Here Comes the Bridegroom

 

Jesu Juva

Matthew 25:1-13                                                           

 November 8, 2020

Proper 27A             

 Dear saints of our Savior,

          The parable of the Ten Virgins is filled with interesting details.  You’ve got drowsy virgins, lamps and oil, and a wedding which is way behind schedule.  But let’s begin with what this parable makes perfectly clear.  Let’s start today with what is obvious—with what is so apparent that you just might miss it:  The Bridegroom is coming!

          The Lord Jesus Christ will come with glory to judge both the living and the dead.  The Bridegroom—our Bridegroom—will one day come again.  Our wise and faithful waiting is not in vain.  All that we hope for and long for will be

realized.  Resurrection, realized.  Heavenly reunion, realized.  Every promise of God, fulfilled.  As today’s epistle expressed it:  The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And you will be there.  Your heart will experience unimaginable joy in the presence of Jesus as all His holy ones are led into the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end.  Let there be no doubt:  The Bridegroom is coming; and for that coming we wait more than watchmen wait for the morning.

          But not everyone is waiting; and not everyone will be ushered in to the marriage feast.  There are some who will be shut out—some to whom the Lord will say, “I do not know you.”  So that you might never hear those horrifying words, Jesus tells us this magnificent parable.

          The ten virgins are virgins; but we might do well to think of them as bridesmaids.  It was the job of these bridesmaids to accompany the Groom on His joyful procession into the wedding hall.  But apparently, weddings in the First Century didn’t start promptly at four o’clock in the afternoon.  Instead, the festivities would start whenever the groom decided to show up.  He could be early; or he could be late.  The virgins simply had to be ready and waiting.

          Now, ever so important to this parable is the fact that five virgins were wise and five were foolish.  And the wisdom of the wise has nothing to do with IQ or SAT scores.  In the Scriptures, to be “wise” ultimately means to have faith—to believe—to trust in the promises of God.  And to be “foolish” means to be unbelieving, to have no faith.

          Now, if you were looking at those ten virgins from a distance, you really wouldn’t notice too much of a difference between them.  Whether they all wore matching dresses or had matching flowers or matching manicured fingernails—we just don’t know.  But all ten took their little lamps along to wait for the Bridegroom.  Only the wise, however, brought along extra flasks of oil.  The foolish virgins brought no oil.

          This detail about the oil is damning.  Would you set out for a camping trip in the woods without packing food and a tent?  Would you set out on a drive to Door County with your car’s fuel gauge on empty?  Would you set off on vacation with your cell phone, but intentionally leave your charging cord at home?  Of course not.  Then why did the five foolish virgins go out to meet the Bridegroom with no oil for their lamps?  They didn’t forget.  It wasn’t an oversight.  Could it be that they simply stopped waiting, stopped hoping, stopped believing and trusting that the Bridegroom would come?

          Back in seminary, I had an Old Testament professor who would randomly pick a student at the beginning of every class to provide an in-depth translation for a passage from the Hebrew OT.  Every student knew what Hebrew passage had been assigned; but none of us knew which one of us would be called on.  Every student had to be ready, with nouns and verbs declined and diagrammed—case, gender, number, tense, voice.  You had to know what every dot was doing in that text—and Hebrew has lots of dots.  And “Woe!” to that student who was unready and unprepared to give the translation.  Some tried to fake it.  Others pleaded for mercy right away.  Others claimed a sudden onset of influenza and fled to the nurse’s office.  But for those exposed as unprepared, it never ended well.

          Now, I can only speak for myself, but on those days when some of us were not prepared, it wasn’t that we were shirking the work intentionally.  “Life” just got in the way.  Maybe there were big tests or big papers due in other classes that day.  Many students had wives and children that needed tending.  Most students had jobs.  There were simply other priorities that kept us from being always ready and always prepared to give a level 3 Hebrew translation.

          I suspect that’s maybe how it was for the five foolish virgins.  “Life” just got in the way of their being prepared.  For them, this wedding was just one more thing on their to-do list.  They had other priorities.  Other things needed tending.  Go to the mall.  Pick up the dress.  Get your hair done.  Try on the shoes.  Who’s got time to worry about an extra flask of oil?  Who knows when—or even if—the Bridegroom is ever going to show up?  For those foolish five, the Bridegroom and the marriage feast just faded into the future—just simply stopped being the main thing.  (And for that there would be hell to pay.)

          But for the five wise virgins?  They were ready!  They were prepared at all times.  They had their extra oil.  They could even go to sleep full of faith and joyful expectation.  Why?  Because they knew and believed that the Bridegroom was coming.  For the wise ones, the Bridegroom and the marriage feast are what they lived for.  They believed beyond all doubt that the Bridegroom was coming.  And for them, that faith—that belief—was everything.

          The Bridegroom is coming.  That is sure and certain.  But just as sure and certain is that Satan seeks every opportunity to interrupt your faithful watching and waiting.  He uses the most innocuous events of life to rob you of your wisdom and strip you of your faith:  Every item on your to-do list becomes increasingly important and radically relevant to your well-being.  Meanwhile your oil supply dwindles.  The things that fuel your faith and make you wise unto salvation dwindle to dangerous new lows:  repentance, confession, prayer, and worship all falter.  You hear the Word, but don’t take it to heart, because you’ve got other things to worry about.  And so that heart becomes cold and unresponsive.  Sin becomes so ordinary, so commonplace.  Anger and rage are your closest companions.  And in our busyness we foolishly forget:  The Bridegroom is coming.  The procession will begin.  The party will start.  The door will be shut.  And those who have become foolishly unprepared will grieve to hear the Bridegroom say, “I do not know you.”

          In the end, when the Bridegroom comes on the last day, when the Lord Himself comes down from heaven—when that happens those who looked like fools in this world will turn out to be wise, while those who appeared to be so wise in this world will turn out to be damned fools.  This is why Jesus says, at the end of the parable, “Keep watch.”  Jesus wants you, His church, to be expectant and watchful, repentant and ready, listening for the trumpet call of God with a rich supply of the fuel of faith.

          Why watch for Jesus?  Why fix your heart and mind on the day of His return?  Because He’s the one who has taken all your sin upon Himself.  He’s the one who suffered and died on a Roman tool of torture as your sacred substitute.  He’s the One who crowns you with His righteousness and His holiness and His wisdom.  He’s the One who rose from the dead to give you resurrection life.  He’s the One who honors you and treasures you, who will never leave you nor forsake you, who loves you more than a groom loves his bride.

          Our Lord who will come on the Last Day—He also comes today, supplying you with all the fuel your faith will ever need.  All the forgiveness, life and salvation that Jesus hung on the cross to win for the world—He gives it all away here and now in His holy absolution, in holy baptism, in His holy Word as it’s preached and proclaimed, and in His holy supper.  In these precious means is more than enough “Jesus” to keep our little gospel lights burning and shining brightly until the Last Day.  Only a fool would say, “No thanks.  Too busy.  I can do without that.”

          The wise bridesmaids knew the One in whom they hoped and the One for whom they waited.  They lived and slept in the confidence of their Bridegroom’s coming.  That’s your confidence, too.  Your Jesus is coming.  He is your hope and expectation.  You can live and work and sleep and die in the glad confidence that your Bridegroom is coming.

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