Hi First Presbyterian Church,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! I’ve been thinking a lot about fasting during Lent, and in particular the point Jesus makes in Matthew 9:14-17 - fasting is meant for us to feel hunger to help us cultivate a deeper spiritual longing for Jesus. In that passage of scripture, Jesus refers to himself as “the bridegroom.” While thinking about longing for Jesus, I was reminded of another passage of scripture where Jesus refers to himself as “the bridegroom” - Matthew 25:1-13. In that passage, Jesus tells a story about ten young women who are awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom. As part of their waiting, five of them bring oil lamps without oil, and the remaining five bring oil lamps with flasks of oil for their lamps. They go out to wait for the bridegroom (presumably during the daytime) and end up waiting long into the night for him to return. They all fall asleep while they wait, until they’re awakened by the news that the bridegroom has returned and will be with them any minute. The young women who didn’t bring oil aren’t able to light their lamps. The ones who brought oil don’t have enough to share, and so the oil-less women must go find oil to buy. Unfortunately, while they are gone, the bridegroom appears and only those who were prepared with oil in their lamps go into the wedding banquet with him.
The background to the story is lost on us who are separated by geography and centuries from this cultural context. It’s likely that the ten young women are from the bridegroom’s household (maybe sisters or cousins or employees), and they are waiting for him while he is likely meeting with the bride’s father, agreeing to terms for her dowry. (Yeah, I know - a very different culture, right?) Once he returns, the young women will escort him to his bride (now in his own household) to consummate the marriage. Afterward, a wedding feast will be held.
It seems obvious that the five women who didn’t bring oil assume the bridegroom is going to quickly agree to terms for a dowry and return soon. That isn’t the case. In fact, even the women who did bring oil were surprised when he finally returned. What’s the point of this story?
Within the larger context of Matthew’s Gospel, it’s clear that this is a metaphor for Jesus’ return to earth, his Second Coming. What is he trying to tell us about his Second Coming? To me, he has one point to make: always be ready, because you don’t know when it will happen. Don’t be like the five who assumed that his delay wouldn’t be long, which will lead you to be unprepared when he finally does arrive and which has the potential to lead you to believe that he’ll never come at all. Even within one generation of waiting for Jesus’ return, Christians were already becoming disenchanted with the idea that his return would ever happen. 2 Peter 3:3-4 says, “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!’” If that was true for those who lived shortly after the time of Jesus, how much truer for those of us who live thousands of years after them! This is the very point of the story about the 10 young women. Jesus is returning… so we ought to be vigilant in being ready!
I think it’s also important to notice that, despite their preparedness, the five who did bring oil for their lamps were still surprised when the bridegroom appeared! It seems there have been people in every generation of the Church’s history that have tried to predict the coming of the Lord based on things happening around them. Upstate New York is notorious for producing such “millenarian” groups like the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Shakers. The reality is, however, like Jesus says in this passage from Matthew 25: “you know neither the day nor the hour” (v. 13).
There is much that many people are anxious about these days. Some people may tell you, “Despair! If Jesus really cared about us, he’d come back and do something about it already. Abandon your hope! Jesus isn’t coming!” Don’t listen to them. The bridegroom delays but he hasn’t abandoned us. Other people may say, “The Bible has predicted the things we’re seeing in the world, and we can know exactly what God is going to do next!” Don’t listen to them, either! We don’t know when Jesus will return.
The only thing we do know is that Jesus has told us to be ready. So… let’s be ready. Let’s not let him find us sleeping or unprepared. Let’s get serious about our faith. Let’s decide that if Jesus does return tomorrow, he’ll find us loving our neighbor with selflessness and humility… which is what he really wants us to do.
Lenten blessings,
Pastor Aaron