Pastor's Corner: Have you checked your oil?

This coming Sunday's gospel reading is the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids found in Matthew 25:1-13. Here's the takeaway: What can one do to avoid being embarrassed like the five bridesmaids whose lamps ran out of oil, or - to use a modern metaphor - whose smartphone batteries were deader than disco? To fully understand the power of this parable, it's necessary to review how Matthew arranges Jesus' red-letter words of the two previous chapters: 23 and 24.

Chapter 23 is full of stinging denunciations against the religious leaders of his day who "do not practice what they preach" (23:3). "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (23:13). "Woe to you, blind guides ... you blind fools!" (23:16-17). Three more times Jesus says "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (23:23, 23:27, and 23:29). Who are the blind guides today?

Then, Matthew lets us in on more gloom and doom. Jesus tells everyone who will listen that the temple will be reduced to rubble. He starts muttering about signs of the end of the world. He says that false prophets will arise, persecution will be rampant and that friends will betray one another. Things will be so bad that the public will head for the hills wishing they'd never been born. Then there will be portents in the sky. Solar and lunar eclipse will only be part of it. There will be amazing and horrifying meteor showers and the "powers of heaven will be shaken" (24:29).

And in that moment ... in that very moment, human destiny will be decided. For "all the tribes of the earth will ... see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from on one end of heaven to the other" (24:30-31). Now scroll forward to today's parable about the 10 women of a bridal party, five of whom were vigilant and ready for every contingency, and five who were reckless and careless and who were in terms of our metaphor, victims of instant karma. They were on the receiving end of the humiliation and anguish they richly deserved. They are classic examples of the conditions reviewed by Jesus in  Matthew chapters 23 and 24.

Sleepyheads. Jesus sometimes had trouble with his followers nodding off when, in his opinion, they should've had a Red Bull and toughed it out. It almost happened at the site of his Transfiguration, and at the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed. In today's text, Jesus concludes the lesson by saying, "Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour" (Matthew 25:13). 

Defcon 1. Keep awake: Really? Jesus himself said that all 10 bridesmaids succumbed to sleep! Their lamps were out. Dead to the world. All of them. Yet, when the groom appears, the trumpet sounds, the shouting begins, the hora is danced whilst singing "Hava Nagila," and five of the wedding party are ready - immediately. Their prior sleepiness is not the problem. Some had oil for their lamps; others didn't. Some slept with one eye on the alarm clock; others didn't. Some remembered they were on standby alert, on-call status; others didn't. Some were operating at Defcon 1, the highest state of readiness; others were not. Jesus' warning to "stay awake" must mean something other than literally, "Don't go to sleep." Instead, we must read Jesus' warning to us, "Be ready. Be aware. Be in a state of readiness."

How can we be ready and awake? When does it end? Both are good questions. Over the millennia, people have wrestled with an answer. Predictions were replete with times and dates, and often fueled by apocalyptic fervor, antisemitism, or charismatic - if not psychotic - seers. How can we maintain a state of readiness? Sometimes, it's so obvious that we can't see it staring at us. To live in vigilance means that Christians must do the tasks they have been assigned to do, like the 10 bridesmaids.

According to Matthew's gospel, these tasks include: bearing witness to God's kingdom by welcoming the stranger (vv.31-46), feeding the hungry (vv. 31-46), visiting the sick and imprisoned (vv. 31-46), and making disciples in all the world (28:19-20). It's all there. In the same chapter. Do these four things - actions that could fall under the category of loving one's neighbor - and you can be assured that when the Lord comes, there will be oil in your lamps.

No one will catch you napping. You will not be embarrassed before your Lord or your neighbors. Rather, you will hear the bridegroom say, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (v. 34).

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Pastor Michael O'Hearn

Hi-Line Lutheran Churches