Matthew 25:1-13

Did we hear that right? Did Gentle Jesus just say heaven will be like a wedding where we have to wait until midnight for the groom to arrive, only then to see half of us get shut out for not having enough oil in our lamps, because the other half of you people refused to share yours with us? How rude! 

It’s a difficult parable, to be sure. And what’s more, it’s historically read in Advent! I mean Fa la la la what? 

The season of Advent (which one author says really starts the first Sunday after All Saints) is actually not just 25+ days of Christmas. It’s a time when the church insists on making us wait.

Advent invites us to wait in the discomfort of the world as it is, and nevertheless proclaim the coming of the Lord, who will set this place aright. That’s why we read apocalyptic scriptures like this one in this season, to clarify just who it is we are waiting for, and how we are called to wait: awake and expectant. 

But what Jesus tells us to expect is far from a Hallmark Christmas movie. In Matthew 23-25 Jesus says that The End shall come amid famine, wars, and rumors of wars, corruption and inequality, natural disasters and violence. This means biblical Advent is neither holly nor jolly. It’s scary. And real. And bears a striking resemblance to our own time. 

I’ve just read a book that points out just how many of these end of the world type things we are experiencing right now in 2023. But it’s not a theology book, it’s a history book. It’s called the Fourth Turning is Here and the thesis is that history happens in cycles (of about 80-100 years) and each cycle or “saeculum” has four seasons or “turnings” (kind of like spring, summer, fall, and winter). The author, Neil Howe says our fourth turning, our saecular winter as it were, is here. 

What are some other 4th turnings in our history you ask? The American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War 2. That’s the kind of crisis we are entering, says Howe. He says it’s about 50/50 whether ours turns out to be a Second Civil War, or World War III. Either scenario is terrible, but sadly, such an apocalypse, now, doesn’t feel that far-fetched. 

My smartest friends say the book is BS, that Neil Howe is a shotty historian and there’s no way he’s right about this stuff. Meanwhile my boomer pacifist mother read some of the book and she’s stocking up on TP and thinking of buying her first gun. 

Whether because of this book, or this parable, or this early-Advent season, we find ourselves today pondering the news that something is coming. The parable of the bridesmaids, given to the disciples only a couple days before Jesus’ crucifixion, says as much, and what Jesus says he wants from his disciples in a time like this is that we stay awake for it. Be ready. 

Last weekend I got to go to Richmond to attend my High School reunion. 20 years for you inquiring minds out there. It was a gift and a blessing to be reunited with old classmates and friends. Among them were a bunch of folks I used to sing with in the school’s concert and gospel choirs. Because my High School was predominantly Black, that means that our repertoire included a lot of African American Spirituals. 

Reading this passage of scripture this week reminded me of those songs, and just how many Spirituals echo this sentiment that something is coming. Something promised, but something that requires our readiness. 

I wanna be ready, I wanna be ready, I wanna be ready, to walk in Jerusalem just like John. (That one is a nod to John’s apocalypse in Revelation.) 

Keep your hand on the plough and hold on, (hold on). That’s a nod to the apocalypse of the Prophets and the words of Jesus. 

And then there’s this one based on this very text: Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, the time is coming nigh.

Remembering these songs I found myself moved by the faith of their original authors, and the communities that sang them in a time of prolonged crisis, the long apocalypse of slavery. What bold assurance, what deep confidence they had in a promised future yet unseen, a coming Lord who would finally give them a seat at the welcome table. What faith they show us as under the grim shadow of oppression and death, these saints kept their lamps, their faith, their hope, trimmed and burning. 

But what about those who don’t? Who can’t? What about the fools that this parable leaves outside? 

We don’t have to look far to find out. Only a couple chapters later, as Jesus and his disciples wait out the midnight hours in the Garden of Gethsemane he asks them to watch and pray, to “stay awake.” But they don’t. They can’t. Three times he finds them sleeping and finally he says, “How are you still sleeping? Behold, the hour is at hand when the Son of Man (the bridegroom himself) is betrayed.” 

Do you see? When our Lord’s apocalyptic hour comes, it is not the groom who shuts the door on his guests, but the drowsy guests who foolishly slam the door on him! It is not he who says “I do not know you,” it is one of them who says “I have never known that man.” 

The thing about our Advent waiting that we cannot avoid noticing is that it’s taking a very long time for our Lord to come back. I often wish that Jesus would just get here already, and when he doesn’t I will confess that the oil in my lamp starts to burn low. My lamplight fades, and I’m tempted to deny the whole thing. 

But then, in one way or another, the songs of the saints brings me back. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, keep your lamps trimmed and burning. 

It is the witness of the saints and the message of the cross that keeps my lamp burning. It reminds me that when the apocalyptic hour came at Christ’s first coming, we weren’t ready. We shut the door on him. But then, out of his great love, he did for us what we could not have anticipated, what we could not do for ourselves. He placed his own body, his own flesh and blood, between our slamming door and its frame, offering himself for the sake of faithless fools, and then in his resurrection he blew the door of its hinges altogether. For me. For you. 

He did not come just for the well-oiled, well-lit righteous ones, or just for the ones who were ready, he came to seek out and save the lost! By the power of his cross and Holy Spirit he came to make ready all those who might refuse him, but whom he insists on bringing with him to his welcome table. 

See, we await the great banquet of his final return, but he is not gone. He is with us still, filling our lamps with the oil of his righteousness, and igniting the fires of faith for sinners and sufferers the world over, so that all might be saved. 

And we, his waiting ones, the foolish ones he chose “to shame the wise,” well, now we know. Now we know, we are his Body living still today. And because of him, now we know so we don’t have to hoard our oil, or hide our light. No, he has conscripted us into the oil sharing business, to offer it freely to others. From generation to generation, we, the waiting church, we pray prayers, we sing songs, we give gifts, we dispense the oil of the gospel for the lighting and encouragement of the weakest of flames, in the direst of hours, and during the longest of waits. 

We do so willingly, eagerly, because if this bridegroom can make a wretch like me ready to follow him into the feast, how much more should I make the world ready to join him at the welcome table. 

And so we are waiting, as Paul says, with eager longing, for the joy that is set before us. And in the meantime, together, we keep our lamps trimmed and burning by the grace of Almighty God.

Thanks be to God.