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The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, 11/09/2014
Sermon on Matthew 25:1-12, by Paula Murray-Stuckert
‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6But at midnight there was a shout, "Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him." 7Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.8The foolish said to the wise, "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." 9But the wise replied, "No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves." 10And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, "Lord, lord, open to us." 12But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know you."13Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. NRSV
The frost has laid lightly on the pumpkins and fields to date, but the first hard freeze of the season is upon us and it is for real. I've proof of it in freezing toes and fingers. I warned the husband we needed to turn off the water and I would bring in the herbs, but I, at least, didn't remember to actually get it done until after midnight. So, I've put the kettle on to warm cold digits, and I am hoping the bridal's veil and the basil and suchlike will survive their short exposure to temperatures below freezing.
It's not as if there wasn't sufficient warning. The weather types have been peering into their digitized crystal balls and crying hue that the potted plants must be covered or brought indoors. This is sport to meteorologists. With the exception of the occasional hurricane, summers are much the same, day after day of hot and humid. But now life gets exciting, for after frosts comes all the fullness of winter from flurries to two foot tall drifts of the white stuff. For the rest of us normal human beings, that first hard freeze and all the hullabaloo before and after means that our small patch of God's creation goes dormant. The land sleeps under its cover of fallen leaves or pristine snow, disturbed only by the farmer intent on getting the beans off, hunters, or the occasional thrill seeker on a three wheeler. The earth sleeps and our dreams of spring and renewal are put on hold as we wait upon the arrival of next year's seed catalogs in January.
With the earth's sleep comes the end, or near end, of the harvest. In our northern climes the end of the harvest season coincides with the end of the post-Pentecost season. That time of our liturgical year is every bit as much about the harvest of the spirit as the time of the calendar year is about the harvest of the fields. We have spent the Sundays from September onwards talking about the fruits of the Spirit, harvesting the texts for the sweet and wholesome fruit within, a fruit that enriches the life of the disciple of Christ and the witness of the Church. This morning's fruit is perseverance.
To persevere is to be steadfast in the face of delay. Delay is the subtext of the morning's Scripture readings. Israel is unhappy that the Lord has delayed in his day of judgment on her enemies. The prophet Amos responds bitterly and with considerable anger to Israel's belief that they will emerge victorious among the nations. Amos, who sees they worship not God but themselves and are unjust in their treatment of the poor and the powerless. He tells them the Day of the Lord will not be a day of light and joy for Israel, for Israel will face judgment even as their Gentile rulers and oppressors will face judgment. The Day of the Lord will instead be a day of darkness and condemnation for Israel. Rather than pray for an end to God's delay in bringing about the Day of the Lord, says Amos, Israel should seek good and not evil.
The delay of Christ's return and the possibility of judgment is at the heart of Paul's letter to the congregation in the Greek town of Thessalonaika. They are his brothers and sisters "beloved of God," (chapter 1, verse 4) who worry that the delay in Christ's return means their newly deceased brothers and sisters in Christ will not know the joy of the resurrection. Paul comforts them, saying the dead will be the first to rise when the Lord returns. For all that he answers their concern, this is not Paul's main purpose in writing the letter. Paul exerts much more effort in this letter exhorting the Thessalonians to persevere in holiness over the time between Christ's ascension and return, for it is Jesus, "who rescues us from the wrath that is coming" (1:10). Since the Day of the Lord will come as a "thief in the night," (5:2), they are to "keep awake and be sober" (5:6), for "God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ" (5:9-10).
Perseverance is the point of the Gospel reading as well, and we could stick only to that text in our meditation on God's Word this morning. But our Scripture readings are meant to be read together to support a common theme, in this case the need for perseverance in faith. Biblical scholars sometimes give the impression that Matthew is inordinately concerned with the topics of judgment and the need to persevere in faith until Christ does return again. The other readings show us that this exhortation to persevere over the course of the divine delay runs consistently throughout the Bible.
There is no getting around the fact, though, that Matthew hits the theme hard. Our parable or teaching story comes after Jesus enters Jerusalem to the praise and welcome of its inhabitants. The joyous tone of that event lasts but a moment; almost immediately the dire nature of the time is made apparent. Jesus denounces his enemies for the hypocrites they are and then tells a series of parables or teaching stories that illumine the faithlessness of Israel's leadership. They wear their faith too lightly, they serve themselves and not God, and they plunder the poor while declaring themselves righteous. Jesus warns of his return to gather in the elect, and follows this warning with stories of what happens when those who should know better do not wait and prepare for the coming of the Son of Man.
This morning's parable is one of those stories. Ten women have patiently waited upon the late arrival of a bridegroom and his men, who will escort his new bride from her parents' home to his parents' home, where they will likely live. The translation says bridesmaids, which is a bit anachronistic; this is no small fleet of women dressed in poorly fitted peach or chartreuse gowns to stand along the chancel railing with the bride. They are virgins, unmarried girls or very young women, who provide an escort for the as of yet virginal bride as she enters her new home. They are her cover, as she wends her way through town. Some time ago, her husband-to-be contracted with her father for her hand, and that contract was finalized with a short ceremony more binding than the usual wedding we might attend. There is a delay of about a year between betrothal and consummation of the marriage. During that delay, both parties are counted as married, and must persevere in faithfulness to a spouse they may not even know. The day chosen for the consummation of the wedding depends upon the bride's preparation of the things she will take with her to her new home, any last minute hitches in the contract of its fulfillment, the groom's completion of a special honeymoon room or chuppah in his parents' home, and his family's readiness for a five or seven day party that may possibly host most of the community in which they live. The families of the bride and groom will settle on a day, but the time of the removal of the bride from her parent's home to her new home is not, other than it will take place at night. The virgins and the groom's friends will form a procession of light to guide the bridal couple. Hence the necessity of the lamps the virgins carry, and their need to wait until the groom arrives.
The problem with the five virgins who are shut out of the wedding party is not that they are somehow unsuitable or that they fell asleep. All of the young women have been chosen for their suitability, and all of them fell asleep while waiting for the groom and his party. The problem is that they did not prepare for the delay, even though such delays were common for a wedding party in that time. The five foolish virgins did not take additional oil for their oil lamps with them, and as they hear the horn and the shouts of the groom's party announcing their arrival they realize they do not have enough oil to properly light the bride's way. The other virgins do have more oil, but not enough for the five less well prepared virgins, who go to buy more oil. When they return, lamps refilled with oil and burning brightly, the groom and his party have locked the door behind them, and the five foolish virgins are not allowed to set their eyes upon the bridegroom or enter into his wedding feast.
Let's ask Luther's question, "What does this mean?" The wedding feast is the feast celebrated in the kingdom of heaven. The bridegroom is Christ our Lord, and the Church is the bride. Our invitation to the feast has been sent, and we have sent back the rsvp card saying thank you very much, we'll be there, the wicks on our lamps trimmed and the oil basin filled. But the feast is, to human thinking on such things, much delayed.
We have had sufficient warning. Over and over again the clarion call is made; wait, for your Lord comes; be prepared for his return. Perseverance is another word for faithfulness. We do not come to faith without the aid of the Holy Spirit and we do not persevere in faith without the aid of the Holy Spirit. That's why we call perseverance a fruit of faith, a gift of a good and gracious God who understands we are weak and must lean on his strength. We are, left to ourselves, too like my bridal veil, showing the effects of my forgetfulness and the first hard freeze of the year. We may say with the Creeds, I believe, when we attend church, and mean it. But the will to live the faith we say we believe is more often waning than waxing with the harvest moon.
All the signs are there, in the Church as a whole, in our own discipleship. We pick up a mystery, but not the Bible. We curse the darkness, but do not praise the Light. We use the Lord's name to broadcast our angry frustrations much more often than we use it to pray for our healing or the healing of others. When God blesses us with material goods we look to use them for entertainment and not to give aid to the poor. We treat our loved ones as inconvenient nuisances instead of the treasures they are. All in all, we are far more likely to be asleep than awake, certain there will be time to get it right in the future. Or, worse yet, sometimes we deny there is a later, that Christ will keep his promise to return, or that God does judge the living and the dead. We deny our need of the grace of God.
That denial is right up there with something as stupid and obviously untrue as denying our need for the fruit of the earth, and starving to death as a consequence. Through Jesus' death and resurrection God offers to us a harvest of good foods for the spirit as well as the body. There is not a minute to spare, there is not a moment too soon, to awaken to the grace that is ours through Jesus Christ.