"Ready" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | November 8, 2026

Sermon Preached: Sunday, November 8, 2026 at Trinity on the Green, New Haven

Proper 27a: Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 | Psalm 70 | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 | Matthew 25:1-13 

Between the words that I speak and the words that are heard, may God’s Spirit be present. Amen.

My younger daughter is a person of very few words– and I mean that literally, because she is 18 months old. One of my favorite words that she has already learned is the word ready. When I’m hustling in the morning to put together my girls’ lunches and grab their bags, I turn to Naomi and ask: ready? And she replies, with great enthusiasm: “readyyyy!” When it is bedtime, and she is clearly tired, I scoop her up in my arms and ask if she is ready, and she replies, in sleepy tones, “Ready.” On most days, my daughter acts as if she is ready for anything. She’s young, she’s excited, and she is learning constantly. Naomi is often the first person in our family to grab her shoes and ask us to put them on in the morning, because she is ready to go. 

Now what does it actually mean for an 18 month old to be ready? I can assure you that she does not pack her own diaper bag, or her milk, or her snacks. But in her tiny heart she is ready. In light of our Gospel passage you could say that Naomi’s lamps are trimmed, full of oil, and burning– whether or not she is wearing pants to cover her diaper.

What does it mean to be ready? In today’s Gospel passage Jesus tells a parable suggesting that we ought to be ready at all times, like the five wise bridesmaids who kept enough oil with them to last through the night. We are meant to be ready– but ready for what? 

In some Christian communities, this idea of readiness revolves around the concept of the Rapture, a time when all of the faithful are suddenly lifted into heaven to be with God. While this idea has roots in scripture– one of them being the passage that we read today from 1 Thessalonians– it’s important to know that the concept of the Rapture does not date back to Jesus’ time, but was instead developed and spread in the 1830s by a preacher named John Nelson Darby. The Bible does indeed teach us to have faith in the return of Jesus– who will judge the living and the dead. But Jesus wasn’t interested in airlifting believers out of a time of tribulation. Instead Jesus was interested in transforming this world into the kingdom of God. Jesus was interested in transforming this world into a new heaven and a new earth, as described in the Book of Revelation.

Well, if we’re not preparing for the Rapture then what are we preparing for? Some Christians would say that we are preparing for the hour of our death. And it’s true that beginnings and endings are moments of particular holiness in our lives. Birth, a move, a new job, the death of a loved one, and ultimately your own death– these are the moments that bring into focus the things that really matter in our lives. And yet, Christianity isn’t some kind of insurance to make sure that we’ve covered when we die. As Jesus says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke: “as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32). When Jesus suggests that we ought to be ready– ready like the bridesmaids with their lamps full of oil– he is not talking about the hour of our death; or at least not only about the hour of our death. Jesus is talking about a broader kind of readiness. A readiness that isn’t just for the end of our lives, but for every day of our lives. Every minute, every hour. Because our God isn’t the God of the dead, but rather the God of the living.

The question remains: What does it mean to be ready? And what are we getting ready for? Well, we are getting ready for nothing in particular. And we are getting ready for every moment of our lives. We are cultivating our hearts and our souls to practice what we preach– or perhaps even more truly, to practice what we pray. As Christians:

We are getting ready to be the person who shares their loaves and fishes instead of holding on to our own meal in fear and scarcity.

We are getting ready to say yes, when Jesus invites us down from our lofty hiding places, like the tax collector Zacchaeus, and Jesus declares “I am coming to your house today.”

We are getting ready to welcome strangers, just like Abraham and Sarah welcomed three men into their home, not knowing they were angels.

We are getting ready to turn the other cheek– practicing again and again that most difficult art of choosing peace, instead of retaliation.

We are getting ready to be healed, even if healing means rubbing spit and dirt on our eyes so that we might see more clearly.

We are getting ready to walk on water, knowing we’d much rather stay in the comfort and security of the boat– our institutions, our habits, our cultural predispositions – but trusting that Jesus invites us to a braver, better way.

This is what it means to be ready: cultivating a mind, heart and soul that is ready to do what Jesus would do, at all times and in all paces. We need to be ready to override those impulses that would have us act in a different way: our fear, our selfishness, our desire to please others– so that we are ready to live according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This kind of readiness isn’t about protecting yourself from an imagined hell or an imagined Rapture. This kind of readiness is about being ready to enter into the kingdom of God as if it was already a reality. This kind of readiness is about growing in faith, living in hope, and serving others in love.

Returning to the parable of the ten bridesmaids: I’ve always found it a bit problematic that the five wise bridesmaids decide not to share their oil with the others. “No!” they say, “there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” When I think about this parable in terms of the message of readiness, it makes more sense. We might be able to share our livelihood, our belongings, the gifts that God has given us– but how can we share our readiness? When you are on the edge of a body of water, getting ready to jump in, there is nothing you can do to share your readiness with the person standing next to you. Instead, readiness is something that has to be cultivated: by learning how to swim; by knowing the water, its temperature and resistance; and by training our hearts to be brave.

So much of Christianity is practice– and I mean that in two ways. Practice, as in the thing you do to get better. And practice, as in the rituals, the liturgy, the music, the prayers— the traditions that give shape to the faith that we profess. What we do on Sunday morning is practice for the life we intend to live when we walk outside those doors. There is an old Christian saying that dates back to the 5th century, in Latin: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. Translation: the law of what is prayed is what is believed is the law of what it lived. Or to put it more simply: as we pray, so we also believe, and so we also live. Our prayers, the shape of our liturgy, the way that we gather around a table for communion every Sunday– these things are not an accident. Our prayers are physical manifestations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we come together, listen to the words of scripture, reflect, express the longings of our hearts, and share a meal in which we are all equal participants. Our worship is practice. Our worship instills the values of our faith in our minds, our souls, and bodies– so that we can go forth and live as Jesus would live; love as Jesus would love. 

What is worship getting you ready for? I don’t know. I don’t know what life has in store for you in the coming week, or what situations and choices weigh on your heart. But I believe that our prayers make us ready.

Ready, to step up in love. 

Ready, to sow seeds of hope.

Ready, to bring Good News to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to bring recovery of sight to those who cannot see, and to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18).

Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Every day is an opportunity to follow in the good path of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Keep awake. Amen.