Podcast of "After Awakening" (MP3)
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78:1-7
1Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-18
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
Seminary is good about doing many things. One of them is turning the way a bunch of folks interpret scripture on its collective ear. One of those ear-turning things is that the scribes who wrote, copied, and edited texts would occasionally add stuff. Sometimes the additions were to make things more clear. Sometimes the additions were to advance an agenda. Sometimes the additions were to make the audience more comfortable with the word. You just heard me share one of those, verse 13 from our gospel reading.
This verse has Jesus telling his listeners to “keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” Actually, this translation is better than the New Revised Standard Version’s which renders this verse, “Keep awake, therefore, for you neither know the day nor the hour.” “Keep watch” makes some sense, but “keep awake” makes very little sense to me in the context of this reading. To see what I mean, I want to take a close look at the differences between the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins.
Let’s begin with the obvious things. All ten of the women were virgins, bridesmaids in other translations. They all waited for the bridegroom together; they all had lamps; and they all fell asleep. This is why translating the phrase “keep awake” makes absolutely no sense to me. Why make distinctions between the ladies with the phrase “keep awake” if nobody keeps awake?
What happened next is interesting though. When they all awoke, they trimmed their lamps. For those of you who have never trimmed a lamp it’s not difficult. There are several different types of ancient lamps and they all work on the same basic principle. There is a reservoir that contains the oil and the wick. The wick is snaked up through a hole in the lamp. The oil is then absorbed by the wick and the oil which burns when lit.
In both only a little bit of wick burns as long as there is oil in the lamp. If there is no oil in the lamp, the wick itself begins to burn. If the wick burns too long, the oil can’t get to the end anymore and it will need to be trimmed.
By the way, the word we translate as “trim” is translated other ways in scripture. Everywhere else in the New Testament, this word means to adorn or to put in order.[1] I don’t think this parable calls us to bedazzle our lamps, so we can ignore that one. But when it comes time to put things in order, to put all things in order, this is an important note for the translation and for our lives.
I bring this up because as both the wise and the foolish virgins fell asleep, they must have asleep with their lamps burning. If they hadn’t what follows next would not be an issue. The wise virgins had their things in order, the foolish did not.
When they fell asleep, their lamps were lit. When they were awakened they were either going out or had gone out. None of them had oil left in their lamps, but only the wise women thought to bring an extra flask of oil in case the bridegroom’s already late arrival was further delayed.
Well, you know how the rest of this goes. The wise virgins refuse to give the foolish virgins any oil because there may not be enough for them if they do. Then in a land that is two-thousand years removed from the 24-hour mini-mart the wise virgins suggest the foolish ones find an oil merchant and get their own.
What makes this obviously a parable, a story based in literature, tradition, and wisdom but not in truth, is that the five foolish virgins were able to find a 24-hour mini-mart where they did secure oil for their lamps. In real life the chances of finding such a merchant would have been between slim and none, but in the parable it happens. By the time they return, the bridegroom has closed the door to the foolish ladies. They were summarily rejected.
So the difference between the wise and the foolish has nothing to do with sleeping because both groups fell asleep. The difference is that only five woke up prepared and ready to go in the middle of the night. The difference between the groups was how they prepared before they fell asleep and then what they did once they awoke.
The difference is that one group came as prepared as an Eagle Scout on a weekend campout and the other was rejected by the bridegroom. So as I said, it’s not really a matter of “keep awake,” at least not as far as I’m concerned. When you get right down to it, I prefer the New International Version’s translation of verse 13 that says “keep watch” better than the New Revised Standard Version’s, but honestly, in my opinion, it could have be translated better.
Another way this could have been rendered is for Jesus to say “be in constant readiness.” As for the language, any of these translations; keep awake, keep watch, or be in constant readiness are suitable. But these phrases all mean slightly different things. What I like about “be in constant readiness” is that you can still be ready and grab forty winks. But if you are constantly ready, you will have oil in case the bridegroom is delayed.
You don’t need much extra oil, enough to fill your lamp one or maybe two more times. The crier will tell you when the bridegroom arrives; you just need to have enough oil to keep your lamp lit. The wise women did this, the unwise did not.
But another way this can be translated is that Jesus warned his disciples not just to be awake, but to be alive, to be fully alive.[2] Jesus wants more than warm bodies. He wants the church to be filled with people who are more than just awake. Awake is a threshold; alive, truly alive is what he wants the church to be.
Our Lord calls us to aspire to and to work toward the life He gives us and calls us to live; to be good stewards of the life, the world, and the gifts we have been given. Our goal, our call, our vocation is be the light of God in the world and to bring light into the world.
The most common way we bring the light is by doing good works. Praise God this part of the body of Christ does many good works in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have opened our doors for community worship services and for civic organizations. We share worship with the community not only every Sunday, but with fellow Presbyterians on Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday. We hosted a group that helps teach people valuable life skills including budgeting and meal preparation. We hosted the youth of the First Methodist Church from San Angelo
We work to fight hunger and do the work of the greater church, through the Marshall Food Pantry. We also make contributions to Presbyterian Disaster Relief and contributions to the Presbytery for mission. We give time and energy to many good causes for the glory of our Father who is in heaven. But there is more, oh so much more we can do and need to do.
One thing we all need to do more of is to share worship. Here’s an uncomfortable question, “When was the last time you invited someone to come and worship with this part of the body of Christ?” The Rev. Mike Nelson tells this story about this:
When I was interning at a Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis
One week he had an insert run off for the Sunday worship bulletin that simply stated, “Surveys show that the average Lutheran invites someone to church once every 14 years.”
At the bottom he asked the tongue-in-cheek question: “How many of you are past due?”[3]
This is just one way we can trim the lamps of our lives. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that inviting someone to worship may cost more than we will ever find in our bank accounts. Inviting others puts us individually and corporately on display. It puts us on the line to show that we worship and work for the glory of God in the world. What could cost us more than that?
This parable is loaded with many symbols. When this gospel was written these elements would have been important to all of its listeners. Jesus is known far and wide as the bridegroom. While not mentioned by name in this parable, the church is called the Bride of Christ. The wedding banquet refers to the anticipated Messianic Banquet; a great feast for the faithful in the age to come that was a feature in Jewish and Christian speculation about the end time.[4] Oil is often used in scripture and in worship to represent the Holy Spirit. Sorry, there isn’t a scriptural parabolic use of the virgin, but interpreters instead liken them to the members of the church who will be sorted like the sheep and the goats in the end times.[5]
The symbols are glorious and illuminating, but there is still that same old problem of reading parables like watching “The Da Vinci Code,” filling in scriptural allusions like watching Tom Hanks fill in the blanks of Dan Brown’s prose.
What we can say is that the kingdom of heaven will be like a great banquet. A banquet the Lord our God hosts when all of creation is put into order. When through the Holy Spirit we work to do God’s will, we work to help put creation into order.
Another interesting thing about the word English bibles translate as trimmed is that it comes from the same root word as the words for world, earth, and ultimately creation; the sum of everything here and now, all of the cosmos. In the common use of the word, it pointed to an orderly creation, a universe where all is beautiful.[6] So as the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, all of what is good and ordered and created is from and for the Lord.
As we trim the lamps of our lives, we participate in making the orderly creation which God envisions. As we trim the lamps of our lives, we work to bring back toward Eden
So this is our goal, this is our endeavor, this is our vocation; this is how we serve as good stewards over God’s creation. We let our light shine before others, that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.[7]
[1] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel, editor. Vol. III. Grand Rapids , MI
[2] gragorew, “A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature.” Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker, Editor, based on Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English editions by W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker. Chicago : University of Chicago Press
[3] HomileticsOnline.com, Timothy F. Merrill, Executive Editor, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords=invite , retrieved November 8, 2008.
[4] Messianic Banquet, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
[5] New Interpreter’s Bible, v. viii, Leander Keck, General Editor. Nashville
[6] Kittel, page 868-880
[7] From The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter XVI - Of Faith and Good Works, and of Their Reward, and of Man's Merit, paragraph 6..
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