Matthew 25:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 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, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
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"The structure of this portion of Matthew’s Gospel is: (1) a series of prophecies in Matthew 24:1-31; (2) a series of parables on being prepared and awake in Matthew 24:32-25:30; and (3) the prophecy of the Son of Man Judging the Nations in Matthew 25:31-46. Clearly, I’m advocating to not read 25:31-46 as the last in a series of parables, the so-called “Parable of the Sheep and Goats,” but instead to see it as the climaxing prophecy in Matthew’s emphasis on the fulfillment of prophecy that leads into the Passion.
"Once seeing that context in Matthew, the importance of this parable is more clearly subordinated to the prophecies. Its purpose is to provide another example of how time can run-out and bring consequences if not prepared. The purpose of prophecy itself is to show the current path one is on, and where it leads, in order that one might act and choose a different path. Prophecy is not fortune-telling. It is not meant to lock a person or nation into a foregone fate. It is aimed at urging that person or nation to steer clear of a negative fate by choosing another path in the present. The parables in-between Matthew’s prophecies — of which the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids is the fourth of five — are designed to underscore the urgency, giving us pictures of folks who ran out of time to choose another path and so suffer the consequences.
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"A properly Jewish-Christian sense of urgency seeks to be part of God’s healing and transforming this world in the here-and-now. The urgency of discipleship is to follow Jesus in nonviolent resistance to the hellish forces in this world — a commitment to stand against the hell of human violence without adding further to the hell. It leads to a costly grace by following Jesus’ willingness to suffer the violence, absorbing it rather than perpetuating it."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments" on the Girardian Lectionary page for this Sunday (link below)
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"Jesus had been previously talking to the priests and the scribes and then more laterally he was talking to the Pharisees, but in each case he was speaking the words that shall never pass away. Since that gospel he's left the temple and he addressed his disciples and others about what we would now call the inner workings of what it's going to be like to living religiously after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem. In other words, the beginnings of the structure of church, and in particular how to be extremely suspicious of fake religious leadership.
"A huge amount of what he's talking about there is to warn us about the kind of forms of hypocrisy and violence that we will see exercised in God's name in our midst, and how to see through them. Then he moves on with his disciples and starts to speak to them privately. He gives them the apocalyptic discourse telling them about the collapse of the temple, the terrible things that are to come, and how they are not to lose their heads in the midst of all those things but they are to learn how to be vigilant, to stay awake. And what we're going to get for the next three Sundays are the parables about vigilance, how it is that we are to have our eyes trained to see the one coming in.
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"First thing to notice, the bridesmaids know that a wedding is coming, all ten of them. It's not as though some of them weren't really bridesmaids and didn't know this was a wedding. No, they're all aware that a wedding is coming, the only question is when, what's it going to look like.
"They all have lamps because they'll need to see - the understanding is that the ability to see what's going on is going to be necessary. ... Part of the role of wisdom is to come into people so that they can see. Wisdom isn't, if you like, a form of extra intelligence. Wisdom is the creative force that adjusts us from within towards being perceivers of and participants in reality, the reality of the creation that is emerging before us. So these lamps and wisdom, that's very much part of the same thing."
"So here we have the bridesmaids who know this is a wedding. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. Okay, Jesus is immediately taking us back to the difference between the foolish and the wise builders from the Sermon on the Mount - we're going to see that the passage from the Sermon on the Mount is much referenced today because if you remember there it was the foolish who built the house upon the sand and the wise who built the house upon the rock. It is of course much more difficult to build a house upon a rock, it takes time, excavation hard work, but the results are more solid. So here the notion of having oil for the lamp would have been understood immediately as the way in which you seek constantly to acquire wisdom, so as to be able to see. You go to see wisdom and wisdom gives itself to you.
"... At midnight there was a shout, “Look here is the bridegroom, come out to meet him.” Okay, the shout is at midnight. Matthew is a genius. Not long after the disciples have heard this, one of them will have particular reason to have remembered this teaching, because as we'll see he is going to be involved in becoming the illustration for us of the working out of this teaching.
"When the cry came at midnight a few days later they were in the Garden of Gethsemane and the bridegroom arrived. The arrival of the bridegroom looked like the handing over of Jesus to his death. Remember that, we're going to come back to that in just a second. So all the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. Remember that, as in Gethsemane all the disciples were asleep, they all got up.
"All the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out.” They were not able to see in the midst of the chaos and the confusion that occurs when the marriage arrives, the bridegroom arrives. For the marriage, when the handing over comes, it's always going to be a time of confusion and darkness. “But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’” The kind of light that is necessary to deal with the coming of the bridegroom, in the midst of the cares and confusion, seeing the arrival of the Lamb who is handing himself over to the marriage feast of the Lamb, that can only be acquired personally, by having gone through, having trained your eyes through it so that you're not thrown by the first signs of the winds of confusion.
"... Later the other bridesmaids came also saying “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” Now beautifully, only a few days later Peter tries to get in to the High Priest's courtyard while Jesus is being tried. Three times he denies, and one of those he denies it with an oath saying “I do not know the man.” Please remember this phrase, the 'I do not know you'. ... Here of course is the irony, because the one who casts out, or on the side of the casting out, is the one who is in fact cast out. The one who has recognized the one who is being cast out and followed them into the banquet, that is the one whom the Lord knows. Beautifully set up here, we have Peter immediately failing the test of the parable, for which thank heavens, because it means we know that we can get it wrong and come again. This is one of the wonderful things of the Petrine witness, it's about being wrong and coming again and not being let down.
"... What I'd like to suggest is ... that Jesus is preparing his disciples for being awake. Being awake means constantly learning how to train your eyes on the moment when the Lord arrives. And the Lord arrives in one being cast out, and it's in our reaching out to and accompanying that person that we find ourselves going into the wedding feast. ... You know that the one is coming when you see the 'being handed over', you see the ones being cast out, and I think that this is one of the extraordinary things for which our Lord is preparing us, that after the time of the collapse of the temple - when finally the sacrificial system was undone, when the fakeness, if you like, of ordinary human sacrificial systems was finally revealed to be what it was - after that nothing will ever be clear again in the same way.
"Our learning what is good, how to be on the side of the good, how to allow ourselves to be made good, all of that is going to be shown as we find ourselves all through the process of learning to see the one who is being handed over, the one who is being cast out. And it's as our eyes are trained to that, that we are finding ourselves on the inside of the light of the Gospel.
"It's actually a thrilling reality rather than a morbid one, it's incredibly alive-making, but it's lifelong, there's no amount of, “Well I guess I know what this is about so I'll just hang around and then I'll be able to make the right decision at the moment I'm sure.“ No, we won't. It's only as we allow ourselves to be trained constantly into seeing the one who's being carried away that we will be able to see the one who is arriving in the midst of all the chaos, confusion - all the fake goodness, all the growling sacred noises, all of that which Jesus has exposed for us - it's only in the midst of all that that we'll be able to see.
"I always remember the tale of Andreas Schmidt, I think that's his name, who was a low-ranking German soldier who became aware that part of his job was to escort trains with Jewish passengers bound for 'reestablishment' in Eastern Europe, and after a fairly short time he became aware of what they were really for. And, unlike all the others in his platoon, for some reason he saw what was going on and he knew that it was better to be dead than to be taking part in that. He saw the arrival of the bridegroom. And he spent the next three months trying to hide Jewish people, hiding them in the forest. He was eventually caught by the Gestapo and killed. And who is greater in the Kingdom of Heaven than he, because his eyes were trained and he saw the arrival of the bridegroom, and he went in to the wedding feast. This I think is what we're being invited to do."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 32 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IT0fLg_udk)
[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper27a/]
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