A preacher once asked his congregation (in tones of great forboding) where would you rather be?  In the party with the wise virgins, or outside, all alone and in the dark with 5 foolish virgins?  Well, piped up one wag from the pews, when you put it like that.....

Of course like most of Jesus stories maybe it is supposed to be ambiguous.

Isn't it the bridge grooms fault for being late and what did the bride make of it?

Shouldn't the other maids have shared their oil, wouldn't that be the Christian thing to do?

Isn't it rather harsh to shut them out after they waited all night?

Might we sympathise with the foolish virgins? Perhaps. But being the subject of sympathy doesn't necessarily put you in the right.

While we may feel great sympathy for those who do not have the spiritual reserves to get thru a long dark night of the soul, that is not an excuse for not taking care of those reserves in the first place. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail and all the rest of it.

But more importantly, in those days, as in many traditional and tribal cultures today, a marriage celebration was a major undertaking that lasted several days – mind you ours are no different – engagement party, stag and hen do, service, afternoon do, evening do, honeymoon etc. But in those days it was more to do with the distances travelled – on foot very often. It is little surprise then that the bride groom could not guarantee the time of arrival. And a precise start time is not so vital in a several day celebration that will see people arrive at all times of the day and night.

But does that not make it all the more strange that these brides maids should be locked out? This was not the custom of the day.

Well to understand this we need to understand what the roll of a wedding guest was, and maybe still is. It was the job of everyone else to make the day a celebration – there is a TV show at the moment that Laura is a fan of and that I am occasionally subjected to called 4 weddings – brides attend each others weddings and mark them out of 10 for the food the venue the dress and so on. Much bitchiness ensues which is of course the point.

But sometimes you want to say to these brides, happily giving their opinion on whether they liked the food, or the venue or the music or the vicar, hang on, this is not about you. This day is not about you. The important thing is not that you have a good time but that you ensure that the couple have a good time. The wedding banquet is not there for your entertainment – it is there to celebrate their love. You have a job to do and its not to eat till you feel ill, drink till you fall over or pinch uncle Derek’s behind on the dance floor. Your job is to celebrate the love of bride and bride groom.

In the same way what makes the virgins foolish or wise is not so much the amount of oil they took with them. It is not in their falling asleep and leaving their lamps untended. It is in forgetting what they were there for. In this case their roll seems to be to light the way for the groom in a lamp-lit procession in to the celebration – and once he has been and gone, there is no roll for them anymore. Some of them are prepared and ready to fulfil their task – the only thing that is being asked of them – to point to the bridegroom, shine their lights upon him, announce his coming into their midst as a bright celebration. And some of them would allow him to arrive unannounced, unheralded and stumbling in the dark to his own wedding. They only have one moment to shine. And they let it pass by while they are out shopping.

The wedding of course is a celebration of the love of God. The marriage the union between Christ and his people. He comes to them, and us, walking thru through the darkness, and asks us simply to shine a light for him. We have a job to do, we are here for a purpose – he invites us in to eat drink and be merry – but those things are not the reason we are there. And should we be absent when he comes, if we leave the celebration of his love shrouded in darkness, then it may be for us as for the foolish 5, - always the bridesmaids and never the bride. Amen.