Keep Awake

Sunday, November 6th, 2005
Pentecost + 25
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 25:1-13

1‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” 7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” 9 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.” 10 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. 11 Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” 12 But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” 13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

It was 10:15 on Thursday night, and I heard a plaintive voice quietly calling from the bedroom across the hall.

“Daddy? … Daddy?”

“Yes, Hannah? … Why are you still awake?”

“I wanted to stay awake so that when Momma and Judson get home I can ask her to sleep with me.” When any of the kids ask one of us to sleep with them, it usually involves laying down next to them for the duration of one or two songs playing on their lullaby CD’s.

I would’ve liked for Hannah to have gone to sleep an hour and a half earlier, but it is an utterly lost cause.

There is the school of thought that declares that your behavior is determined by genetics; your parents, and their parents, and THEIR parents … ad infinitum. You’ve heard the saying ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’ This is where it comes from.

The other school of thought proposes that your behavior is determined by your environment. What you DO you do in reaction or in response to what is going on around you; it is not necessarily something that is predetermined by your great-great-grandmother catching your great-great-grandfather’s eye at an 1832 barn-raising.

So for Hannah, when it comes to going to sleep at night, she is caught both ways. Genetically, she is duplicating what BOTH Leslie and I did as children – sneaking around, staying up late, FINDING the flimsiest excuse to walk into the living room or den to ask our parents the most innocuous question JUST so we could SEE WHAT WAS going on. Leslie and I BOTH lived in fear of MISSING something.

It has never occurred to me until now to ask our parents if they did the same thing as children. Chances are, if not they themselves, I suspect my Aunts or our Uncles MORE than compensated in some way. So the genetics would still come into play, as a latent gene.

As for environment … well, I suppose it could be considered that simply the fact that there are other people in the house who are awake when SHE is supposed to be sleeping is enough of an environmental factor to trigger whatever that gene is that we gave her.

There are those of us who eagerly remain awake, waiting for the next thing, and those of us who gladly sink into the dream world, and rest in preparation for the day that is to come.

In the text, we read of 10 virgins, Jesus says that five of the virgins went to meet the bridegroom with only the oil in their lamps. The other five came not only with the oil in their lamps, but an additional flask of oil as a backup, in case they had to wait an unexpectedly long time.

Guess what?

They had to wait an unexpectedly long time.

The first five thus end up being called foolish, and the second five are called wise for their foresight.

ALL of them dozed off and fell asleep while they waited for the bridegroom to appear.

ALL of them, both the foolish and the wise, fall asleep.

But it wasn’t the falling asleep that ended up being the problem. The problem ended up being the lack of oil in the lamps. THAT ended up causing the foolish five to leave the place where they were to find the oil they needed to relight their lamps, and they missed the opportunity to enter with the bridegroom.

In first century Palestine, young couples wouldn't go away for a week-long honeymoon; instead, they would stay at their home and would have a sort of "open house" for their friends. Everyone treated the couple as royalty; the week following their wedding ceremony was undoubtedly the best week of their lives.

Before the wedding, the maidens or virgins kept the bride company outside of the groom's house as she waited for him to arrive. They'd bring lamps to use while they waited because they were not allowed in the streets at night without light. Because the groom could come at any time, even at night, they had to stay and wait.

No one knew exactly when he'd arrive. They didn't print invitations and invite people to come at a precise time for the wedding, it happened whenever the bridegroom came. It could be today, it could be tomorrow or it could be next week.

When the bridegroom approached, a messenger would go out into the streets and declare, "Behold, the bridegroom is coming" then the maidens would accompany the bride into the house for the wedding ceremony and the week-long celebration to follow. (Barclay 354)
There was a small window of opportunity to walk through the door into the house. Once the wedding began, no one else was admitted.

In other words, it wasn't possible to be too early, but it was possible to be too late. You couldn't just walk in and find a seat in the back, when the door was shut, it was shut and it wouldn't be opened again.

So when Jesus told this parable, His listeners had a cultural point of reference that made it come alive to them. They immediately got his point about the importance of preparation.

The Gospel of Matthew might have been written down as much as 50 years after the resurrection of Christ, the church was struggling with the extended time interval between the first coming and the second coming of Christ. Perhaps some were losing hope.

Some suggest that Matthew uses this parable to remind the church that the end will come and it will come suddenly, but it may not necessarily come soon.

The main question for the first readers of the Gospel and for us today in this scripture is: "What do we do while we're waiting?"

Keeping watch, standing guard, being prepared; they are all watchwords for doing what we are supposed to be doing in the preparation of AND in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God.

The analogy is pretty stark. The coming bridegroom is Christ himself, the Messiah. What we do while we’re waiting for him to show up is being answered FOR us in the parable: Do we show up and wait prepared, or unprepared for what comes next? How do we, as Christians, prepare for the inbreaking Kingdom of God? What is it we’re called to do ‘in the meantime?’

Jesus, in this passage and the rest of the chapter, is bringing things to their conclusion. The allusion we find just before the conclusion of the parable, “Lord, Lord, open to us” and the bridegroom’s “I do not know you” reply is not a reference to preparedness, but to … judgment, and justice. Jesus is communicating to his followers that he is not going to be with them much longer, and that they are in for a wait. And yet, in the absence, there is hope.

As we approach the Advent season, during which we remember the waiting of the people of Israel for the Messiah, We are here presented with an image of what will be involved in our waiting for the RETURN of that same Messiah into OUR future.

Our wait now becomes an echo of theirs. But we do not wait complacently. We do not wait in stillness. We wait in eager anticipation, we wait by fulfilling his commands, following his examples, as we spoke on Wednesday; the most powerful testimony to the movement of God in the world is each of our individual lives. We wait by engaging the world through living lives that reflect the character of Christ – and not only the character, but the PRESENCE of Christ in our lives. If we are to talk of weapons that can vanquish an enemy, let’s talk about the weapons of love, forgiveness, service, truthfulness, and grace. They are a formidable array with which to confront the enemies of hatred, bitterness, egoism, superficiality and malice.


What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means this: if we are to choose how we live our lives, may our choices always reflect those of Christ Jesus himself. If we are to practice what we read and know of Christ in our hearts, let it first be reflected among us as the body of Christ. If we cannot see each other as Jesus sees us, and we more or less like each other, how can we hope to see the world, with which we might have less in common, as Jesus sees IT?

Have we run out of oil, and don’t have a flask from which to refill our lamp? Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’. Can we reach out and claim that light again and again and pass it on as we find the world knocking at our door? Are we going to recognize the bridegroom when he comes? Will we be ready when he comes? Will we be about the business of the Kingdom of God when he comes, or … not?

Let’s pray.