Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Our Gospel reading today is a rich text that is worthy of being meditated upon for a long time. I’ve known this text for many years and have taught it for many years, but I do not feel as though I’ve understood it completely. There are texts in the Bible that are like this. A person can profitably wonder about them for years or even a lifetime. We will take it up again today. The broad outlines of the parable are clear. This is talking about Christ’s second coming. No one knows the day or the hour when Christ will come again, so, as Jesus says in the conclusion to the parable, we should keep watch. The bridegroom in the parable is Jesus. The ten virgins represent those who self-identify as Christians. Christians are waiting for Jesus to come. There’s a problem, though. Five are foolish. They end up getting locked out of the marriage feast of the Lamb in his kingdom which has no end. These are all things that can be clearly identified and understood. There are other elements to this parable that are less clear, at least to me. What do the lamps represent? What does the oil represent? What does the extra flask of oil that the wise virgins are carrying with them represent? What does it mean that all of them fall asleep while they are waiting for the bridegroom to come? Why won’t the wise virgins give any oil to the foolish virgins? Who are those who sell the oil? What does it mean that the foolish are directed to go and get more oil, and how do they get any in the middle of the night? These are a lot of questions. Over the years you have probably heard answers, and probably even good answers, to the questions I’ve just asked. It is often taught that the oil in the lamps is faith. The reason why the wise cannot give any oil to the foolish is because no one is able to believe for another. Each must believe for him or her self. The sellers of oil are pastors from whom a person can acquire faith through the Word and Sacraments that they are called by God to dispense. I’m sure that there are much worse ways that this parable could be interpreted. The individual statements are true enough. What is said about faith is true. No one is able believe for another. The only source for Christian faith is the hearing of the Gospel and the receiving of Christ’s sacraments. However, I’ve never quite been sold on interpreting the parable this way. It seems to me to be an oversimplification. It makes it seem as though Christianity is a religion where almost the whole point of it is to go to church. That’s where the oil is sold, so make sure that you have a good supply on hand. But the parable does not say that the wise virgins had just come back from a shopping trip for oil. They remembered to bring along some extra. If Christianity is just a matter of attending church, then it hardly seems necessary for there to be a final judgment at all. We’d already know whether someone has passed the test by looking at the attendance records. There’s more to faith than attending the Divine Service. So I think it is helpful to think outside the normal interpretation of this parable.  The obsession concerning oil and the lamps going out appears strange to me. They had planned on having lit lamps for the bridegroom. I’m sure they wanted their plans to succeed. But would the bridegroom care that much if their lamps had run out of oil? Would he have banned them from attending? I’m not aware of any custom or regulation from that time that made burning lamps a prerequisite for attending a wedding feast. So the obsession with having enough oil has always struck me as being kind of feverish and dreamlike. I’m sure you’ve had those dreams that keep you half-awake all night because of something that you are obsessing about. It’s always something that is totally beside the point. You don’t have something, for example, and you think that you really need to have it. All your efforts at attaining it are thwarted. If you were ful