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The Very Hardest Parables - Matthew 25:1-13
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Well, welcome today. We are now halfway through our series on the parables of judgment. And hopefully, this series has not felt at all judgy. Hopefully, you have actually come out of these conversations feeling more deeply connected to the grace and the invitation of Christ. Because the idea of judgment in the mind of Jesus is not intended to grind us down.
Speaker 1:It is intended to shake us up, to destabilize our assumptions, but then to build us into something more durable. And so everything that Jesus speaks is a form of grace and invitation even when it has a hard edge to it. And yet, it is also important that we do take time to explore from time to time the hard edges of what Jesus says. And so in this series, so far, we have heard Jesus tell a story about being crushed under the weight of a stone, about a king who kills his enemies and burned their houses to the ground, and then last week a boss who cuts his bad employees to pieces. So these are not our typical Jesus stories.
Speaker 1:In fact, are probably not the ones you should read to your children at bedtime from the bible. And so sometimes, we just kind of skip them. But last week, actually read from Jesus as he tells one of these hard stories to his best friends only to have Peter turn and ask, Jesus, is this a story for us or is this a story for everyone? And I love that phrase from Peter. Because you just know that when Peter says everyone, he does not mean everyone.
Speaker 1:He means everyone else. Am I right? Lord, is this a story for me or is this a story for them? That's what he means to say there. And let's be honest, isn't that how we all read the hard parables from time to time?
Speaker 1:It's the Pharisees. It's the Sadducees. It's the overly religious. It's the homosexuals. It's the liberals.
Speaker 1:It's the hard right conservatives. It's the Muslims, the feminists. It's Justin Trudeau. That's who Jesus is really talking to. And yet even when we do acknowledge that it is everyone Jesus speaks to, it is still a whole lot easier to imagine ourselves as part of the everyone than it is as the object of Jesus' words.
Speaker 1:And that's what Peter is doing. He wants to make sure he is getting a small taste of general judgment on the side and not the full meal deal. The problem of course is that sometimes we need that. We need to be called out. We need to hear hard words and we need to take them seriously.
Speaker 1:Paul says it this way, that we would learn to speak the truth in love to each other. Now, you can speak truth, but you can do that in a way that is damaging or hurtful or belittling. And often times that is worse than saying nothing. And doctrine is important, but if you think doctrine is more important than love, then you already have bad doctrine from the start. So it's important then when we decide that we need to go into Jesus on judgment mode, we make sure we have already earned the right to speak that truth the way that Jesus has.
Speaker 1:Because he does that by demonstrating his love first. And so I think it's important that when we read the parables of judgment, it's important that we not villainize the people Jesus is speaking to. These are not Jesus' enemies. At least not to him they are not. These are people that he loves, that he cares for, that he wants to speak truth to because these are his people, these are us.
Speaker 1:And knowing that Jesus has your best in mind even when he speaks hard words to you, that means that we don't need to find ways to deflect that message off onto others. Jesus, is this for us or is this for everyone? It's for us. And so we can simply come to his words, take them as they are, digest his message so that we can be shaped and molded and transformed as his spirit is working in us. Now, absolutely, as we always do, we will still work to uncover context and culture and the particular circumstance that informs what Jesus is saying.
Speaker 1:But that is not a way of deflecting his message. It's actually part of how we internalize what he says. Now, we have three weeks left in the series. Series. And after that, we will move into holy week, which includes Palm Sunday and Good Friday and concludes on resurrection Sunday.
Speaker 1:But we are going to spend these last three weeks of this series all in Matthew Matthew chapter 25. Because there are three parables in this one chapter and they are actually part of a bigger sermon that includes the parable that Joel walked us through last week. And so we should know that going in because these are indeed words for Jesus' closest friends. But, let's pray. And then we will look together at the first of three from Matthew 25.
Speaker 1:God of gracious love and invitation, when you speak the hard truth that points directly at us, would we not look to shy away or deflect your meaning, but instead receive the grace and the correction that you intend to bring us closer to your heart. Sometimes we wish that you were all puppies and cotton candy, and yet we know that we also need that love and correction and transformation in our lives. We want to become the people you imagine us to be. And so by your spirit, would you enliven us to listen well? To develop ears to hear as it were, so that we might digest and metabolize and then live out your love that is expressed to us.
Speaker 1:Where we have spoken harshly or quickly to others without having earned that right by first demonstrating our love, would you forgive us? Where we have had words devoid of love spoken to us, and we have left those conversations feeling smaller or less than we came into them. Would you heal us? And where we have been taught to fear your judgment as if you were some tyrant in the sky who intends only to cripple us with fear. Would your spirit be present in this place and in this moment dismantling those misconceptions and reminding us that love and grace are the ground of all being.
Speaker 1:May every word you speak, even your parables of judgment, be heard in the light and beauty of your grace. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Alright. Matthew 25.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned here, we are gonna be in this one chapter for the next three weeks. But I also mentioned that the context here is Jesus speaking to his disciples. And so I wanna back up a little bit to the start of Matthew 24. Because that is where Jesus begins this long sermon that takes up these two chapters in Matthew. So in Matthew chapter 24 verse one, we read that Jesus left the temple and was walking away.
Speaker 1:When his disciples came up to him to call his attention to buildings. Now in Mark, there's a parallel. And there they actually say, teacher, look at these massive stones. What beautiful buildings. So we're talking about the Jewish temple here.
Speaker 1:It's often known as the 2nd Temple. It was built to replace Solomon's temple that had been destroyed earlier. And it was an incredibly impressive structure. The disciples, a little rough around the edges, not particularly cultured, perhaps not having spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, are duly impressed with this building. And so they remark on it.
Speaker 1:But Jesus says to them, do you see all these things? Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another for everyone will be thrown down. Now in a physical sense, that actually happens about forty years later in the year seventy of the common era. The Romans at the time of Vespasian under his son Titus destroy the second temple and they raze most of Jerusalem to the ground. At the time of Jesus though, it would have been unthinkable to even suggest the temple would ever crumble.
Speaker 1:And so a little later, when Jesus was sitting on the Mount Of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age? So they have been sitting with this kind of crazy thing that Jesus said as they were leaving temple. And they're probably running it through in their mind over and over again trying to figure out what he could possibly mean.
Speaker 1:And so now, finally, they work up the courage to come and just ask him. Okay. So the temple is gonna be destroyed, but you'll be coming back. So how will we know when this is gonna happen? And this is one of those moments where disciples, even just a little bit, actually seem to get it.
Speaker 1:Jesus has referred to his body as a temple before. In John two, he says, if you destroy the temple, I will I will rebuild it in three days. Here, they recognize that he's talking about the actual physical temple, but they also seem to understand that this has something to do with Jesus' life and mission, his purpose as well. So they ask him, can you elaborate? And as Jesus is want to do, he decides instead to tell some stories.
Speaker 1:And so that's the context for these parables that we are about to read over these next three weeks. And it's important because we need to understand the question Jesus is trying to answer if we're going to understand what he's trying to say. And so, if we go back to Matthew 25 in verse one, we read, at that time the kingdom of heaven will be like. So what's at that time? Well, at that time is at the end of the age.
Speaker 1:It's if you prefer the point when Jesus comes back. That's what the disciples were talking about at the start of the scene in Matthew 24. That's what this story here in chapter 25 is all about. Now, the irony of this is that Jesus is very specifically going to tell a story that says, don't worry about when. But we haven't got there yet, so just hold on to that.
Speaker 1:But, at that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now, what's going on here is kind of like a bridal party today. That's what these 10 virgins are. They are friends of the couple who had been invited to the wedding party. And one thing we should note here is that the starting point for Jesus' parables, even his parables of judgment, is almost always invitation and inclusion.
Speaker 1:Five of these guests are going to turn out to be wise. Five of them will be foolish and will be left outside of the party. But the starting point for parable is that all of them have already received their invitation. Every single one of us is expected at God's party. The first week of this series, Jesus spoke about wicked tenants of a vineyard who refused to pay the owner his rent.
Speaker 1:And the owner sends a messenger and they beat him. And he sends a second and they shame him. He sends a third and they turn him away. Until finally, the owner sends his son and they murder him. But the owner in that story seems to assume even to his personal detriment and pain that these tenants must want to be in good standing with him.
Speaker 1:In fact, they have to work incredibly hard not to be. In the second week, we saw Jesus tell a parable about a king who invites his friends to a party. And when they refuse, he invites them again. But when they refuse, a second time, he goes out and he invites anyone and everyone he can possibly find. In eventually when he does have to kick one of the guests out of his home, it's not someone he stops from coming in.
Speaker 1:It's someone who refuses to participate fully in the party. Last week, even the bad servant, the one who beats his fellow employees and steals from them, even that servant starts with an honored position in his master's house. Jesus' parables seem to assume that you are in until you say that you are not. Now that doesn't soften Jesus' words at all. He's still saying choices have consequences.
Speaker 1:He is still saying that our relationship with the divine is a real relationship. God doesn't force us. God doesn't coerce us. God doesn't manipulate us into his presence. You and I, we can choose to walk away from God if we want.
Speaker 1:But it seems to me that from the parables of Jesus, it takes a lot more effort to depart from God than it does to simply find ourselves safe in the grace of the divine. If you have ever been taught to imagine that God is hard to find, or that he is hiding himself from you for some reason. If you have been taught that God doesn't want to be found or that only a special few with secret gnostic knowledge or unique religious language can ever access him, then would the parables of judgment begin to reverse that paradigm for you? Because yes, there is a dichotomy between exclusion and embrace in the gospel. But embrace, this is the default posture of our father.
Speaker 1:That's why Jesus has come. He has scooped us up in the arms of God. You do not need to earn that grace. The question is whether you will choose to stay there. And so we have 10 virgins all invited to the party.
Speaker 1:Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps, but they did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming. And they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
Speaker 1:Now, we know from the context that this is a story about Jesus' return. Jesus has actually referenced himself as a bridegroom back in Matthew chapter nine. And so the disciples are probably pretty clear about what's going on and how the story is unfolding at this point. What's not clear about what's going on is how this groom can be so incredibly late to his own wedding that everyone actually falls asleep waiting for him. So I have done a lot of weddings.
Speaker 1:And cliches are lazy, but it is almost always the bride who shows up late. Come on, you know that 's true. But this is because we live in a very different world from Jesus. Jewish weddings were a very big deal. The fact that they still are.
Speaker 1:But you are talking about a days long party that celebrates the culmination of a year long engagement. And so after the traditional engagement period was over, the actual wedding would start when the groom had finished preparing a home for his bride. Now at time, the that was generally a room that was built as an addition on the parents' home. Some of you are like, no, I'm hoping my son actually moves out for real, but that's another thing. But what would happen is that when the home was ready, the bridegroom would march across town, get his bride, and then the whole community would then follow that couple through town back to the new home.
Speaker 1:The point being, the idea of a midnight parade or the idea of a wedding celebration being delayed for hours, sometimes actually even days if things weren't quite ready. This was not unheard of. This is very much a scene from real life in first century Palestine. And remember this, Jesus doesn't speak in theological abstractions. He speaks in concrete examples of life.
Speaker 1:As much as I love theology and I do, I need to remind myself from time to time that the gospel is not lived in the mind. It is lived at weddings and dinner parties, in conversations and confrontations. Gospel is everyday stuff from every one of our lives. And so that means that how you greet your spouse when she gets home tomorrow, or what you say when you drop your kids off for school in the morning, how you interact with the person who bags your groceries at the store this week. All of that may have more to do with gospel than this sermon does.
Speaker 1:Gospel's lived in real life. Now at midnight the cry rings out. Here's the bridegroom come out to meet him. Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. But the foolish one said to the wise, give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out.
Speaker 1:No, they replied. There may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves. Now, it's the middle of the night. Probably not much oil to buy, and so some have taken issue with these wise virgins.
Speaker 1:I mean, why can't they just be wise and generous all at the same time? That doesn't seem so hard, does it? I mean, what's the problem with just sharing a little bit of their oil? What's the big deal here? Aren't we supposed to be open handed with each other?
Speaker 1:Listen, oil is cheap enough right now. You might as well give that stuff away anyway. Am I right? That one hurt a little bit. Right?
Speaker 1:In the Alberta. But let's remember that parables are parables and they will break if you stretch them too far. So no, I don't think Jesus is saying you can't share your oil with anyone else. That said, I do think there is something important going on here. Because in the context of this story, what Jesus seems to be saying to me at least, is that you can't borrow your way into God's presence.
Speaker 1:I mean, you you are on the guest list. And God expects you to be at the party. But whether you show up or not, this is not up to your mom or to the company you keep. It's not up to me. It's not up to the person who hurt you or made you bitter.
Speaker 1:Because the question of your presence before the face of the bridegroom, this is an interaction between the deepest parts of your soul and the spirit of God who is welcoming you toward the divine. And nobody else can answer that call for you. But that also means that when someone invariably comes along and they see your story from the outside from their perspective and they try to tell you that it doesn't measure up. That your story is not enough or that your spirituality doesn't fit inside their expectations. Well, I think you should listen to that.
Speaker 1:And you should take that seriously, and you should try to understand if that person has your best in mind. But you should also remember that you can't borrow their story anyway. Because your journey is the only journey that can ever lead you to where you are invited. Now that is not my way of saying your path doesn't matter. Of course, it does.
Speaker 1:Very clearly in this parable, it tells us that some paths don't lead to the party. But what it also says is that the only path that will get you there is yours. So don't fall into this trap of looking over your shoulder and wishing that someone else's story, somebody else's faith, somebody else's spirituality was yours. It won't work for you anyway. And I know that it looks easy for someone else right now.
Speaker 1:But whatever it is that you wrestle with, whatever you struggle to believe, whatever doubts that you have, these are yours. And in some way, they are a blessing. So these foolish girls try to borrow their way in. But that doesn't work. And so while they were on their way to buy oil, the bridegroom arrived.
Speaker 1:The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the others also came. Lord, Lord, they said, open the door for us. And here's the hard part. He replied, truly I tell you I do not know you.
Speaker 1:Therefore, keep watch because you do not know the day or the hour. Now, this is of course a reference back to the original question that the disciples asked at the start of chapter 24, when will it happen? Jesus says you won't know. But that's Matthew 25 verses one to 13 here. Now there's a couple things here I wanna talk about before we close.
Speaker 1:And first of all, we have an issue right away when we try to make sense of this parable. Because very often, I think our first inclination is to imagine that the wise virgins are those of us who are diligent and ready for God's return. The foolish are those who squander their lives and pursue guilty pleasures and don't prepare for life with God. The problem with that is that Jesus says very clearly that they all fall asleep and they all let their lamps burn out. And for me, that's the key to this parable.
Speaker 1:Nobody is getting into the party by the sweat of their brow or the form of their character. Nobody is getting in through the diligence of their watchfulness. Everyone falls asleep. That's just not what the parable is about. You see Jesus has this way of turning what seems to be wise into something foolish, and often turning something foolish into what seems to be wise.
Speaker 1:Paul talks about this in first Corinthians. He says, God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things to shame the strong. So there's this meme, this paradigm in the scriptures of God flipping things on us. And I wonder if that's not at least part of what's at play here. Earlier, I talked about how this parable is drawn from real life.
Speaker 1:That the image of a wedding being delayed into the evening is not surprising or culturally inappropriate. And yet, that doesn't mean that you would automatically expect that either. You you certainly wouldn't plan for a wedding to be delayed this long. I mean that would almost seem foolish. In fact, normal sensible person, even understanding that things don't always go to plan in this world, you would probably still reach out to the family and see how things were coming along.
Speaker 1:Estimate the start time and plan accordingly. Bring the oil that you need. That's wisdom as we understand it. To do what makes sense. And yet Jesus seems to suggest that when it comes to the kingdom of God, what is sensible is actually, maybe, sometimes foolish.
Speaker 1:The disciples say, how will we know? Like, what will be the sign? How can we plan for your return? And he says, listen guys, you just don't get it. You can't.
Speaker 1:You're gonna doze off, and you're probably going to miss the announcement. Chances are you will be dead asleep drooling on your pillow when I arrive. But that's okay. Because if you can just get that you don't get it, and if you can stop trying to make sense of it all, if you can just let go of the idea that you could ever figure out when or why or how I work, if you can give up on the idea of trying to game the system by planning for what you need, then it won't matter when I come, it will matter that I come. What Jesus seems to be saying is that we are all going to fall asleep, and we are all going to miss his arrival.
Speaker 1:Remember, Jesus is talking to his disciples here. This is him saying to Peter, listen, dude, you're gonna deny me three times. And Judas, you're gonna betray me. And the rest of you, you're gonna scatter like so much chaff as soon as things start to go sideways. And if you think that that matters, then it will.
Speaker 1:But if you can just realize that your invitation was never dependent on your ability to stay awake to begin with. And if you can prepare as it were for not being able to know when I'm gonna come back, then somehow that will be enough. See that's the judgment in this story. It's not against our readiness for the party. We're not ready.
Speaker 1:We all fall asleep. The judgment is against our insistence that we could even try to be ready. That we could plan. That we could figure out how God works. That we could buy the right amount of oil to be on time.
Speaker 1:Jesus says, no. When you admit your failure and you plan for sleep to defeat you, when you acknowledge your shortsightedness, when we welcome the fact that the party will come when it wants to. This is when we get in. For our cape on, Matt writes in one of my favorite quotes that he wrote. He says, when all is said and done, when we have scared ourselves silly with our now or never urgency and the once and always finality of judgment, we need to take a deep breath and let it out with a laugh.
Speaker 1:Because what we are watching for is a party. And that party is not just down the street making up its mind when to come to us. It is already hiding in our basement. Banging on our steam pipes and laughing its way up the cellar stairs. The unknown day and hour of its final bursting into the kitchen and roistering its way through the whole house is not dreadful.
Speaker 1:This is all part of the divine lark of grace. For God is not our mother-in-law coming to see whether her wedding present China has been chipped. She is he is our funny old uncle with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other. We do indeed need to watch for him, but only because it would be such a pity to miss the fun. So when will you know you won't?
Speaker 1:And how can you plan accordingly? You can't. And so would you hear the judgment of God today? Ruling that your plans are obsolete and concluding that your sensible estimates have been woefully under underprepared. Pronouncing that your preparation was simply not enough.
Speaker 1:All so that you may enter the party purely in celebration of nothing but the one who has invited you. Let's pray. God, help us to let go of our desire to know exactly when and how and why you work. This innate drive that we have to be sensible, to be wise in the things that make sense in this world, to figure it out, to plan accordingly, and instead to give ourselves over simply to trust in you, to know that we will fall asleep, and we will miss you from time to time. And probably when you arrive, we will be fast asleep.
Speaker 1:But if we have planned for nothing more than our failure and your grace, it won't matter anyway. God help us to carry this tension where we still want to become holy. We wanna mature. We wanna grow. We wanna become the people you imagine us to be.
Speaker 1:But not to confuse all of that work and that effort with the grace that invites us into your party. May we plan for failure, but trust in your invitation. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:We will end here as we always do with this. Love God. Love people. Tell the story.