Pentecost 23A

23rd Sunday of Pentecost Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don’t know about you all, but I would be glad to just forget that this past week ever happened. It was, by all accounts, a pretty awful week. And the awfulness is still going. I can’t say that I’m surprised by any of it. Actually, I *wish* I could say that I was surprised by some of what happened this week. Sadly, I’m not. After what we’ve been seeing for the past four years from the politicians in our nation’s capital, this stuff we’ve seen since Election Day is really just par for the course. So no, I’m not surprised.

And if you’re anything like me, in the last several days you may have uttered the words “Come, Lord Jesus”. You may have said to yourself “I’m ready, Jesus, just come and get Judgment Day started - I’m ready. Let’s get this whole mess over and done with.” I’ve certainly thought about it.

Of course, what Christian wouldn’t look forward to being with our Lord and Savior? If we’re going to spend eternity with Him in paradise, why not get eternity started now, right? Let’s just fast-forward and get the Book of Revelation going. Bring out those angels with the trumpets and let’s start opening seals, Lord.

Welllll…not so fast. As bad as this past week has been…it wasn’t apocalyptic. It ain’t “end-times” bad. It ain’t Judgment Day bad. How do I know? Well, another name for Judgment Day is “the Day of the Lord”, and our first reading tells us how bad that day is. In fact, the prophet Amos begins by saying

18 Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!

Why would you have the day of the LORD?

It is darkness, and not light,

19 as if a man fled from a lion,

and a bear met him,

or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,

and a serpent bit him.

20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light,

and gloom with no brightness in it?

This is not a day to celebrate or be joyful. This is a day that will be very painful and difficult. So Amos is keeping us - and rightly so - fearful of that day.

Jesus is also telling us about that day in the Gospel lesson this morning. Quite a few times in Scripture the metaphor of bride and bridegroom is used to describe the relationship between Christ and his Church. He is the bridegroom and the Church is the bride. Of course, there is no bride in these verses…only the ten virgins. And who are they?

In ancient Hebrew culture, when there was going to be a wedding feast, the bride would have a number of virgin girls who would be her “attendants” or what today we would probably call her bridesmaids. It was customary for the bridegroom, on the wedding day, to dress in wedding garments, and his friends would escort him to the house of the bride. The bride would come out to meet them with her friends. Chapters 3-6 of The Song of Solomon beautifully depict a wedding procession and the meeting of a bride and groom - and this is precisely the context of Jesus’ parable of the 10 virgins from today’s reading. [Taken from The Lutheran Study Bible, ESV, (St. Louis:Concordia Publishing House, 2009), pg 54.]

So these virgins represent members of the Church on earth. And as always, numbers have great meaning in the Hebrew culture. In this case: the number ten reminded the Jew of the “words of the covenant, the ten commandments”... It indicated completeness or sufficiency, and was used at times to represent a large number . It also expressed, according to Jewish usage, the limit or lowest number of which a company could consist that ate the paschal lamb in conformity to the law in Exod. 12:4, “so that a company not less than ten belong to every sacrifice”... In the present case the phrase, ten virgins, is equivalent to the customary or appropriate number of female friends and attendants of a Jewish bride… On the occasion of a marriage, the bridegroom, attended by his “companions”, advanced, after the setting of the sun (hence the “lamps”), to meet the bride, who was attended by a corresponding number of “virgins, her companions”. [Charles F. Schaeffer, Annotations on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, ed. Henry Eyster Jacobs, vol. 2, The Lutheran Commentary (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1895), 265–266.]

Now if you’ve ever planned a wedding, you know that getting the wedding party to the right place at the right time, in the right dress, is a bit of challenge, even with just 2 or 3 bridesmaids and groomsmen. I’ll admit to a bit of a flashback to our wedding and the rehearsals and figuring out where everyone was supposed to be…and we didn’t have anywhere near that many bridesmaids.

So hearing that only half of these virgins had prepared their lamps with oil did not seem like an unlikely scenario…although half being properly prepared is a bit disappointing. After all, it’s not like these girls don’t know what’s going to happen. A wedding feast was often the biggest party of the season for a village or neighborhood. Everyone came and celebrated with the family. It represented the growth of the people, the birth of a new family, which meant more children, more people in the community, more workers, more business… it was definitely a thing to be celebrated, and everyone did. These girls knew what their responsibility was, and they knew what they were supposed to do. And half of them didn’t.

The question becomes: why didn’t they? Or why did half prepare themselves appropriately while the other half didn’t? If we’re sticking just with the parable, it appears that Jesus is insinuating laziness, or possibly a mindset of living in the moment but ignoring the future. Or maybe even a lack of maturity - maturity which postpones immediate pleasure for long-term gain. Some or all of these seem to linger in the background of this parable that Jesus is telling.

But the parable is just the surface here. What’s the meaning behind it? First, and most importantly is this: we don’t know when Jesus will return. We don’t know when Judgment Day will be. We don’t know - we *can’t* know when “the day of the Lord” is going to take place. We don’t know when the bridegroom will announce his arrival and call us out to meet him. Even Jesus himself says so in the chapter just before this: “36 But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matt 24:36, ESV)

If we don’t know, then what are we to do? That is the lesson we are to take from the ten virgins. The bridegroom has been delayed for some reason - we don’t know why - and the bride’s companions “all became drowsy and slept.” It’s one thing to fall asleep when you’re prepared for what’s about to happen; it’s something entirely different to go to sleep unprepared. The five wise maidens were ready. They had the oil they needed for their lamps and were ready to go. All they needed was to hear that wake-up call and get up and go. Not so for the five foolish maidens. They hadn’t gone to get the oil. And when they realized they needed oil, they tried to talk the other maidens into giving them some of theirs.

Looking at the deeper meaning here, there’s a lot that’s wrong with what these five foolish maidens have done. They have not taken their responsibilities seriously. They are not prepared to do what needs to be done when the bridegroom arrives. As much as we talk about how Jesus died for the sins of all, it seems clear from this parable that not everyone will be invited to the wedding feast. That is, not everyone will be saved. I think it’s important to point out that just because this group of ten maidens is divided into 2 equal groups of 5, that doesn’t mean that exactly half will not get to join the feast. Rather, it seems clear that while most will be saved, a large number will not. And that is sad indeed.

Now let’s look at the lamps for a moment. One of those smart scholars I read has a great explanation here: Lamps without oil are the forms of Christian life that are without the substance of this life; lamps together with oil are the forms that are vitalized by the true Christian life... We may call this oil spiritual life, faith with its works, even the Holy Ghost as some do. We prefer to think of faith and its works as being the flame of the lamp, the grace and the power of Christ in his Word as the oil, and the outward forms of Christianity as the lamps. We have the exposition in 2 Tim. 3:5: “Having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” We must have both. Hundreds of people attach themselves to the church but are never reborn and renewed. They may even do great deeds in and for the church yet inwardly remain strangers to Christ. [R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 964–965.]

I hope I’m not the only one here that feels convicted by that. This is how God uses His Law as a mirror to reflect back to us where we fall short. And we do. Are we strangers to Christ, even though we come here regularly and worship him?

I spent time this week in the NALC’s national mission festival. Normally, this would be part of our in-person gathering during what we call “Lutheran Week” where our whole church body meets every August for our annual Convocation. Because of the pandemic, we had to cancel our regular plans and do things online. The mission festival portion was delayed until just this week.

One of the speakers we heard is an NALC pastor in Texas. Pastor Greg told us his own parable that really hit home. He wanted his daughter to come to the kitchen and talk to him, so he called out to her “honey, will you please come to the kitchen and talk with me?” To which she replied “Wow Dad, that was really powerful, you calling me to come and talk with you. I’m so moved by that. Thank you.” But she never left her room.

So he repeated “actually, I really want you to come down here and talk to me.” And she responded “Gosh Dad, I’m really inspired by you calling me, I want to go and study what it means to be called, and do some deep analysis of the language you’ve used here. I’m really looking forward to this study time!”

“I just want you to come and talk with me. It’s really pretty simple…not nearly as complex as you’re making it out to be.” And then Pastor Greg looked at all of us and said “what would it look like if we all actually did what Jesus tells us to do?” I’ll be the first to say that I’m like the daughter - I study and analyze and break down the language. And it’s important that we do that for God’s Word. We *do* need to understand what it is that God is telling us.

My problem, and I suspect I’m not alone here, is that we don’t *do* what God’s Word tells us to do…at least, we don’t do it often enough. What we’re told to do isn’t often easy, but it usually isn’t complex either. It’s usually rather simple. Which means we don’t have to spend much time figuring out the “how”.

What we can do, however, is to be watchful to see where and when God wants to use us. This is part of our preparedness…our readiness. We never know when the bridegroom is going to come, and we never know when the opportunity will present itself for us to do some kingdom work. Are we napping like the maidens? Maybe we are. Maybe there’s a lull while we wait for the next opportunity. But before we put our head to the pillow, or before we pulled up the footrest on the La-Z-Boy, did we make sure we had oil for our lamp? Did we make sure we are ready to respond to the Lord’s call?

In our church family, we’re doing some good things. We’re working with our neighbors to fight hunger in our community. We’re going to make sure that again this year some very poor families in coal mining towns are going to have Christmas. Our yarners continue to bless ministries around Hickory: most recently they blessed the Pregnancy Care Center with some of their handiwork. Our quilters have once again donated a whole bunch of quilts to our flood bucket ministry, which I’ve heard several times that we’re one of the more consistent contributors to that vital ministry. We’re doing good kingdom work brothers and sisters.

I just want to ask you, individually, to spend a little time reflecting on what you feel that God is calling you to do or to be. This year has been absolutely unlike anything I’ve ever seen or even heard of. We have many obstacles in our way, and some of what we’re used to doing as a church family is hard, if not impossible, to do. Some of what we *want* to do seems impossible too. But what can we do?

In light of the events of this week, I might just suggest that spending time in prayer and spending time in God’s Word might just be the ointment our wounds need. Speaking for myself, I am just not going to allow myself to get sucked into the Pit of Despair - social media, mainstream news, etc. I’m going to put more time and energy into seeing what God has to tell me and worry less about what the news outlets want me to hear. Besides, the news outlets have nothing but bad news to share. To them, good news doesn’t sell. I think I’ll spend some time with God’s Word and focus more on his Good News.

Speaking of which, did you hear the Good News in Jesus’ parable? He did take the 5 wise maidens into the feast. And I want to put that in context, too: After the Jewish betrothal a certain time, usually not a very long time, was allowed to elapse, and then on a certain evening the groom, accompanied by his friends, proceeded in a festive procession from his own or his father’s house to the home of his bride to bring her and her maiden companions to the groom’s home for the consummation of the marriage with its days of wedding festivities. This homebringing was not connected with a marriage ceremony. The husband merely took his wife unto himself. This was the common procedure, and we have no reason for thinking that another procedure was followed when the wedding feast was held at the bride’s home. In the Parousia the heavenly Bridegroom takes his bride, the true church, to his heavenly home, and the feast is held there although heaven and earth shall then be united. [R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 962.]

This is what we have to look forward to. If we can keep our oil ready, and can trim our lamps when the bridegroom comes, we will be ready to meet him. We can join him in his Father’s House for the feast that He has promised to us…that feast we look forward to each time we partake of His Supper. We can remember that He has paid the price for our admission to that feast, and even though we don’t know when it will happen, we can look forward to it. No matter what’s going on around us in the world, no matter how bad it gets, we have an eternal feast with our Heavenly Father to look forward to. And that Good News is better than anything else we’re going to hear.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.