THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, FRANKLIN, MA Matthew 25:1-13 Always be ready, because you don t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come! November 6, 2011 In a few verses prior to this morning s Gospel reading Jesus said, you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. [24:44 ESV] you [He was responding to His disciples who had asked Him Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age? [24:3 ESV]] you [both the disciples and each of us] must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you [we] do not expect. Most of us live a pretty comfortable life we certainly have our struggles with illnesses and problems in our families and at work and in school, but most of the time things go pretty well for us. So what it mean for you to be ready ready to meet Jesus face to face? What do you think about when you say the words in the Creed: He [Jesus] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. One biblical scholar wrote about these words of Jesus: God doesn t give warnings. He calls us to choose, now. And to serve Him faithfully. i Another scholar commented, believers who will be looking forward to the coming of the Lord of glory, should be alert. They will know generally, from the signs of the end, when He will return, but they will not know the exact time. ii So what does this parable about the ten virgins mean? How would people in Jesus day have understood His words and what does it say to us who live in the 21 st century? I had met several times with the couple for their premarital counseling; their relationship appeared strong and loving; everything seemed to be on track and positive as their wedding day drew near. All the arrangements had been carefully planned the selection of the readings, the prayers, the music and the all the details
2 of the reception that was to follow the ceremony at the church. During the rehearsal on the evening before the wedding everything went smoothly. The next morning the groom and the men in the wedding party arrived about an hour before the time set for the service. When the hour for the wedding arrived, the bride and her bridesmaids were nowhere in sight and the clock continued to tick. As we waited, I remembered a theme that had reoccurred during the couple s premarital counseling sessions: the young woman had often reminded her future husband about the need to be ready, to be on time it was clear that the two of them had quite different understandings of the importance of being on time. Twenty minutes later and still no bride I could sense that people were beginning to get a little restless. We waited for another fifteen minutes before the bride, her mother and the bridesmaids finally arrived. In all the confusion of getting ready, they had accidently locked themselves out of the house before everyone was prepared to leave for the church. Every culture has its own ways of celebrating weddings and thus its own risks of things not going as planned. This bride, who was so focused on being on time, was late because of the unexpected she certainly never planned to get locked out of her own home. She had planned to be ready on time! Bishop Tom Wright describes some of the traditional customs of weddings in the Middle East the land where Jesus lived and taught. In the Middle East, to this day, there are some places where the customs at a wedding are quite similar to the ones described [in this morning s Gospel reading]. In the modern West, people don t normally get married in the middle of the night! But in that culture torchlight processions, late in the evening, are certainly known, and it seems as though the proceedings might have several stages, with the bridegroom likely to be delayed at an earlier venue before he arrived for the banquet itself, to be greeted at last by the bridesmaids. iii
3 So much for the local color of this parable but the details of the story still might be confusing for us compared to wedding customs in our own country. What s going on here? What does this parable, that Jesus told His disciples, say to us about the need to be ready? The bottom line of the parable appears in the last verse, Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Some ancient manuscripts of the Bible add at the end of the verse, in which the Son of Man is coming. The verse reads like this in the New Century Version of the Bible: So always be ready, because you don t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come. Always be ready [as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus Christ], because you don t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come. This parable is one of three stories in this section of Matthew s Gospel that look forward to the glorious return of the Son of Man. The three parables are preceded by the words of Jesus that reflect Old Testament images of the day of the LORD mentioned in the reading from Amos. Jesus said, Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. [Matthew 24:19-31 ESV] In the parable, the ten virgins (young, unmarried women, the bridesmaids) not the bride or the bridegroom are the principal characters. They ten aren t identified either as good and bad, but as wise and foolish. Their lamps were probably more like torches sticks wrapped with rags soaked in oil. They would have been waiting outside the bride s home to escort her to the groom s home when he arrived. The issue is not that they fell asleep all ten, wise and foolish
4 alike, fell asleep the issue is that five of them were unprepared. They weren t thoughtful enough to have brought sufficient oil with them. Delays were normal, sometimes as the bride s family haggled, at the last minute, over the value of the presents to be given to them in recognition of the bride s great value. The lesson: Wise disciples, followers of Jesus, must remain vigilant for His return. All the virgins, the bridesmaids, would have been ready if the groom had arrived as expected, but delays were so common in their culture that they should have anticipated that he might be delayed. The parable provides a clear warning that the Lord s return may be delayed, but Christians shouldn t lose heart if Jesus doesn t return as quickly as some expect Him to. In fact, Jesus said, But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. [Mark 13:32 ESV] The five wise virgins unwillingness to share their oil reflects their concern for their friend s wedding. Since they only had enough oil for their own torches, sharing what they had would have resulted in all the torches going out and the entire wedding procession would have been ruined. The foolish young women were not excluded simply because the door was shut, nor because the groom didn t know them; they were excluded because they had insulted the bride and groom and their relatives by not being prepared. The implication would have been clear to Jesus disciples: those who are unprepared for the banquet in the kingdom of heaven planned by Jesus for His followers insult Him by not being ready and will face judgment. Jesus warns us in this parable that there will be a number of people who may look like Christians, who may associate with Christians and who even think they re Christians, who will be shocked to learn that they are not saved at His return. What a sobering thought that is! This parable is not about creating uncertainty and doubt in our hearts and minds. It s not seeking to rob us of Jesus assurance that
5 He ll never leave us or forsake us; but it is a warning a warning against having a false assurance, a false sense of comfort, if, in fact, we have never accepted Him as our personal Savior and promised to follow Him as the Lord of our life. In the last days, just as in Jesus time, there will be those who appear to be believers, but are not. Jesus said earlier in Matthew s Gospel, Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. [Matthew 7:15 ESV] Think for a moment about what each of us affirms in The Nicene Creed: We believe [Jesus] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. And every Sunday we proclaim in the Holy Eucharist: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. So always be ready, because you don t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come. When it comes to being ready, being alert at any moment, it s hard to beat the example of the Pony Express. This historic, famous mail service between St. Joseph, Missouri and California depended on constant readiness. Relay stations were established every ten to fifteen miles. The rider would shout aloud as he approached a station, giving the station master very short notice that he needed to be outside waiting with a fresh mount. Even when a rider came to the station where he was to spend the night, another rider was already mounted and waiting, ready to grab the first rider s bundle of mail and continue the trip. But after only eighteen months, the completion of the transcontinental telegraph system rendered the Pony Express obsolete. Despite its short life, the Pony Express is an intriguing example of what it means to be ever watchful. Jesus used the parable of the ten virgins to teach the value of readiness and watchfulness on the part of all His followers as they await the day when He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and [establish the kingdom of heaven which] will have no end.
6 Look at the very first word in the reading from Matthew: Then the word refers back to the close of the preceding chapter that describes the time of Jesus return, His Second Coming, to reward His faithful servants and to take vengeance on the faithless. Then the kingdom of heaven will be like the ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. This is the key to the parable, the object of which is to illustrate the vigilant and expectant attitude of faith that we should have as believers. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel s call and with the sound of God s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. The parable teaches us that we must be watchful, ready to hear the sound of God s trumpet at any time despite all the distractions that surround us. We re called to live our life in such a way that we re always ready for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ and prepared to meet Him face to face. The five wise virgins were ready. The five foolish ones were not; they were careless, assuming that they had plenty of time to get ready for the wedding. Sadly, the bridegroom said to them, Truly I tell you, I do not know you, and they were not admitted to the wedding banquet the image that Jesus used to describe what the kingdom of heaven is like.
7 Biblical scholar F.F. Bruce wrote, Keep awake, because a time of testing may come without warning. Be ready to resist this temptation (whatever form it may take); be ready to meet this crisis; be ready to grasp this opportunity. Somebody needs help; be ready to give it, for you know neither the day nor the hour when the call may come. iv The Catechism in the Kenyan Prayer Book says that Christians live in the certain hope of the advent of Christ [the return of Jesus], the last judgement, and the resurrection to life everlasting and understand that, God, who has overcome death by the resurrection of Christ, will raise from death in a body of glory all who are Christ s, that they may live with him in the fellowship of the saints. v Are you ready to meet Jesus if He were to come today? Remember, He came to destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life [and we pray that] having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with [the Father] and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. ****** Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Father Jack Potter+ i Lawrence Richards, The Bible Readers Companion, Wheaton: Victor Books, 1991; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996, S. 626. ii John Walvoord, Roy Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1983-c1985, S. 2:79. iii Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone Part Two, SPCK, London, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2004, pages 132-133. iv F.F. Bruce, Hard Sayings of Jesus, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1983, page 235. v Our Modern Services, Anglican Church of Kenya and Uzima Publishing House, Nairobi, Kenya, 2008, page 56.