Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Matthew 25:1-13
“Choose to Be Prepared”
When I was a child, I never participated in Girl Guides or Scouts, but I do know one of the mantras of those groups that my guiding friends learned and remembered: “Always be prepared.” It was Robert Baden-Powell, the English soldier who founded the Boy Scouts who published the motto “Be Prepared” in his 1908 handbook, Scouting for Boys. He wrote that to be prepared meant “You are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.”
And, of course, the motto came to mind when I thought about the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids that we read this morning. Five of them were prepared, and five of them were not.
But just as our children don’t have a lot of knowledge or experience with oil lamps, we likely don’t know much about first century Jewish weddings, so let’s begin with some historical context.
According to historians, on the day of a wedding ceremony in first century Palestine, the bride-to-be waited at home with her wedding party. Meanwhile, the bridegroom negotiated elsewhere with her relatives the various financial details involved in obtaining her as his wife. It was actually a mark of … Read more »