+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Today and the next two remaining Sundays of this Church Year, the appointed Gospel Readings present us with three consecutive portions of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, all reporting Jesus’s sitting on the Mount of Olives and teaching His disciples about the separation that occurs on the Last Day (Matthew 24:3-4). With today’s Gospel Reading, people often try to make much of the uncertain wedding customs back then, and so they can end up contradictorily allegorizing all of the parable’s details. However, when we stick both to the parable’s one main point of comparison and to the parable’s stated central truth, today’s so‑called “Parable of the Ten Virgins” is relatively straightforward. Just as the bridegroom’s return at an unknown time essentially separated the five wise and so ready virgins from the rest of the virgins in the parable, so the Lord Jesus’s return on an unknown day and at an unknown time will separate those watching from those not watching in the Kingdom of Heaven. So, if you do not want to end up shut-out of the marriage feast that is the Kingdom of Heaven, then, as Jesus says, “Watch!”
A difficulty in applying the parable to ourselves is that in the Gospel Reading Jesus does not explicitly say what constitutes “watching”, or what makes us “wise” and so “ready”. In the parable, all ten virgins apparently loved and wanted to serve the bridegroom, for they all had taken their lamps and gone out to meet him. They all became drowsy and slept, and, at midnight when there was a cry to come out to meet the bridegroom, they all rose and trimmed their lamps. Only then does the fact that five virgins wisely brought flasks of oil with their lamps matter, for while the five foolish virgins went to the dealers to buy oil, the bridegroom came, and those virgins who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. When the rest of the virgins came saying “Lord, Lord” and told him to open to them, he said he did not know them. Obviously, we who appear to be in the Church do not show our wisdom or readiness or watchfulness by bringing flasks of oil with lamps. So how does our wisdom and readiness show itself by watchfulness? There is an answer to that question in the broader context of St. Matthew’s Gospel account, where a similar dialogue is recorded.
St. Matthew’s Gospel account earlier records Jesus’s saying in His so‑called “Sermon on the Mount” that “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21; confer Luke 6:46). And, Jesus continues, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and cast out demons in Your Name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:22-23; confer Luke 13:25-27) Clearly, people can wrongly think that they are in a right relationship with Jesus, when in fact they are not in a right relationship with Jesus! They can wrongly think they are doing God-pleasing good works—even eating and drinking in Jesus’s presence (Luke 13:26)—when in fact they are not doing God-pleasing good works! On our own, we all fail to do the will of our Father Who is in heaven, such as His will expressed in His Ten Commandments. By nature, we all are workers of lawlessness. The kind of preparedness and readiness that we need is the preparedness and readiness of contrition and faith worked by the Holy Spirit through messengers such as John the Baptizer, who made ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:17; with reference to Malachi 3:1). We arguably are wise, ready, and watchful when we repent before the Lord comes and shuts us out of the Kingdom of Heaven as we otherwise would deserve to be shut out.
In the parable, the bridegroom tells those who were shut out of the Kingdom of Heaven, “I do not know you”. The Lord Jesus arguably is speaking as the bridegroom. People of other religious traditions often like to make a big deal about the fact that they know the Lord. Today’s Gospel Reading might suggest that more important is that the Lord knows us! Of course, when the Lord knows us, then we also know Him (confer John 10:14), but that sequence is important! He knows us first, and then we also know Him. Out of God the Father’s great love, the Son of God was made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary in order to live the perfect life that we fail to live and to die on the cross for our failures to live that perfect life. Jesus did die for us, and then He rose from the dead. When, lead by the Holy Spirit, we are sorry for our sins and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful natures and all of our actual sins, whatever our actual sins might be. We cannot demand that the Lord open the Kingdom to us because of anything we have done, but we go in with Him as we repent and faithfully receive His forgiveness through His Means of Grace.
Since the parable mentions those who were ready’s going in with the bridegroom to the marriage feast, we especially think of the Holy Supper, what our liturgy calls a foretaste of the feast to come, namely, what Holy Scripture calls the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end (Revelation 19:6‑9). Of course, even here and now the Holy Supper of communion with Christ’s Body and Blood in, with, and under bread and wine is open to some and closed to others. Ultimately, pastors, to whom Christ has entrusted the exercise of His keys (Matthew 16:19; 18:18-20; John 20:21-23), admit to the Holy Supper those who are baptized and absolved who share the same confession of the Christian faith as this Altar. On the other hand, those pastors, as stewards of the “mysteries”, or “sacraments” (1 Corinthians 4:1), exclude others, often to prevent them from being guilty concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord and eating and drinking judgment on themselves (1 Corinthians 11:27‑32). Those who faithfully receive Christ’s Body and Blood thereby receive also the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. They depart from the Rail in peace and so also in joy.
With faith created and sustained by God’s Means of Grace, we at least want to and begin to think, say, and do the things that God wills for us to think, say, and do. Such good works naturally follow from God’s forgiving us, and such good works give evidence of our faith. We serve where service is needed, and we give sacrificial first-fruit offerings to support the work of God’s Kingdom in this place. God works in us justice and righteousness, like that He said in today’s Old Testament Reading that He desires, so we do not need to fear but can desire the Day of the Lord (Amos 5:18-24). Three times in today’s Psalm we called for God to “make haste” or “hasten” and “not delay” (Psalm 70:1-5; antiphon: v.4), as the bridegroom in the parable of today’s Gospel Reading “was delayed”. Truly, in God’s time, the final “meeting” with the Lord will take place, as described in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18): if we are alive at the coming of the Lord, then we will go out to meet Him as He comes, and, if our bodies are resting on earth, then they will rise and be reunited with our souls that will come with Him to a new or restored earth, where we will always be with the Lord.
As in today’s Psalm, already now we rejoice and are glad in God. He makes us wise, ready, and watchful in daily contrition and faith. He has known us in Christ and takes us with Him into the Kingdom of Heaven by grace through faith. As I mentioned, two more passages from Matthew 25 are appointed for the next two Sundays, but, in the meantime, we pray as we did in today’s Collect of the Day, that our Heavenly Father would send forth His Son to lead home His bride, the Church, that, with all the company of the redeemed, we may finally enter into His eternal wedding feast!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
