At the top of the list of endangered occupations is that of the lamplighter. In early nineteenth century London, New York, or Philadelphia, your safety would have depended on the reliability of lamplighters. Each evening at dusk, they would appear, poles in hand, topped by kerosene-soaked rags, to reach up and ignite gas flames in the many lamps strategically placed throughout the city streets. No one wanted to venture out after dark without the lamps being lit.
Lamplighters knew all the neighborhoods of major cities. They had to show up on time and be dependable. They worked around the clock. They appeared at dusk to light the lamps and then again at dawn to extinguish them. Today, with electric lights on timers, it’s difficult to imagine just how important lamplighters would have been to an earlier age. And as difficult as it has been to get our light timers working here around the church, I almost wish we could hire our own lamplighters.
Interestingly, the profession has not gone completely out of style. The city of Brest, Belarus, has employed a lamplighter since 2009, and there’s still a small group of lamplighters in London. Only a handful of cities across the globe have active lamplighters.[1] They’re a dying, nearly extinct, breed of people, hanging on to a profession that has been superseded by technological efficiency.
But with the demise of this peculiar profession, there has been a loss of more than just jobs. Think of the ways in which lamplighters were so tied up with the communities in which they worked in ages past. They knew the streets. They knew the people. They provided an invaluable service for the people, and the people depended on the lamplighters for their safety and freedom. In some ways, community was formed and nourished around light, and at the center of those relationships of trust, were the lamplighters.
Maybe we need a modern guild of lamplighters. I don’t mean actual lamplighters roaming the streets and lighting the few extant gas lamps that aren’t self-igniting. I’m talking about a guild of people committed to giving light to a world where the light seems to be going out, to give hope where there’s constant despair. We need a guild of people committing their lives to showing up, dependably, to let the light shine so that others can find their paths in the darkness and proceed on their way in safety, with the hope that they will reach their destination.
If what I read daily in the news or hear in conversations with others or see on the streets is any indication, scores of people are struggling to see the light. I don’t think the world is particularly worse than it has been in the past, but it seems like it because we have so many more mechanisms of spreading a perpetual message that the light is going out, or that it has been extinguished altogether. And this is why the world needs the Church. We are the modern guild of lamplighters. We can be a reliable source of light in the darkness and a lodestone of reconciliation and peace if we reclaim the mission God has entrusted to us. And to reclaim that mission means we need to be more like the wise maidens in Jesus’s parable rather than the foolish ones.
Of all the Gospels, St. Matthew’s in particular gives us the encouraging wisdom that to follow Christ is not to grasp at some elusive notion of God’s will. To follow Christ necessitates doing certain things. What we do matters. Christian discipleship is not only a matter of the heart. It is also a matter of our hands and feet taking action so that we gradually conform to the self-emptying pattern of Christ’s life. To find Christ’s light in a world of darkness, we must constantly replenish our lamps with oil. We must bother to take extra oil with us on the journey. We must be prepared.
We can learn a lot about the two types of maidens in Jesus’s parable by reflecting on their level of preparedness. The wise maidens are not only smart and organized enough to anticipate a long wait for the bridegroom. They’re humble enough to know that when the oil runs out, they can’t presume to rely on backup oil from others. It would be arrogant to consider joining the banquet by piggybacking on other people’s preparedness if they weren’t themselves prepared.
But the foolish maidens have not only been irresponsible; they have also been proud. They have assumed too much—that the bridegroom would not take so long in arriving at the banquet and that if they themselves could leave for the banquet in haste without fully preparing, others would bail them out. It’s not that the wise maidens don’t want to help the foolish ones; it’s that the wise ones know that helping the foolish ones will help no one at all. The oil will run out, and no one will get to the banquet.
And these two types of maidens are rather like two types of Christians. One type of Christian knows what is required of a true disciple. It’s no mystery. Say your prayers. Go to church. Feed the poor. Clothe the naked. Give drink to the thirsty. Love your enemy. Treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated. Humble yourself to be exalted. Empty yourself to be filled. And when you set out on the road of discipleship, make sure you always have enough spare oil.
The wise Christian knows that on the road to heaven, the light will wane. It will threaten to go out. At times, it will appear as if it has gone out. The wise Christian knows that it’s impossible to control the darkness, but it’s more than possible to tend to the light. It’s no mystery. Jesus has shown us what to do.
But the foolish Christian has taken it all for granted. The foolish Christian certainly wants to feast at the banquet but can’t imagine that the bridegroom will be delayed in coming. The foolish Christian will hope for others to assist when deliberate unpreparedness comes home to roost. The foolish Christian will wait until the tragedy strikes to cry, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But the door will seem shut because there will be no readily apparent answer. And the answer’s light, which is always there, will not be seen because the lamp has run out of oil. The foolish Christian is willfully unprepared.
If the Church is about anything these days, she must be about tending to the light. We must be a guild of lamplighters, even though these days we often yearn for recognition, just like that dying breed of actual lamplighters. Like the handful of lamplighters who still give light to their respective communities, we in the Church can be seen as an anachronism. Who needs the Church’s wisdom when we have the wisdom of technology? Who needs the Church’s community when we have the fellowship of social media and clubs? Who needs the Church’s works of charity when we have social service agencies to help the needy?
But without the Church, the light that seems to be fading into darkness will be insufficient to light the way forward, because the Church’s very mission is to manifest the Light of Christ to a confused world. And we are the lamplighters, tending to the flame among us, and lighting the path for others to find the true Light that lightens the world.
Jesus’s parable of the ten maidens is so often heard with anxiety. Will we miss the banquet? Will the door be closed to us? But this parable is, in fact, a gracious, non-anxious invitation to be a guild of lamplighters that this world so badly needs.
When the rest of the world believes that the light is going out and will go out soon, we’ve been told that the light always shines in the darkness, and the darkness can’t overcome it. We’ve been told by Jesus himself how to put oil in our lamps, and no matter how much we have failed to do it, we know that keeping oil on hand is within our capacity to accomplish.
The Church is no anachronism to the world. She is its living light that points the way to the true Light. And what the world needs from us is clear. The world needs us to be prepared, watchful, dependable, and faithful. Ironically, a world that seems increasingly to stay away from church needs us to be here, in church, weekly, dependably, faithfully. The world needs us to show up constantly to say our prayers and pray for others to find the light that shines in the darkness. The world needs us to lighten the darkness by our works of charity and mercy and through our refusal to concede to despair.
The world needs us because we are keepers of the light. We are the lamplighters, with one exception. We never need to show up at dawn to put the lights out. The light always burns. It burns before the Sacrament in this church. It burns in our prayer and daily work. It burns in our authentic witness to the Gospel. And if we choose to put oil in our lamps, we will be the ones to shine a path in the cold darkness to the living Light of the world, who invites the whole world in to feast with him.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
November 12, 2023
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter