Homilies
Keep Awake
Holy Spirit take my words and speak to each of us according to our need.
“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
There is something about those words of Jesus that might make us feel a little uneasy. Keep awake. Be ready. You don't know when the moment will come.
For those of us who struggle with anxiety or uncertainty, this can sound like another demand. Another thing to get right. Another reason to lie awake at night, worrying whether we are prepared for whatever might happen next. But I don’t think Jesus is asking us to spend our lives anxiously watching for the future. I think He is inviting us to live differently because we cannot predict it.
We could probably all recall a time when, although we were physically present, our minds were somewhere else. We might sit with family, but be thinking about tomorrow's workload. We might meet a friend for coffee, but half our attention is on what is going on around us. We might recognise what is like to lie in bed, exhausted, rehearsing conversations that may never take place and worrying about problems that haven't yet happened.
We use today's energy worrying about tomorrow's difficulties. We borrow trouble from a future that hasn't arrived, and when we do that, we risk missing out on noticing the gifts that God is offering us today.
So what might it actually mean to keep awake? Let's look again at the story Jesus tells. Ten bridesmaids, waiting for a bridegroom. They have lamps and expect to accompany him into a wedding celebration. But the bridegroom is delayed. The hours pass, darkness falls, and eventually all ten fall asleep.
That detail matters. All ten of them fall asleep. Jesus isn't describing five people who never get tired and five who cannot manage to stay alert. They are all human. They all become weary. And none of them can control when the bridegroom will arrive. The only difference between them is that five have brought extra oil for their lamps, while five have not.
When the announcement finally comes, the bridesmaids wake and prepare their lamps. The foolish bridesmaids discover that their oil is running out, they must leave to go and buy more which they are unable to join the celebration when the bridegroom arrives because they are not there.
It is a challenging ending, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. Jesus is warning his listeners that readiness matters. But perhaps we can hear that warning without turning it into an invitation to live in constant fear. The question is not whether we can prevent the unexpected from happening. The bridegroom arrives at a time none of them knows. The question is how we prepare for a future we cannot control.
And that brings us to the oil. What does it represent? Jesus doesn't explicitly tell us, but the oil has often been understood as a picture of faith, spiritual readiness, prayer, or the inner resources that sustain our relationship with God. Perhaps we can think of it as something that needs tending before the moment of need arrives.
We cannot expect to live indefinitely on yesterday's faith, any more than we can expect a car to run without replenishing its fuel. Our relationship with God needs room to grow. It is nurtured through prayer, worship, Scripture, friendship, silence, acts of kindness and the willingness to receive God's grace. These are not tasks we complete to earn God's love. They are ways of making space for the love that is already given to us.
Tending our oil doesn't mean becoming spiritually busy every moment of the day. It means having routines and habits in our spiritual life that can sustain us when life becomes difficult. The invitation is to nurture our relationship with God before a crisis arrives, rather than waiting until we are desperate to discover that we need one.
And I don’t know about you, but it always catches me out when the wise bridesmaids refuse to share their oil? It sits quite uncomfortably because we know that Jesus teaches us to love our neighbour, to share what we have and to care for those in need? Why, then, would they say, “No! There will not be enough for you and for us”?
We need to remember that this is a parable, a story with a teaching point rather than an example for us to follow. Jesus is making a point about readiness: the oil represents something that cannot simply be acquired at the last minute or borrowed from someone else. Our relationship with God is something we are invited to nurture for ourselves. No one else can do our trusting, loving or responding for us.
Yet we must hold this alongside another truth that we are called to share generously with others. We can share our resources, our time, our faith and our hope. We can pray for one another, walk alongside those who are struggling, and help people prepare for their own journeys, rather than standing at a distance. The wise bridesmaids may remind us that there are things we cannot do on another person's behalf, but this mustn’t become an excuse for turning away from someone in need.
Rather than asking only why the wise bridesmaids refuse to share, we might ask why the foolish bridesmaids find themselves unprepared. What had they assumed? What had they left until the last minute? What might they have done differently? And then we might turn the question towards ourselves. Are there things in our own lives that we keep postponing? Do we put off prayer, reconciliation, generosity or the difficult work of loving our neighbour because we assume there will always be more time? And, perhaps more uncomfortably, are there times when we have enough to share but choose not to, because we are afraid that being generos might cost us something?
These are not questions to make us anxious or leave us feeling that we are somehow falling short. They are invitations to notice where we are, to recognise what God has already given us, and to consider how we might respond because our calling is not only to make sure that our own lamps are burning, but to be people through whom the light of Christ shines into the world.
We are invited to tend our own faith while sharing the love, kindness and hope that helps others find their way. And that light is not diminished by being shared. The oil in the parable may not be transferable, but the love of God is never something we are asked to hoard.
And this matters in our modern world, where there seems to be no shortage of reasons to worry. News alerts tell us about another crisis. Social media presents us with other people's achievements which highlight our own feeling of falling short. Work follows us home through emails and notifications. There is always another problem to solve, another decision to make, another reason to feel we are falling behind.
For some of us, uncertainty is particularly difficult. We want to know what is coming, whether we have done enough, whether people are happy with us, and whether everything will be all right. We try to think our way towards a sense of safety. But there are limits to what thinking can achieve. We cannot guarantee tomorrow by worrying about it today.
Jesus says that we do not know the day or the hour. This is not an invitation to become overwrought with working it out. It is an acknowledgement that some things are beyond our control. We can make sensible plans and fulfil our responsibilities, but we cannot live tomorrow in advance. There is wisdom in distinguishing between what we can act upon and what we must entrust to God. If we have a difficult conversation ahead, we can prepare thoughtfully without rehearsing every possible outcome all night. If we are waiting for medical results, we can seek support while allowing ourselves to enjoy the things that still bring us joy. If we are worried about our family members, we can love them, guide them and offer them a safe place, without imagining we can protect them from every disappointment. And when the news of the world feels overwhelming, we can respond where we are able, through prayer, generosity or practical action, without believing that we personally must carry every suffering and injustice.
This is not indifference. It is recognising that we are human, not God. Sometimes the faithful response is to do what we can and leave the outcome in God's hands.
Of course, there is a deeper meaning to this parable. Jesus is speaking about the coming of God's kingdom and the need to be ready for Him. As Christians, we live in the hope that Christ will come again and that God's purposes will ultimately be fulfilled. We do not know when that will be. But the Christian response is not to live in terror of being caught unprepared. It is to live in the light of the kingdom we hope for: practising the love, justice, mercy and reconciliation that belong to God's future.
The bridegroom's arrival is unexpected, but the destination is a wedding feast: an image of joy, welcome and celebration. The story carries a serious warning, but it also points us towards the hope of sharing in God's promised future.
So, should these words cause us fear, or offer comfort? That depends on how we understand God. If we imagine God as a distant examiner waiting for us to make a mistake, then “keep awake” sounds like a threat. But if we look to the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the one who welcomes the lost, forgives those who fail and calls people into new life then we can hear the words differently.
Keeping awake means being attentive to the life God calls us to live, rather than allowing fear of the future to dictate how we live it now. So let us tend the oil of our faith, love the people around us and let us prepare for tomorrow without sacrificing today to worry. And when tomorrow does arrive, may we meet it with the grace God gives us then, rather than exhausting ourselves by trying to live it in advance.
Amen.