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
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.
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