Matthew 25:1-13 - Keeping Watch - November 8, 2020

The gist of this parable is pretty simple, isn’t it? Keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. It’s not exactly a novel concept. Keeping watch is a routine part of life. We watch our porches for packages to be delivered from Amazon. Parents watch to make sure their kids stay out of the street and are home before curfew. Investors watch the stock market; politicians watch the polls; doctors watch for test results; farmers watch the weather. Everyone keeps watch for something. In a world full of people keeping watch, however, Christians are unique; for only we are keeping watch for the Lord’s return.

What does that mean? What does it mean to keep watch for our Lord’s return? Does it mean always staying awake? Being constantly vigilant every moment of every day? If it were, what grade would you get? We’ve all had times when we’ve had to force ourselves to stay awake. You try to force your eyelids open, you may slap yourself. And yet, what ends up happening? The more you try to make yourself stay awake the sleepier you become. Forcing yourself to stay awake usually has the opposite effect. It’s nearly impossible to make yourself stay awake for extended periods of time. That’s why, even in Biblical times, militaries rarely assigned overnight guard duties for periods of longer than a few hours (Matthew 14:25). Commanding someone to stay awake for an entire night is to command failure. But whether staying awake is possible or not is not the question. The question is: is that what the Lord is suggesting here? Does he want us to be constantly awake, constantly looking to the sky waiting for his return?

What would that look like? Every time you see a flash of lightning you’d have to jump up because it could be the first sign of the Lord’s return (Matthew 24:27). Every time you hear the tornado sirens tested you’d have to react like it’s the sound of the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52). Every time you see the news of wars, earthquakes, disease and false doctrine you’d have to behave like Jesus is only minutes away from his arrival (Matthew 24). You’d also have to reject every occupation, recreation and relationship which would threaten to distract you from keeping watch. Try to force yourself to do these things and one of two things will happen: either you’ll find yourself on State St. marching around like a madman with a sign that says “The End Is Near!” – or you will be overcome with guilt because you can’t be that watchful. It’s simply impossible to spend every waking moment in constant vigilance for the Lord’s return.

Thankfully this parable makes it clear that keeping watch doesn’t mean staying awake. There are two pieces of evidence for this. First, in the parable Jesus says that they all [all ten virgins] became drowsy and fell asleep. You know how that goes. You’re committed to staying awake for something: a movie, the announcement of election results, a sermon – but no matter how hard you try, you slowly nod off. And the virgins had a significant advantage: while they maybe didn’t know the exact hour the groom would come, they at least had a rough idea and they knew the day – because they knew that the bridegroom was delayed. They could only know that the groom was delayed if they had some idea of when he was originally supposed to be there. But we have no idea of when the Lord is going to come – either for us personally or for this world in general (Matthew 24:36; 44). We not only don’t know the day or the hour, we don’t know the year or the decade. So how could we possibly stay awake?

Second, if Jesus is commanding us to stay awake here, it would contradict his teachings about his return. The Bible says repeatedly that he will come like a thief in the night, when we don’t expect him (Matthew 24:43-44; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10). Jesus says that if a homeowner did know when the thief was coming, he would be on the alert and not let the thief break in. Since we do not know when the “thief” – Jesus – will arrive, it’s impossible to be on constant alert. Keeping watch isn’t about staying awake.

If this parable isn’t telling us to stay awake, then what is it about? It’s about being prepared. Jesus tells us right away that of the ten virgins – which represent all who are, outwardly, members of the Christian church – thought they were prepared; they all took their lamps and they all allowed themselves to nod off to sleep because they were confident they were ready to meet the groom whenever he arrived. The question this parable urges us to ask, then, is not “are you awake” but “are you wise or foolish?” This is the self-examination question we need to ask today precisely because we don’t know when Jesus will return. The one thing that is very clear from this parable is that it is foolish to try to get prepared once he’s already arrived – as the five foolish virgins discovered.

So how can one be prepared to meet Jesus? Are you prepared? Our natural tendency is to look inside ourselves to check for preparedness. To ask “if faith is what it takes to be saved (Mark 16:16), then do I have enough of it to last until Jesus arrives?” Those sorts of questions only lead to paranoia and doubt, don’t they? You would constantly be checking, constantly trying to measure your faith. How would you even do that? How do you know if you have enough faith to last until Jesus returns? Where’s the measuring stick for that? Being told to look inside yourself and measure your faith could only lead to one of two outcomes: either self-righteousness or despair.

The amazing truth that this parable teaches is that being prepared is actually pretty easy. How? With oil (in all probability, olive oil). Olive oil was not an especially rare or precious resource in ancient Israel. Olive trees were plentiful. If you cooked or had a lamp, you had olive oil. Thus, in the context of the parable, it was not an especially difficult task assigned to these virgins – all they had to do was bring a lamp and oil – which they, in all likelihood, already possessed. And that’s what makes the foolish virgins so extraordinarily foolish. It wasn’t just that they didn’t take enough extra oil – they didn’t take any at all (Matthew 25:3)! What could be more foolish than to pick up a lamp and not notice that it’s empty; to not fill it with oil; to see five other virgins carrying lamps full of oil and not think, “Hmm, maybe I’ll need some of that too!” The real sin, the real failure in this parable then is thinking you’re prepared to meet Jesus when you’re not.

It’s not about staying awake but about being prepared. How can we be prepared to meet the Lord? What qualifies sinners to get into the wedding reception of the Lord? It can’t be remaining constantly awake, ignoring the day-to-day occupations of life to watch for his return, because in the parable none of the ten did that. It cannot be a matter of having enough faith because each of us are plagued with doubts, fears and worries; every one of us must confess with the father of the demon-possessed boy: I do believe. Help me with my unbelief! (Mark 9:24) Nor can being prepared consist of never sinning. There will never be a day that we don’t have to cry out God, be merciful to me, a sinner (Luke 18:13). So what can prepare us for something that we cannot prepare ourselves for? Only God!

God alone has the means of preparing sinners to meet his Son. And what are these means through which God prepares sinners to meet him? We call them the means of grace. By means of Baptism he fills us with the Holy Spirit and ignites the flame of faith in our hearts (Ephesians 5:25-27). By means of the Absolution, God sends our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). By means of Holy Communion, God guarantees that we are his heirs who have the same claim on heaven’s inheritance that Jesus himself does (Matthew 26:28). See? Being prepared is easy! Water is more plentiful than olive oil – and wherever you have water and the Word, you have the tools to prepare disciples from every nation on earth (Matthew 28:19-20). Absolution is so powerful that it can declare even the worst sinner “not-guilty” in God’s eyes (1 Timothy 1:15) Communion is so potent and powerful that when you receive the true body and blood in faith, God looks at you and sees Jesus.  

Now you might be thinking: “That’s too easy. That can’t possibly be enough! After all, we’re Lutherans who confess sola fidei – that we are saved by faith alone (Mark 16:16; Galatians 2:16). Where does faith fit into this equation?” Good question. Where do we see faith in this parable? The foolish virgins believed they were ready to meet the bridegroom; they weren’t. The foolish virgins believed that they could get what was needed to enter from those who had it; their request was rejected. They believed that when they showed up later and shouted ‘Lord, Lord, let us in’ that Jesus would the door; they believed wrong. The foolish virgins had plenty of believing going on, plenty of trusting, plenty of ‘faith.’ So what was the problem? Their faith was rooted in nothing more than their own imagination. The point is this: it isn’t those who think or believe that they are prepared to meet their Lord who will be welcomed into heaven – but those who know they are prepared.

And for that what we need is not some weird, abstract, circular or emotional faith in our own faith – we need faith that is rooted in the things of God. God promises that Jesus died for your sins because he died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2).God promises that baptism saves us (1 Peter 3:21). God promises that the words of absolution spoken by a man actually forgive sins (John 20:21-23). God promises that the body and blood of Jesus are truly present in Holy Communion for the purpose of forgiving our sins, confirming and strengthening our faith – which is really nothing more or less than trust in his life, death and resurrection for us (Luke 22:19). When your faith is rooted in the words, promises and sacraments of God – then you can be sure that you are prepared to meet Jesus whenever he returns.

In the end, while our natural tendency, when thinking about the end of time, is to ask “when will this happen?” This parable teaches that we aren’t supposed ask when but who? In the parable the virgins don’t go out to keep watch; they went out to meet the bridegroom. Meeting the groom is the point. The groom, not the oil, got the five wise virgins into the wedding reception. And what got the five foolish virgins locked out was not their lack of oil but because the groom did not know them. The groom is everything! Those who meet him are saved; those who don’t aren’t! And Jesus tells us that we can meet him now until the end of time in the water, words, bread and wine of Baptism, Absolution and Holy Communion. Only a fool would refuse to keep watch by rejecting or neglecting these God-given means of preparation. Amen.