Pentecost Twenty-Four (Revised Common Lectionary) | 11.08.26 | Matthew 25.1-13 | Carl A. Voges

The Passage

“Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.  For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.  As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.

“But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom!  Come out to meet him.’  Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps.  And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’  But the wise replied, ‘Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’”

“And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut.  Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’  Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

          [Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press]

“The LORD will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of trouble.  Those who know your name will put their trust in you, for you never forsake those who seek you, O LORD.”                                                                                                      [Psalm 9.9-10]

  In the Name of Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Trusting that all the Lord’s people stumbled through the elections this past Tuesday and that they are coping fairly well with their incomes and expenses, this second November Sunday finds us confronting a clear parable from our Lord and Savior.  Well, it is clear until we get to its conclusions!  Thankfully, we have an excellent example from one of our teachers in the Lord’s Life, Martin Luther, who continually reminded us of how to best enter the biblical passages we are confronting.  He would urge us to examine the before and after contexts of those passages!

The preceding chapter (23) has Jesus blistering the scribes and Pharisees, pointing out how their traditions are hampering the ways in which they attempt to wrestle with his words and actions!  While we won’t attempt to get into those ways right now, the Lord’s blistering points out how his people today can still be hampered by his words and activities.

In the same chapter Jesus goes on to describe the realities which will surface as the world approaches the End of its Time.  The realities from chapter 23 literally take our breath away today because they accurately reflect the same realities being experienced by our world today, regardless of the media to which we have access.  Jesus mentions that such tumult and chaos will really unfold with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple which will occur some thirty years later.

In chapter 24 the disciples want to know precisely when all this unfolding will occur.  Strikingly, Jesus first calls on them to be ready!  Thus his call for such readiness is not only for the things unfolding in the world’s life, it is also for the unfolding of his Life as it makes its ways into this world.

What are the realities opening up in the world’s life?  The things breaking down around us (notice the coarseness splattering through our culture, the apparent hiddenness of the Trinity’s activity in the world today, the strong desire to have and to be a significant influence on the people around us).  Then there are the on-going wars in Ukraine, Sudan and the Middle East.  Jesus reminds us of the famines and earthquakes which occur with some regularity.  He comments that all these realities are like the signs of an impending birth!

Jesus also points out that the authorities (both from the world and from the Church?) will be hammering his people.  They will create difficult relationships among us.  They will turn everyone’s life loose so that it is always about them and their choices.  Their impacts will stir up all the clashing egos which, in dispiriting and destructive ways, unleash the world’s tumult and chaos on a never-ending basis!

Chapter 24 concludes with Jesus stating that those who endure to the end (the End-of-Time) will be saved and that the Gospel will be preached throughout world!  This passage to the end will be extremely rough – there will be no relief from anxieties and pressures, there will be no gods on which we can rely.  The leaves falling from the trees this time of the year remind us to be aware of his Life pressing into our own.

Jesus goes on to stipulate that no one knows the timing of the actual End.  It will just slip into the world’s life, similar to the way in which the Flood occurred in Noah’s time.  Jesus reminds his followers that the Son of Man is coming to this world at an unexpected hour.  So he calls us to be faithful and wise about everything he is saying to us!

It took us a while to get here, but this parable from the opening verses of Matthew’s twenty-fifth chapter reinforces his call to us, his followers today!  The parable shows the readiness levels of ten maidens (virgins or assistants) who are participating in the ritual of a Jewish marriage.  The festivities are taking place in the home of the bride’s father as the groom brings his bride there.  The assistants have lanterns to accompany the procession.  If the groom is delayed, the lanterns are not lit until his arrival.  The assistants may get drowsy while they wait for him and, in this situation, they do fall asleep.

Jesus characterizes the ten assistants.  Half of them are wise because they not only brought their lanterns, they also brought the vessels containing extra oil if needed.  The other half are foolish, they have their lanterns, but they do not have the vessels with the extra oil.  When the delayed groom finally appears, the assistants scramble to go with him.  The wise ones light their lanterns and have access to their vessels.  The foolish ones suddenly realize they are not fully ready. They ask the wise ones for their assistance but are turned down.  They have to pull away from the groom’s procession and go to the suppliers who sell extra oil.

What startles are the harsh conclusions to this parable!  The foolish assistants finally get to the marriage festivities, but they cannot get in, and the groom denies that he even knows them!  Jesus then closes the parable off with the ominous phrase – Watch, for we don’t know the day or the hour!

What do we make of this parable and its harsh conclusions for our lives today?  We return to the context following this passage.  All of chapter 25 reflects Our Lord’s teachings on his kingdom, a reality from eternity, one which reflects the full Life of the Holy Trinity.  This is the Life given to us when we are baptized, this is the Life confronting us when we are exposed to the Holy Writings, this is the Life surging into our own when we face up to our sin and are met by the Lord’s Forgiveness, this is the Life which surrounds our lives when we participate in the Lord’s Eucharist.

This is THE Life, then, to which we are called and for which we are to be ready.  Matthew’s next two chapters reflect the immensity of Jesus’ death as the world’s life unleashes its fury upon him, a fury that is overcome and discarded by the stunning realities of his resurrection!  Our Lord today is calling us to be alert and faithful and wise to the Life he continually brings to an arrogant, beaten-down and mindless world through the ministry of his Church.

Those who are wise recognize this call can be dulled, they know how deeply rooted is their desire to be like the LORD God.  They confront it, though, so it can be met by the Lord’s Forgiveness, they continually expose themselves to the Lord’s holy places of his Scriptures and Sacraments as his Life continually crosses with their own.  Those who are foolish are those who ignore that desire – they go through their lives, managing their days and nights as well as they can, borrowing the stuff they need or, if that does not happen, going to the people who provide what they need.

It is at this point where the passage takes ferocious turn and the Lord’s people today have a difficult time absorbing it, just as the Jewish authorities did more than two thousand years ago.  Although delayed, the foolish assistants are able to get what they need for the bridegroom’s feast.  When they get there, however, he not only refuses to let them in, he also states that has no idea of who they are!  This is a brutal conclusion, but it illustrates how the natural desire to be like the LORD God can cut our lives off from his.  This natural desire enables us to get through the world’s life on our own, but it also dulls us.  It even separates us from the rescue which the Lord Jesus Christ aches to give us and all the world’s people!

Thus we need to remember that, through the realities of his dying and rising, the Son has confronted this desire to be like him and broken its perpetual grip on our lives.  Yes, we still have to deal with it on a daily basis, but its grip is not permanent.  This is why the Lord’s people, whose lives are constantly bombarded by the self-centering of the world’s life, find relief through their participation in the Church’s liturgies.  Their exposures to his Life through his Scriptures and Sacraments enable them to cope with the world’s attractiveness and destructiveness.

With deep thankfulness we receive that Life and press on, answering the Son’s call to be faithful and wise as his Life swirls around our own.  His call to such alertness and readiness has been stretching out a very long time – to this point we have been answering it for more than two thousand years!  But, in stubborn ways, we press on in the Lord’s Life, trusting it will always be the last word for us as well as for our world.

The sin in this world steadily swarms our thinking and doing so that our lives in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit get dulled; it also distorts, warps and destroys the world’s life.  After all, when we see the conflicts, problems and wrongs swirling around our lives, we recognize the source of all that trouble – it’s sin!  What can go wrong if you turn three hundred forty million people loose to live their lives on their own?

Today, however, we are reminded that the LORD God is our refuge from all the world’s trouble and the ways in which it hammers its people!  Those whose lives have been crossed by the Lord put their trust in him, confident that he never pulls away from those who seek to be alert to the Life he is bringing to this world!

Now may the peace of the LORD God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our

   hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus Our Lord

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Pr. Carl A. Voges, STS, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com