Vicar Christopher Gillespie
Immanuel Ev. Lutheran Church of Frankentrost
Saginaw, Michigan
Last Sunday of the Church Year (November 25, 2007)
Text: Matthew 25:1-13

11-25-2007 audio

Our meditation for today is the Gospel text just read, the parable of the ten virgins.
Let us pray: Hasten as a bride to meet Him, And with loving rev’rence greet Him. For with words of life immortal He is knocking at your portal. Open wide the gates before Him, Saying, as you there adore Him: Grant, Lord, that I now receive You, That I nevermore will leave you. Amen. (LSB 636 v.2)

I don’t know about you, but the idea of going to court scares me. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on appearing before a judge anytime soon! Even so, the prospect makes me squirm.
It really doesn’t matter to me whether I am the accused, the prosecutor, the one leveling charges, or even the jury. The whole courtroom scene makes me nervous because I never know the outcome. The end of the trial is always a question. Even the most bound-and-shut case can be tossed out on a technicality.
The vision of the end of time being a trial court, with Christ as the judge is different. The sentence has already been announced, the penalty paid, and the newly innocent set free.This is vision is quite different than the vision of earthly courts where the outcome is unsure.
Our reason and intellect would defang Christ’s rule and judgment on the last day as a figment of God’s imagination. Surely a redeemer and savior would not deny his free gifts of eternal life with him in his kingdom to anyone? How can Christ come to redeem all mankind and then on the last day deny half entrance into heaven?

The prospect of a Jesus whose patience and favor has a limit is the inconvenient truth. For in the wisdom of God, our history has an end. All things will come to a close. On this last day, Christ will come not just as redeemer but as judge over all people. Christ holds the scales of judgment where you will be weighed against the standard of the Law.
I find the prospect of the judgment of a human court intimidating. Even though I trust in my baptism, the prospect of standing before Christ, the everlasting Lord, sitting at the right hand of God, with my eternal life hanging in the balance scares the living daylights out of me.
And so is the message of the end of the church year and Christ’s parable of the ten virgins. Here we learn there is a righteous fear of the verdict to come. We are wise to consider the end of all things and the beginning of the heavenly kingdom. We must not lean on our own understanding of what it means to be prepared but instead trust in the wisdom of God.
Be Prepared! Christ is Coming!

Five virgins were wise and five virgins were foolish. All were virgins which means they were bestowed with the gifts of chastity and purity. The old persons of unbelief and sin have been destroyed and replaced with new and perfect lives suitable for the wedding feast. They have been given the lamp of Christ to light their way to the feast. They have been prepared for the time when the bridegroom will call and say “Come to the banquet hall!”
But five were cast out, barred from entering, denied the very thing their chastity and purity were for. How could this be? How could someone given the prospect of life and salvation only later to be denied the entrance to heaven on the last day?
The parable is a word of caution to the baptized believer.
We all have been born again in the waters of the font. Our lives are being restored to God’s image. We are clothed in Christ’s righteousness, the righteousness won for us on the cross.
In these waters, our unchastity and the grime of sin are washed away and we are once again restored to the righteousness and purity of the new Adam.
Door to the marriage feast is opened to us.
But this new life is not a ticket to heaven alone to be spat upon, ignored, or abused. It depends upon faith, first granted at our baptism but now fed continually by his church.
The oil of faith preserves us in the truth.
It fuels the light of Christ which guides our way unto earthly death and heavenly light.
Lest our human reason say we have enough of this faith, Christ tells us that the bridegroom will come at the time of his choosing; He will be delayed. His arrival will be unreasonable, like a thief in the night. In our wait, we all will fall asleep.
To sleep is a euphemism for death. You recall the Gospel text from last week where Jesus says, “for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” In death, the faithful are merely sleeping, awaiting the resurrection of all flesh. For the baptized, death is a divine rest, a sabbath, where we wait for the day when all creation is restored and our Father can declare once of us, “it is good!”
When it comes to the things of this world, we’ve all heard it said, “you can’t take it with you.” But the treasures of God stay with you unto heaven. Your life of faith on earth is lived to prepare you for life to come.

Notice how all ten virgins expected to enter the wedding feast.
All had apparently been elected by God for the feast.
All had received the wedding garments of the righteousness of Christ.
They have received the gift of Christ, the light of the world, who is the guide and bridegroom.
They profess faith that he is their way and guide.

So why are the foolish virgins denied entrance? What is their foolishness? When the time comes, their faith is found lacking. For they place upon God wisdom of their own construction. Their human wisdom says that we can determine how much or little of Christ’s gifts we need to go to heaven.
Yet, God’s wisdom, foolishness to us, is that we should store up the things of God in excess, in abundance.
Jesus presents for us the witness of the five wise virgins who don’t just accept our Lord with reason or intellect but allow the true faith to take hold of them, to have its way with them.
The cautionary tale of the virgins is that you can’t get too much of God’s good things. He has designated the portion needed to preserve you until the last day.

For example, we have more forgiveness than our reason could ever accept. Why would he forgive us through baptism? Then again to forgive us in the divine Absolution pronounced by the pastor? Then too, to forgive us in the receiving of His true body and blood?
We have a surplus of the Word, Christ. We hear the Word confessed in our liturgies and hymnody, where our confession is His proclamation. We hear the Word read publicly. We are exhorted by His Law and receive the grace of the Gospel by his called preachers .We pray the Word in the Lord’s Prayer, in collects, and in daily prayer.
Such redundancy is utter foolishness to man but to God is wisdom. In our Lord’s wisdom, he lavishes His gifts upon us with superabundance.To our foolish eyes, this is excess and an unnecessary abundance. In our foolishness we create arbitrary limits to his gracious gifts.
How is does this human wisdom overcome God’s divine wisdom in your life?
Perhaps we avoid the divine service when Holy Communion is celebrated saying, “the service goes too long.”
Perhaps we delay our arrival to church in order to finish that last chore on the farm on Sunday morning?
Perhaps we neglect the study of his Word in Bible Study in favor of a Sunday brunch?
The intent of today’s Gospel parable is to prevent such abuse to the gifts of God.
The Christian faith bestowed upon us determines our action. It grants us the all the oil necessary to preserve the light of Christ in us until the last day.
A faith professed which has no life lived in faith, is no faith at all. It lacks oil.
It is only a lamp with a waning flame.
It does not have the stamina to wait until the Lord’s time of deliverance.
It is a faith that foolishly believes Christ will come in our time, at a place and time of our choosing.

The question for us believers is: when it comes time to trim lamps, to adorn ourselves with gladness, will our lives be fruitful witnesses of the faith given? Will the delay of the bridegroom leave our faith waning, wanting of oil?
The foolish virgins, guided by their reason deny the foolishness of God.

As we come to the end of the church year, our eyes are fixed on the final judgment of Christ on the last day.
Our human wisdom considers this end of history to be the end of all things.
The foolishness of God is that this is instead the end of a history of sin, death, and the devil.
Christ foolishly delivered himself up to His own Law, suffering our penalty for sin upon himself.
Christ foolishly has transformed death into life.
God foolishly gives us this gift of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life as a free gift, without our works.
But God’s foolishness is only in our mind’s eye. These things which appear to make God a fool are indeed wise and just. In faith we know His way is not foolishness but is wisdom.
For God’s wisdom is given to us by His Word, it renewed us in holiness and chastity in our baptism, and preserves us yet in this faith. To our earthly mind, the foolish virgins were wise. The received the chastity and holiness of virginity. They came to meet the bridegroom. They brought enough oil to last through the evening.
To the mind of God, these virgins were foolish. For they trusted in their own idea of preparedness. When it came time to trim the wicks, to prepare to enter the feast, they had not enough oil.
The oil are the means by which God has promised to sustain faith in Christ, the light of our path. To be truly prepared in the judgment of God is to have excess of this oil.
God sustains our faith by the hearing of His Word and the receiving of His body and blood. He speaks to us the same message of sin and grace, death and life each Divine Service. The message never changes. We always preach Christ and Him crucified.

Cast off your earthly foolishness.
God has forgiven you abundantly.
Be children of the light and the day.
He has prepared you for His feast.
Live in your baptism.
Trust in the wisdom of God and receive His good gifts, His means of grace, the oil for His lamp to abundance.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105) May you store up in us the oil of faith. May we ignore the voice of our reason which prescribes a limit to Your grace. Instead may we receive all of Your gifts in excess so that on the last day we may not be found wanting. In the name your Son Jesus. Amen.