[Sermon] Oil for the In-Between

Pastor Hector & Michelle Weber | "Conversations on the Road"

November 8, 2026 + 24th Sunday after Pentecost

Michelle Weber joins Pastor Hector for the final "Conversation on the Road" of the season, wrestling with Matthew’s parable of the ten bridesmaids. Michelle, who confesses she wanted to rescue the “foolish” ones, helps Hector see the story from a new angle after thirty years of preaching it. Together they notice that all the bridesmaids fell asleep, and that what separates them is oil, not attentiveness. For Michelle, that oil is the openness she’s found in serving neighbors, which lets her see God already present in the community. Hector reflects on the line “I do not know you” and what it might have meant for Matthew’s community. The conversation lands on a vision of waiting that is neither frantic nor passive, but sustained, embodied, and shared.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Pastor Hector: Please be seated.

I would like to invite Michelle to join me here today as we continue with our Conversations on the Road. Before we go into that: grace to you and peace from God, Abba, Father, Mother, Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Savior, our Lord. And we say, amen.

Congregation: Amen.

Pastor Hector: Well, my siblings in Christ, as I said, today is the last Conversation on the Road for this season. If the Spirit is already poking you and saying you are next, there will be another season next year where you’ll have an opportunity to have these conversations.

Remember, the purpose of these conversations is a reminder that all of us are on a journey. All of us are growing in our faith. All of us have questions. All of us are trying to figure out what the gospel means in our lives, and there is nothing wrong with asking questions, and nothing wrong with not being able to grasp the whole picture of the gospel at once. We are in this journey together. That is the purpose of this series.

Today we have these two stories, Wisdom and the Gospel according to Matthew. These passages confront us with the unbearable reality of living in between, in a time of waiting, as I was talking about with our young worshippers here. It’s a time not of complacency or passivity but of action, shaped by the wisdom that is a gift from God.

A little context, because it’s a complex story: in the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus instructs the disciples, helps them practice, and sends them into the world to practice the instructions he’s giving them. At this point we come to the end of a formal instruction. After the passage we read today, we have the Passion, the death, and the resurrection. And for the next three Sundays we’ll have three parables about Jesus’ coming, the parousia, the second coming of Jesus, where the theme of keeping awake is common. So that’s more or less the context for the story we heard today.

Let’s go into our conversation on the road. Michelle, I’m so glad to have you here today. I have known you since I came to this congregation, and since I met you I have seen you active in the life of the congregation. For those of you who have been here for some time, you know that Michelle has taken different positions of leadership. She has been apprenticing young worshippers as an acolyte, she has been reading, and she has been participating in many different positions of leadership in the congregation. So, Michelle, this congregation is blessed by you, your presence, and your ministry among us here at Trinity Lutheran Church and Schools. Is there anything else I missed that you would like to say about yourself?

Michelle: Well, not too long ago, after I lost my job at Trader Joe’s, I decided to join Neighbors in Need on Saturday mornings. That has changed my perspective on some of my life, where my heart says serve. Just like I do every Sunday morning, I serve everyone, and I serve our neighbors.

Pastor Hector: Yes, and I am a witness of that. So thank you, Michelle. Again, it’s a blessing for this congregation to have you here.

So, let’s go. You and I have been talking about the passages we read today. We’ve been walking like those two disciples, trying to figure out what this difficult passage is about. You have Wisdom and you have Matthew, and you said Matthew caught your attention. What led you to this passage?

Michelle: Actually, it led me to a lot of confusion.

Pastor Hector: Okay.

Michelle: But basically, what led me to Jesus’ passage is that there were the foolish and the wise. And of course I decided to take the wise, because it caught my attention. I consider myself a warm-hearted person. Again, you see me on a Saturday morning and a Sunday morning. That comes from my heart and love, and somehow it disappointed me, the response to the foolish bridesmaids. I would never, ever want to leave them without oil, so they could always make it to the wedding banquet on time.

Who here would feel a little lost if they ran out of oil on their way to a wedding or a banquet, or even a family dinner? These two occasions are coming up, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wouldn’t you want to make sure you had oil on your way to a celebration?

Pastor Hector: Yeah. You really made me think. I was telling Michelle when we were talking that I never thought of it, or maybe if the thought crossed my mind, I forgot. But you really made me think about that perspective: how would I feel if I ran out of oil, and when I asked for help, somebody said, “Go to the grocery store and buy some yourself”? It was hard for me to look at the story from that perspective, and I’ve been reading this passage for years and years, and preaching on it for probably thirty years. So that’s great.

What questions does this gospel passage evoke in you? What are you curious about?

Michelle: Well, reading on to the rest of this chapter, there’s not much more. They ended up walking on the road, and they ended up without oil. Then, reading on, they were never out of oil. So what do you mean you’re out of oil? “Well, we have oil, but we don’t have enough oil.” Well, you should have thought about that the night before. We look at ourselves. Me, I don’t drive, but those who might be on a trip to wherever notice their oil is down, their gas is down. For example, my dad was on the way to Spokane and he realized, “Uh-oh, I better fill it up with gas.” [He should have] filled up with gas before we left, because by the time we got to Spokane, he was out of gas. Luckily we were near a gas station, but it took two people to shove the truck to the gas station, because the truck ended up dying. He didn’t have the smarts to fill it with gas before we left.

Pastor Hector: Oh, so it seems like you relate very well to these bridesmaids, right?

Michelle: Yes.

Pastor Hector: And I think we have been there in many cases, not only with gas but in other aspects of our lives.

Michelle: Yes.

Pastor Hector: Absolutely. So what aspect of this passage did you find most challenging when you were reading it?

Michelle: My challenge was what side I was going to take. Was I going to take the foolish or the wise? After reading it, I decided to take the wise. Sorry about that, everyone. But they were never out of oil. They had very little, and that is why they did not have enough to last until the groom showed up. If they were wise, they would have remembered to fill their oil lamps to the top before they left.

Pastor Hector: Yeah. I remember you were talking about that, and one of the things I discovered as we were talking is two things. One is that you notice they said they ran out of oil, which means they had some oil already. They just didn’t have enough. The second thing I also found challenging is that sometimes we tend to think the foolish bridesmaids are the ones who weren’t paying attention, or were neglecting or negligent. But if you notice, actually all the bridesmaids fell asleep. All of them. So it’s not so much about falling asleep or not having oil, because the wise ones also slept. That was challenging for me as I was rereading this story and having our conversation.

And what you mentioned also is that maybe they didn’t remember to put in a little more oil, just in case things didn’t work the way they had planned. That’s something I was also trying to tell our young worshippers here: how do we live in between the time when something is promised to us and the time when it is fulfilled? How are we prepared for that? That was one of the things that was really challenging for me as we were reading this passage together.

The next thing we were talking about is: how does this passage speak to your life and your faith journey?

Michelle: This one is pretty good. What the gospel tells me about my life, faith, and journey: I’d be the wise one, and I am always prepared to see God in everything. And I decided to add every day. Just like Pastor says, six days a week, or seven days a week, when you go out and live, live it seven days a week, or six days a week, until we gather again on Sunday morning. In my life and journey with my family and friends, if I were on a walk to the wedding banquet and they ran out of oil, I’d be very upset. So I would always make sure to be with them, that their lamps were filled and my lamps were filled with oil before we left.

Pastor Hector: Yeah. And I think on Wednesday we were talking about the gift of wisdom and how we share that wisdom. In the prayer of the day today, which Megan did for us, we were talking about asking God for the oil to be shared. How can we become an extension of the wisdom and the compassion of God to all people? Again, this was one of those moments in our conversation that was enlightening for me. Sometimes, from my perspective as a pastor, I’m trying to read this in a very theological way, wondering what I’m going to tell people about it. But when we are in conversation, you uncover little things I didn’t pay attention to, because I get so familiar with this story. So this has been a wonderful journey, having this conversation with you.

Something you said was the first thing you told me when we met. You said, “I think this story is all about being ready to be surprised.” That’s how you started the conversation, and I think that is part of this story. How do we live a life, as a congregation and as individuals, ready to be surprised by the showing up of Jesus in our lives?

Michelle: Correct.

Pastor Hector: And going back to where you started, you talked about how your sense of call, and your sense of being ready and prepared, comes through serving others. That openness, if I hear you correctly, has helped you see how God is present in the midst of the community you are serving.

Michelle: Correct.

Pastor Hector: And that’s the oil.

Michelle: Yeah.

Pastor Hector: That gives life and light.

Michelle: Yes.

Pastor Hector: Yes. So, with this last question that you and I were discussing: what do you believe is the good news in this passage?

Michelle: Wake up, everybody! Wake up, everybody! The time is coming, and the wedding is starting soon, but I don’t have enough oil. The Spirit will always remind me to be prepared and to always keep awake, because you don’t know the day or the hour Jesus is going to show up. So you better be prepared.

Pastor Hector: Yes, because Jesus really shows up, right?

Michelle: That’s right.

Pastor Hector: Yeah. I think that’s the good news. And when I was thinking about the good news, Michelle, yesterday, as I was wrapping up our conversations, I got to this line. You talked about it in our previous conversations: one of the things that caught your attention was that the story ends where the groom says, “I do not know you,” and shuts the door, and it ends there. You said, “I’m curious how this story would continue. What did the bridesmaids do after that?”

So I did a little thinking about “I do not know you,” and asked, is there good news here? This is one of the most chilling lines in the Gospel according to Matthew, when we know that Jesus says, “I know you by name. I am with you.” And all of a sudden, in this story, it could be interpreted as “You do not know me.” What does that mean?

I think this is connected with the community of the church at the time of Matthew. Many of the Christians, the new converts, the new followers of Jesus, came from a Jewish tradition, and in order to follow Jesus they had to leave their families and their communities. For them, that was the experience of having the door of their community shut in their faces. They knew what that was. They knew how it felt, because it happened in the synagogue, in the family, and at the banquets they used to have.

So the parable may be less about God’s judgment mechanism, how God is going to judge us, and more about the tragic reality that unpreparedness, as you were saying, “be awake, be ready,” can mean missing the celebration that has always been prepared for you, and for me, and for all creation. This story is not about divine punitiveness. It is a sober truth that love’s invitation can be declined by our own neglect.

The bridesmaids are precisely in a liminal space, like many of us, waiting in the dark between the promise and the fulfillment. Waiting is not passive complacency but an act of witness and solidarity, as you were saying earlier, where we need to see each other and see how God is present in our lives. People in our communities now seem to be between a rock and a hard place regarding jobs, relationships, transitions in life, and so on. The socioeconomic and political precarity we are facing right now is the kind of liminality this parable addresses.

So the temptation for us is, many times, twofold: either to burn ourselves out in anxious activism, not oil but a lot of flame, or to withdraw into cynical waiting, no flame, just oil. The parable’s wisdom is about sustained, embodied, communal readiness. No frantic control, no passive resignation, but the cultivation of the capacity to keep showing up, keep burning, keep watching, all together as a community, waiting and being ready for the welcome of Jesus when he arrives, and arrives, and arrives daily in our lives.

All of this, I think, is what you shared with me through the days we were talking. I just put it in a few more fancy words than our conversation, because we were sitting at a table talking, taking notes, and being guided by the Spirit.

Michelle, on behalf of this congregation, thank you for sharing what is in your heart, where you are in your faith journey, and for allowing the Spirit to make you an instrument of God’s grace and compassion by bringing the good news of the Lord Jesus. May you continue to journey. And as you were asking us for prayers for your job applications, may the Lord guide you and give you the oil that you need, and help you to light other people, even in between now and the promised blessing that you may not be able to see today.

And thank you all for participating in these conversations on the road, my siblings in Christ. As I said, be ready, because if you don’t sign up, I will find you anyway. Okay?

Congregation: (laughter)

Pastor Hector: I already have a list of names. So be ready. Be awake. You are next. And we say, thank you, Michelle.

(applause)