This is not my favourite parable, and it seems so unfair that the ones who didn’t think to bring spare lamp oil miss out, and that the ones with spare oil refuse to share. That goes against everything else we hear in the gospel. It goes against the Jesus we see always there for the outcasts and the failures. It goes against the Jesus we see crucified outside the city gates, hanging there in the darkness, calling out to his Father that he has been abandoned. So that can’t be the point of the parable.
‘Watch, therefore, because you don’t know the day or the hour.’ There will be an end to our own lives. There will be an end to this messed up world when the Lord returns in glory. The invitation is for us to keep trusting and hoping that life is good and God is good; to keep connected to the Lord of life in worship and daily prayer; and to show love and care to those around us, as we are able. We pray our deepest needs and hurts, and discover that there is a Go who hears and holds them. We keep trusting that the gospel is good news for us all the time, and not just when we get things right.
If this were my dream…. Can you imagine a dream where you have been knocking on this door, desperate to be inside where you belong and where all is good. Yet the door stays firmly shut, you can’t open it, and the voice on the other side adds, ‘Go away. You are not welcome here.’
If that were your upsetting dream, and you were telling me about that, I’d ask about times you had experienced that in the past. Then I would say, ‘Each part of our dream can be a different aspect of ourselves. Is there some way in which a part of you is firmly shut against another part of you and is trying to keep it shut out? I wonder what that might be?’ That could lead to all sorts of interesting and enriching insights and conversation, right then, or in the future. Even bad dreams can be the really good. And tough parables have nuggets of pure gold.
