Between Sundays for the Week of November 9, 2026
In the final scene before Jesus death and resurrection, he takes his disciples up the Mount of Olives and delivers his final teaching to them, ending with a series of three parable. The first of these three is the parable of the wise and foolish maidens (Matthew 25:1-13). One way to understand this story is to see the various elements of the parable as reflective of the ways the disciples will respond to Jesus’ betrayal, trial, death and resurrection. Seen from that vantage point, we can imagine that Jesus tells this parable as a story for his followers to draw on in the midst of the chaos to make sense of all that is happening.
But from our vantage point, on the other side of the resurrection, still waiting and watching, Jesus’ words are also spoken to us. Keep awake . . . you know neither the day nor the hour. At the heart of this parable lies a promise – Jesus Christ is coming! – but no timeline.
Could it be that one facet that Jesus is getting at in his parable is an encouragement to prepare to be surprised? Or as the writer Debie Thomas states in a reflection on this text, “It’s not going to go the way you think it’s going to go.”
From the beginning of his preaching of the Beatitudes to his final parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus teaches his followers in every age: Prepare to be surprised! One way the parable of the ten maidens speaks is to remind us that the wedding banquet of the Lord will take place at an unknown hour among the most unlikely of people – those hurting and in need of compassion and care, of mercy and justice. It’s not going to go the way that any of us think it’s going to go!
Each year in November, the assigned scripture readings ask us to face the harsh realities of our world – to be clear about all the ways that the world does not yet reflect the fulfillment of God’s new creation, the ways that we are not prepared to receive it even when we do get glimpses, and yet to still continue to hold before us the promise – Jesus Christ is coming.
We can hear this as a warning. Or maybe, we hear Jesus’ words as an invitation to shift our focus to watch and listen for where and how God appears to us here and now. To use our moments and our days to prepare ourselves to be surprised by Jesus, who was, and is, and who is to come! In embracing this promise, a thrill of hope is born!
P.S. Listen to the full worship service (including Pastor Amy’s sermon that starts with the gospel reading at 18:00) here. As always, share your presence with us or prayer concerns by completing a contact form on our website! Links to previous worship videos are available on our website.
Faith Connection at Home
November 11 is Veterans Day, originally “Armistice Day.” On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (that is, 11:00am on November 11, 1918), the truce was declared that ended World War I, then known as “The Great War” and “the war to end all wars.”
“Armistice” is from the Latin arma (“arms”) and sistere (“stand still”). Imagine the stillness, the quiet that came from laying down weapons on both sides, after years of grueling, bloody trench warfare.
The United States Congress subsequently declared that the date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”
Sadly, it was not “the war to end all wars” — and so in 1954, the day was renamed, “Veterans Day” in order to honor veterans from all the wars since, not just World War I. But the words of Congress still resonate, as do the holiday’s origins in that great stillness.
A day of thanksgiving: for the service of veterans, living and dead; for the service of caregivers — doctors and nurses and chaplains and mental health professionals and spouses and family members and friends — who walk with veterans through the ravages of war, even after the bullets and bombs and missiles stop flying; and for the days of peace that come at long last.
A day of prayer: for people of all faiths (or no faith at all), a time of prayer, meditation, or reflection on the stillness of armistice, so that the days of peace on Earth increase, and the days of war decrease.
A day of exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations: for all of us to find ways, large and small, to build bridges across lines of difference, suspicion, or hostility, in our neighborhoods, our country, and among the nations of the world.
To lay down our arms. To step into a new serenity, a new stillness together. To sing with our ancestors that we, too, will lay down our swords and shields, “down by the riverside, and study war no more” — so that the next hundred-and-eight years may be more peaceful than the last.
As we live through these days of war and rumors of war, may God’s peace be with you on this Veterans Day, this Armistice Day, and may we lay down all of our arms, all of our burdens, in God’s great Shalom rising up even now, like soldiers climbing out of trenches a century ago.
Ponderings
The Coming
Keep awake, therefore,
for you know neither the day nor the hour.
—Matthew 25.13
Scholars with furrowed brows will tell you
the parable of the bridesmaids
is a tale of waiting for the Second Coming,
about being as prepared as a Boy Scout—
as if you can anticipate unimaginable glory.
Oh, let someone else do that waiting.
After two thousand years,
the next few don’t look too different.
No, better, look for this coming:
the appearance of the One
who even now enters your life
with enough light
for both of you.
You can hear the writer, Steve Garnaas-Holmes, read his poem at Unfolding Light.