| Jesus and the End-Time The Imminence of the End-Time Preparing to Wait |
"Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, 'Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut. Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I say to you, I do not know you.' Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour" Matthew 25:1-13There is in English history a king named Ethelred, who somewhere picked up the nickname "the Unready." I had wondered what it was that had given Ethelred his nickname; had he been slow to prepare for an attack or slow to respond to one? It had to be something bad for him to bear a nickname like that through a thousand years of history. So I looked him up, and it turned out to be one of those unfair tricks that history sometimes plays on its participants. Poor Ethelred had not been unready at all, he had been unraed, which meant in the language of the day that he lacked the counsel of those who should have supported him. But when language changed, people who knew about him started to call him the unready simply because it sounded like unraed, even though the meanings are not the same. But my interest in Ethelred stemmed from his nickname, probably because of my own fear of being unprepared. I have nightmares about it. And because of it I sympathize with the five girls who were left out of the marriage feast. They weren't wicked and they weren't unlikable, but they possessed that fatal stupidity which keeps people from being ready on time. The parable is called by the name of the wise and foolish virgins (KJV), but the story is mainly about the foolish ones. It is their desire, their activity, and their destiny that are followed through the story, so we will examine it from their point of view. The girls wanted to be part of the wedding. They intended to be. They cared about being in the marriage feast and were greatly honored to be chosen as bridesmaids. It was to be their job to escort the bridegroom to the house of his bride and the couple back to the bridegroom's house, lighting the way with their lamps in a festive procession. In those days it was more like a parade through town than a token march down the center aisle of a church. The foolish girls as well as the wise ones were glad to be in on it. To understand what went so badly wrong for them that they were left out of the celebration, let us look closely at the basic assumptions in the story. The first is the certainty of the bridegroom's coming. No doubt is expressed anywhere in the story about the bridegroom's showing up. The carelessness of the girls is to be seen in the light of this certainty. We could understand their carelessness if they had doubted his coming; if they had disbelieved in it entirely, they would not have been waiting for him at all. The only real explanation for their carelessness is that they were foolish. In the current idiom, they were "dumb kids." (They probably were kids. Since most girls were married by the age of fourteen, these girls-designated maidens, or virgins-should be taken to be twelve or thirteen years old.) They just didn't think, as the saying goes, and their failure to think led to their failure to take along extra oil for their lamps. So when the oil was used up, they could not replace it. It is important to be exact here. Their lack of preparation would not have become apparent if the bridegroom had come right away. Then the oil in their lamps would have been sufficient. In other words, they were prepared to serve but they were not prepared to wait. Because they were not prepared to wait, when the bridegroom finally came they were no longer prepared to serve. This leads us to the second assumption in the story, which is that the bridegroom is delayed in his coming. The five wise maidens thought he might be, so they took along extra oil "just in case." Then if the bridegroom came and they did not need the oil they would not be out anything-they could use the oil another time. On the other hand, if the bridegroom were delayed, they would be ready for him when he came. These five had no more information than the dumb ones; they just used what they had more wisely. The schedule for the wedding was not in their power. The wedding would begin when the bridegroom came, and their one purpose in being there was to be ready for his appearance. That meant being prepared not only to serve but also to wait. You might suppose that the longer the delay, the more time there would be for the foolish maidens to get prepared. But it didn't work that way. Perhaps you have observed, as I have, that it usually doesn't. Unprepared people-that is, those who are chronically unprepared-do not ordinarily lack time, but they have a certain attitude that leads them to believe that somehow or other they will muddle through. In this case the foolish girls asked the wise ones for oil: "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." Which leads to the third assumption: the girls were responsible for their own preparation. The wise maidens will not now help the foolish ones on the sensible grounds that everyone would run out of oil, the lamps would go out, and the wedding procession would finish in the dark. So the five unprepared girls, frantically, at midnight, try to buy oil for their lamps, but by the time their errand is finished the procession is over and the bridegroom is disgusted with them because they did not do the one thing asked of them in exchange for the privilege of being in the celebration. So he doesn't invite them to the marriage feast. (If this seems to be an immature, unforgiving act, note: the rabbis advised that a man should marry off his son "while he still had his hand on his neck," so what we have here described is a seventeen-year-old boy's exercising the first adult judgment of his life as a newly married man by taking his temper out on some twelve-year-old girls. It is immature, but that doesn't change the responsibility of the girls, or their fate, one whit.) Jesus said that the Kingdom of heaven is to be compared to this event. The obvious implications in light of our expectation of Christ's return-which is the context in which Jesus tells the story-are these:
Because it is indefinite from our perspective, it is not only allowable but wise for Christians to plan for the future as though their earthly life will continue. We dare not assume that the coming of the Lord is immediate when it is only possibly immediate. On the other hand, we dare not, as C.S. Lewis has pointed out. Give our whole loyalty to a worldly future; in particular, we must not sacrifice our ethics in the present for the sake of a future that may not come to pass.1 The only certain future event, from a Christian point of view, is the coming of the Lord; all other possible events are contingent upon its occurring or not occurring at a given time. Secondly, the wise maidens had an appropriate plan: by taking along extra oil, they were prepared both to serve and to wait. The Christian does well to plan as they did. A Christianity that lives only for the enthusiasm of the end-time, in the assumption that the close of the age is immediate, has difficulty sustaining itself from generation to generation. Enthusiasm is, after all, an emotion; the Church lives not by emotion but by the Spirit and Word. Rather, we must take the delay seriously, realizing all the while that it could end at any time. Finally, preparing to wait for the Lord is a personal responsibility. The world challenges the Church with a besetting question, "Why doesn't God do something? But a Christian who asks that question deserves a crisp answer. "Why don't you do something?" In the story the girls did not have much to do, and their failure to do it did them more harm than it did anyone else. The wedding went on just the same, the celebration was just as fine, but they were left out of it. We do not have to worry about God's doing something. He has already done it all. But whether or not we have fulfilled the responsibilities we have is an open question. 1 C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night, p. 111. » Next Page — Preparing to Wait » Table of Contents » Home |