as possible for them when they come.
To take the darker crises first, it is possible to prepare as  best we can for sorrow, for illness, for unemployment for bereavement and so on. Mary of Orange became Queen of England in 1687. She contracted a severe and fatal illness and  as she became weaker her priest asked ‘Shall I come and say prayers with you at this time?She replied, ’My friend, I did not leave this matter until this hour’. 
One of the interesting features of human life is that we often prepare ourselves for the darker crises in life but not for the lighter ones, as in the parable. Take my own example; I have always been very careful to take out insurance against everything that could go wrong but when I had the joy of our first child being born, I was , in a way, quite unprepared. Yes, I had decorated the nursery, bought a cot and all that practical stuff but when we brought our daughter home I remember putting her in her cot for the first night and sitting on the floor watching her for hours just taking in the sheer joy, yes, but enormous responsibility of looking after this little helpless scrap of humanity. I recall my wife Carol rising from her bed and asking ‘what on earth are you doing? I replied ‘I just don’t feel prepared to leave her on her own’to which she replied’well you can sit up all night if you want but I’m tired out and I’m going to get some sleep’. I had prepared myself for the possibility of having our house burn down, but made no real preparation for fatherhood. 
So, how do we prepare for all the crises of every kind that will present themselves in life? Isn’t there one way and isn’t it by the preparation of our character? In the parable, the thoughtless bridesmaids lost their place in the marriage banquet because they ran out of oil and the thoughtful bridesmaids shared in the banquet because they had an adequate supply of oil. This is what we ask for in the familiar words of the hymn ‘"ive me oil in my lamp keep me burning give me oil in my lamp I pray" So, what is the oil we need to keep our lamp burning?
In his letter to the first Christians in Thessalonica, St Paul describes the 3 graces necessary to us if we are to be ready for the crises we face in life and for the crisis which we face when life on earth comes to and end for us.
The first is faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ and from such faith emanates hope and love. This morning, Rotimi and Toma  are  undertaking  a great joy and a great responsibility in their lives to prepare Oludamilola for all the crises she will face in her life by bringing her for baptism and by promising to bring her up in the Christian faith. By praying for her and with her, by teaching her the Christian faith with the help of God’s church and by showing her through the example of their own Christian lives how her character can develop as she grows. And, her godparents will promise to help Oludamilola in every way that they can so that, one day when she is older, she will be able to possess this faith for herself. Because, as the thoughtless bridesmaids discovered, its not something you can borrow at the last minute, its something you must possess yourself. For he/she who has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ trusting in him alone for salvation, he/she who loves the Lord Jesus Christ and loves others for his sake, he/she who rests their hope on the Lord Jesus Christ for time and eternity, he/she it is who is ready for the banquet of eternal life. Give me faith in my heart keep me trusting. Give me love in my heart, keep me serving. Give me hope in my heart keep me watching. Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning, keep me burning till the break of day.