25 1-5 “God’s kingdom is like ten young virgins who took oil lamps and went out to greet the bridegroom. Five were silly and five were smart. The silly virgins took lamps, but no extra oil. The smart virgins took jars of oil to feed their lamps. The bridegroom didn’t show up when they expected him, and they all fell asleep.
6 “In the middle of the night someone yelled out, ‘He’s here! The bridegroom’s here! Go out and greet him!’
7-8 “The ten virgins got up and got their lamps ready. The silly virgins said to the smart ones, ‘Our lamps are going out; lend us some of your oil.’
9 “They answered, ‘There might not be enough to go around; go buy your own.’
10 “They did, but while they were out buying oil, the bridegroom arrived. When everyone who was there to greet him had gone into the wedding feast, the door was locked.
11 “Much later, the other virgins, the silly ones, showed up and knocked on the door, saying, ‘Master, we’re here. Let us in.’
12 “He answered, ‘Do I know you? I don’t think I know you.’
13 “So stay alert. You have no idea when he might arrive.
14-18 “It’s also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money.
19-21 “After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
22-23 “The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
24-25 “The servant given one thousand said, ‘Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’
26-27 “The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.
28-30 “‘Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this “play-it-safe” who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.’
31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’
37-40 “Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
41-43 “Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’
44 “Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’
45 “He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’
46 “Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ‘sheep’ to their eternal reward.”
+++
This could be a story about winners and losers.
Five bridesmaids gave some thought to what might happen and five bridesmaids took everything for granted.
Two employees were winners and one was a loser.
The sheep were winners and the goats were losers.
But that’s not what we’re supposed to learn from these parables. These parables are about attitude, about expectation, about faith.
We might think that these parables are about winning and losing because those fit well with how we make decisions and how we see and seek justice. We might think this is about how we plan or how we get ahead.
Why do we plan? Because we worry about what could happen. And yet Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount not to worry.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? …“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
The first two parables seem totally disconnected, until we get to the third parable about the sheep and the goats. Jesus is talking about expectation. One of the things that makes us Christians unique is our expectation that Jesus will return to gather us all together. These parables are not about preparing. These parables are not about making the best use of our material goods.
What is the connection between the parable of the bridesmaids and the workers? They are connected by the third example Jesus gives us, about the sheep and the goats. But that parable is not about the good guys and the bad guys. That parable, that comparison is also about expectation. What the three stories have in common is the return of Jesus to gather us all together.
We don’t, in our congregation, talk about Jesus’s Second Coming. That promise was made 2000 years ago and it hasn’t happened yet, so why would it happen in our lifetime? As a child, I fully expected Jesus to return just as I was hitting my sister or throwing rocks at my brother. When that didn’t happen, I pretty much forgot about a Second Coming. The only reminders I had in my adult life were news items about people predicting the Second Coming and missing it by a mile. In this century alone, there have been at least fifteen missed dates. The next date that I could find is April 8, 2024, which is the day of the next total eclipse on this continent. So mark your calendar.
The words, the promise are still there, words of Jesus that we take seriously, that we use to live the way we promised at baptism, at confirmation, and in our worship. We take Jesus’s words about his return for granted because we have seen neither affirmation nor contradiction of this event, so we shelve it with everything else we can’t understand.
For the first Christians, in the first Century CE, Jesus’s return was foremost in their mind and it influenced daily life. Most of the first letter to the Thessalonians is full of reassurances that Jesus will be back in town any day.
If you knew for sure that Jesus would be dropping by with his giant Greyhound or arriving on Amtrak for sure on April 8, 2024, how would that affect you? Would that change how you invested your money? Would that change any of your eating habits? Would you give up your membership at the gym? Would you buy the car of your dreams so you could drive it for a year without finishing the payments? Would you buy a condo on your favorite lake, knowing the mortgage payments would be suspended within a year? Would you quit your job and live off your savings? Would you divorce your spouse and look for companionship elsewhere? Would you spend time traveling to see all the places in the world that you’ve wanted to see?
This was a real problem in Thessalonica 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
9Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, 12 so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.
In other words, keep on working, keep putting food on the table, keep weeding the garden, keep feeding the sheep, keep weaving the cloth. You’ll need it for the foreseeable future. Nobody knows how long we’re going to be here.
Those early Thessalonians would probably be surprised that many centuries later, we are still waiting.
Or are we?
This is what Jesus is warning us about.
Former students of mine, a brother and a sister, gave their parents tickers for a cruise for a Christmas present. This brother and sister were still high school students, not adults who lived on their own. Imagine two high school students, who had lots of friends, with an empty house and a weekend to fill. Party central. Imagine the activities that took place in the house—nothing terrible—but certainly lots of food, lots of noise, lots of people in and out. As the end of the parents’ cruise approached, I’d guess some cleaning up took place. Trash was removed, floors scrubbed, bathrooms cleaned. Furniture returned to pre-party locations.
This is not how Jesus expects us to live—as if he’s not looking, as if he’s on vacation.
Jesus expects us to follow his way of living all the time. Paul had to remind the Thessalonians that being followers of Jesus did not exempt them from following Jesus’s commandments.
The bridesmaids did not know when the bridegroom would return. So they kept their lamps burning. The servants did not know when the boss would return, so they made the most of his trust in them. And the sheep and the goats didn’t have a clue why they were separated.
Finally, Jesus brings it all together when he explains how God sees us, what God values. It’s not who gives the most to the church or who has perfect attendance at Sunday worship, or who has served the most years on church council. It’s not about who reads the Bible everyday. It’s not even about making or breaking laws. It’s about how we treat each other.
I was hungry and you fed me…it’s about having enough to eat.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink…it’s about having clean water.
I was homeless and you gave me a room…it’s about being able to return to the same place, day after day.
I was shivering and you gave me clothes..it’s about protection from the weather.
I was sick and you stopped to visit…it’s about providing healthcare.
I was in prison and you came to me…it’s about caring for people who have had bad luck, made bad decisions without making them feel like losers.
Food. Water. Shelter. Protection. Health. Taking care of each other, no matter where we end up.
I have been accused of being too political. Why? Because I have complained about food insecurity. Because I have complained about polluted water. Because I have complained about affordable housing. Because I have complained about the lack of affordable healthcare. Because I have complained about uneven distribution of justice.
I am not the one who politicized these issues. Nor is Jesus. Government has made these basic issues political and polarized us so that none of us can provide what every human deserves, what every child of God created in God’s image deserves: the basic ingredients of life: food, water, shelter, clothing, health, security.
So, do I just keep donating to food banks and second hand stores? (At our food bank, the client cannot touch the food. What would it be like for you to go to the grocery store and have the cashier walk around, up and down each aisle, while you point to what you want and the cashier takes it off the shelf and put it in your basket? What would you feel like?)
We live in a world that wants to punish us for not following orders. The orders are two: Be rich. Be powerful. When we are not rich or powerful, we are punished, from not being able to take the can of baked beans off the shelf by ourselves to losing our ability to live at a permanent address.
Too one-sided?
What if the only side is at the side of Jesus?
Here are Jesus’s orders: Love God. Love your neighbor. If Jesus comes back in all his glory—-what will that be like? I’ve always hoped it would be on a big white horse with a gold mane and a gold tale, silver hooves, lots of angels singing a Bach chorale, or an orchestra playing Bohemian Rhapsody. Flowers falling from the sky. Aurora borealis. Chocolate.
That’s ridiculous, as is trying to figure out the date. That’s the whole point of this entire chapter: the date is unknowable. What is knowable is how to live so that we are always ready, always prepared for Jesus to walk in the door, to jump in the back of the pickup with us, to hold hands in the movies with us, to walk through the grocery store with us, to watch women’s basketball with us.
Get rich. Be the boss. or…. Love God. Love your neighbor. Goats or sheep? Amen.
The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
Some Kind of Faith 