This Little Light of Mine

 

Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.  But understand this:  If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. –Matthew 24:42-44

 

 When Jesus returns, will you be ready to meet him; or will you be cast into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?  I grew up on lessons and sermons where those questions were frequently asked.  I wanted to be ready to meet Jesus, but I wasn’t really sure what that entailed and was fearful that I wouldn’t be worthy.  ‘Being ready’ was always rather nebulously equated with being good enough; having reached some high level of obedience and righteousness.  I didn’t believe I had much chance of attaining that status. 

Matthew chapter 25 contains three parables where people arrive at judgment day and some are ready while others are not.  These stories have always made me uncomfortable.  I wanted to be able to look down my nose at the rejects and identify with the winners, but in my limited understanding, I much more closely resembled those I considered to be the losers. For that reason, I never cared for Matthew 25, at least not the Action/Consequence version I grew up with; but that has recently changed. I’m starting to identify with the winners now! Hopefully, you will, too.  So, in my next few blogs I want to take a fresh look at those parables, but this time through the lens of Death/Resurrection.

In order to get a sense of the context for the parables in chapter 25, you have to go back to the previous chapter. The disciples had asked Jesus to tell them what signs to look for at “the end of the age” when Jesus would return.  So, in chapter 24 he tells them about wars, increased wickedness, false Christs, fulfillment of prophecies found in the book of Daniel, signs in the heavens, etc.  But he concludes by saying that no one really knows the day or hour he will return. The angels don’t know. Even he doesn’t know; only the Father knows. And, he warns them that they will need to be vigilant in watching, because his coming will take them by surprise.

Chapter 24 concludes with a strange parable which begins with a question: “Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time?” (Matthew 24:45) Jesus says that it will be good for this servant if, upon his mater’s return, he is found doing what he was assigned to do; but, if the servant, because the master’s return is delayed, begins to beat the other servants and begins to eat and drink with the drunkards, when the master returns unexpectedly he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; a rather violent and grizzly fate!

Understanding this parable is crucial, because it lays the foundation for the ones that follow.  Who, then, is the faithful and wise servant? This servant is someone who was put in charge of all of the other servants, and given the task of feeding them, at the proper time.  This servant represents all of those whom God has entrusted with the responsibility of “feeding” the rest of the church.  That task was given specifically to the apostles, pastors, evangelists and teachers.  Theirs is the job of unfolding the message of the gospel; “correctly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). They will be held accountable by the master for how and what the church is “fed”.  If the church is being fed properly, all is well.

However, there is a warning in this parable for those who mishandle that responsibility; for those who, instead of appropriately feeding the ones  in their charge, start thinking and acting like the master is out of the picture; those who become power hungry, and begin “beating” the other servants.  Whenever the good news of Death/Resurrection:  That we are helplessly, hopelessly dead in our sins; and, because of that, God sent Jesus to fulfill all of the demands of the law on our behalf, and to pay the penalty of God’s wrath which we deserved, so that we, together with Jesus, are resurrected to a new life where there is no more condemnation, no outstanding debt remaining against us, and where God views us as if we had never sinned. – Is twisted into the bad news of Action Consequence:  That we must earn God’s approval by our own works, by striving to deserve his acceptance with our own obedience and righteousness, or suffer the consequences – that is the spiritual equivalent of “beating” the church.  The servants who have betrayed the master’s trust are those who are starving the church with a false gospel of works rather than nourishing them with the finished work of Christ.  In the parable, the fact that the one doing the beating is the worst sinner of all, is the reason the master is so enraged; and why, after cutting the wicked servant to pieces, he assigns him a place with the hypocrites.  Anyone who “beats” others because they are not measuring up is most certainly a hypocrite, because no one can measure up.  And that kind of abuse is detestable to the master!

With the understanding of that parable in mind, let’s now take a look at the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13.  Jesus begins by saying, “At that time”, referring not just to the End of Time, but to what he had just finished saying to them, which was the end of the story where the servant had been cut up and assigned a place with the hypocrites, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. At that time, “the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.”  Jesus is describing the state of “the kingdom of heaven”, or the church, just before his return.  The state of the church is directly related to which “gospel” it has been fed, the Death/Resurrection or the Action/Consequence version.  The virgins represent a cross section of those who await the appearance of the “bridegroom”, who is Jesus himself. 

“Five of them were foolish and five were wise,” Jesus says. “The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them.”  It is important to notice that Jesus says they did not take any oil with them.  He didn’t say, ‘they did not take extra oil’; they did not take any oil.  “The wise”, however, “took oil in jars along with their lamps.”  The wise virgins had extra oil; the foolish virgins had no oil at all.

The story continues, “The bridegroom was a long time in coming and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.”  The Action/Consequence mindset would like the story to say that only the five foolish virgins fell asleep while the wise virgins remained awake and vigilantly watching, but Jesus says that all of them fell asleep; just like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane who could not stay awake and “watch” one hour with Jesus, they all fell asleep.

“At midnight,” Jesus says, the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’  Have you ever been caught napping when you weren’t supposed to be?  During my recent visit with my daughter and grandson, my daughter hired her regular babysitter for one evening so the two of us could go out for some mother/daughter bonding time.  We were out later than we planned to be, and when we got back the babysitter was sound asleep.  My daughter tried to gently wake her, but she ‘came to’ with much jerking, flailing and some pretty hilarious sounds of being startled from a deep sleep.  That’s how I picture the ten virgins as they awoke to the shouted announcement that the bridegroom was finally there. 

The first thing they did was to “trim their lamps” so that they could light the way for the wedding procession; this involved making sure there was oil to keep the wick burning, trimming the wick itself so the flame would be even, and then lighting it.  The wicks were, of course, made of flammable material, so they could be lit initially, even without oil; but just like anything else, they would go out if there was nothing to keep them burning.  Remember, the foolish virgins had no oil.  They lit the wicks, but the lamps immediately went out.  (They were ‘foolish’, remember.)  So, Jesus continues, “The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’”

If I were telling the Action/Consequence version of the story, at this point I would have the wise virgins do the ‘right’ thing and share their oil, saving the day, and everyone would live happily ever after.  But, that is not how Jesus told the story.  The wise virgins said no, because they needed the oil they had.  Instead, they sent the foolish virgins off to ‘those who sell oil’ to purchase some for themselves.  “But while they were on their way to buy the oil,” Jesus says, “the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet.  And the door was shut.”

I believe that the five wise virgins were those who had been well fed on the Death/Resurrection version of the gospel. The oil was their faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ on their behalf.  The five foolish virgins represent those who were fed only Action/Consequence.  They professed to be Christians, but they were dependent on their own works, their own righteousness, to make them ready for the bridegroom.  They had no oil, no real understanding of, or faith in, Jesus and what he had done for them.

No one can give another person their faith in Christ.  The wise virgins were not being selfish by not sharing their oil.  A measure of faith is given to each one of us by the Holy Spirit, and it is ours alone.  The five foolish virgins had to bring their own faith.  They were instructed to go and buy it from those who “sell oil”.  If faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit, what were they being told to do?  I believe they were being sent back to those who were peddling what was meant to be a free gift, at a price which no one could afford.  Action/Consequence insists that we pay, and we cannot.  The oil that was being sold was only “snake oil”.

Jesus gives us the epilogue to this story.  The five foolish virgins came to the shut door of the wedding feast, “’Sir! Sir!’ they said, ‘Open the door for us!’  But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’”  Jesus did not know them because they did not belong to him; they had never acknowledged him and trusted in what he had done for them.  They never grasped that the only requirement for being ‘ready’ is an acknowledgment of our total dependence on his mercy and grace.  We can bring nothing to the wedding feast but that; and it is all we need.

Jesus concludes with the admonition, “Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”  Satan always directly attacks our faith in Jesus. His strategy isn’t only to get people to believe that Jesus isn’t real; his strategy is more often directed against those who think they believe in Jesus by convincing them that their salvation is dependent on Christ plus their good works, their obedience, their righteousness.  The battle of Action/Consequence against Death/Resurrection is ongoing and fierce.  We are called to stand firm in our belief in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone.  That is the only way we can be ready to meet him when he returns.