Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle and former
tax-collector St Matthew. And we read from this gospel reading today where
Jesus says:
And while
they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in
with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our Gospel
reading today is one of the most wonderful of Jesus parables—it is so incredibly
rich, but also incredibly mysterious. Jesus says: Then the kingdom of heaven
will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Jesus tells us here of a wedding custom which
has not been celebrated for centuries. We have ten virgins, ten young unmarried
women, who are particularly honoured with the task of welcoming the groom when
he arrives for the wedding.
We read: Five
of them were foolish, and five were wise. Today in this reading, we must
take special note of what Jesus says here, that five of the virgins were
foolish and five were wise. Everything today for our sermon depends on what it
means to be foolish and what it means to be wise.
Let’s read
this passage, and take special attention as to what it means to be wise and
what it means to be foolish. We read: For 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, they all became drowsy and slept. But at
midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” Then
all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the
wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise
answered, saying, “Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather
to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” And while they were going to buy, the
bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with them to the marriage
feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying,
“Lord, lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know
you.” Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
First of
all, take notice of how Jesus draws you in through this parable into this
wonderful, heavenly, mysterious wedding banquet. In this parable, we only
experience this wedding banquet from outside. We read about how the wise
virgins went in and the door was shut. Doesn’t your heart and your mind and
your soul and everything in your being want to know about the wonderful
celebration that goes on behind those closed doors? Don’t you long to be one of
the wise virgins?
So what does
it mean in this parable to be wise or foolish?
Does it all
depend on whether they are virgins or not? No – all ten women in this passage
are all virgins.
Does it all
depend on having a lamp or not? No – the foolish and the wise virgins all had
lamps.
Does it all
depend on staying awake? No – both the wise and the foolish virgins all fell
asleep, and they all woke up at the same time.
Does it all
depend on trimming their lamps? No – when the time came, all of the virgins
trimmed the wicks on the lamps.
Does it all
depend on whether their lamps were burning? Yes and no – of course, the foolish
virgins’ lamps stopped burning, and they wanted their lamps to burn, they knew
it was important for their lamps to burn.
So what was
it that made the foolish virgins foolish, and the wise virgins wise? We read: When
the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took
flasks of oil with their lamps.
Can you see?
It all depends on whether they had oil or not. The oil is everything—without
the oil, the lamp can’t be filled up. Without the oil, the flame can’t burn.
But there’s
one thing more—when they wanted to go and buy some more oil, it was too late.
So if we are
going to understand this parable, we have to work out what this oil is, who the
dealers are who sell it. We have to go to the dealers in advance to buy the
oil, or otherwise our time will run out, and when we need the oil, the time
will be too late.
Without the
oil, there’s no fire, there’s no flame.
There are
some people who don’t make a proper distinction between the oil in this story
and the fire. So people sometimes talk about the oil as the Holy Spirit, which
sets alight our faith and our Christian life. But I don’t think that this is
the correct interpretation.
Sure,
sometimes, in the bible the Holy Spirit is spoken of as oil, or an anointing
with oil. We read about when King David became king, he was anointed with oil
over his head, and he received the gift of the Holy Spirit for his task as
king.
But on the
day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given to all the disciples, the Holy
Spirit appeared on that day in tongues of fire, resting upon each of the
disciples’ heads.
Here in our
Gospel reading today, I would like to suggest that the Holy Spirit corresponds
to fire, the flame, which burns brightly in the lamp, which is our human heart.
But you see,
God never sends us the Holy Spirit directly. He always only ever gives us the
fuel, the oil, and when we fill our lamps with the oil, then he sets our lamps
on fire with the Holy Spirit. We don’t set out lamps on fire with the fire of
the Holy Spirit, without any fuel, without any oil.
So what’s
the oil? The oil is God’s word. And God’s word enters into our ears, it is
poured into our hearts, and this word is the fuel for the Holy Spirit to burn.
And it’s not as if the Holy Spirit uses up the word of God—but because of our
sin, we need the oil to continually be poured into us.
God the
Father is the one who sends the Holy Spirit, through his Son Jesus Christ. And
without God’s word, which he has revealed to us in the Holy Scripture, in the bible,
there is no Holy Spirit. If there’s no oil, there’s no flame.
When the
wise virgins enter into the banquet, nobody really notices the oil, because the
oil is inside the lamp. The thing that we see is the outside of the lamp and
the flame burning on top of it. Nobody sees the oil—but without oil, all you
have is foolish virgins outside in the cold, with the door shut.
And yet,
this oil, which nobody sees, this oil inside the lamp, is the most important
thing. Without the word of God being poured into our ears and into our hearts,
everything about our Christian faith doesn’t matter. We can give an appearance
of having a burning lamp. Maybe the foolish virgins tried desperately to shove
a few sticks in there or something that might burn. But as we know, the sticks
would just smoulder, and it wouldn’t keep the lamp alight.
Today in our
congregation, we are going celebrate Holy baptism and also the Lord’s Supper.
And the power of these two things depends completely on the word of God. The
word of God is the oil that sets baptism alight. The word of God is the oil
that fuels the Lord’s Supper. And it’s funny, we often look at the external
things of water, and bread and wine, but do we listen the word that is spoken?
In the church, we never baptise in silence, but we always speak the word of
God: I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. This word is the oil that sets baptism aflame, and when we trust in
this word of God in the water and together with the water, then this word
ignites the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
And also in
the church, we never celebrate the Lord’s Supper in silence, but we always
recite the words of Jesus, which he said at his last supper: Take, eat, this
is my body which given for you. Drink of it, all of you. This is my blood which
is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Many people don’t listen to
these words, and so think that the only thing that is here in the Lord’s Supper
in bread and wine. But what is the power that inflames this bread and wine, so
that it becomes the body and blood of Christ? It’s the powerful and living and
active word of God.
So when we
listen to the forgiveness of sins spoken in the absolution, or when we listen
to the preaching of Christ’s death and resurrection in the sermon, or whenever
we hear the word of God—this is the fuel, the oil, that is poured out into our
hearts, and when we have had this oil poured into us, then we trust in Jesus’
words: The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. Through these
words, we receive the Holy Spirit. At Christmas time, we read about the wonderful
passages where the Virgin Mary—a very wise virgin!—treasured up all these
things and pondered them in her heart. Do we treasure up every single word
of the Scripture, every syllable, every single sentence, and verse, and jot,
and line? What a wonderful treasure the word of God really is! How pure it is,
the kind of purest oil that when it burns there is no smoke, and instead of
putting smoke into the air, it makes the air pure and clean! Mary not only treasured
up all these things, but she pondered them in her heart. If you had
a treasure chest at home, wouldn’t you go and open it up all the time and just
go and enjoy it, and let the light from the gold and the gems just beam up into
your face? And God’s word is so much more precious than anything like that!
What light and what golden brilliance do you think it exudes into our eyes and
into our souls? God’s word is so precious and radiant and brilliant because it
constantly shows us the perfect death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
forgiveness and eternal life that are given to us through his holy precious
blood. Just imagine yourself like Ali Baba, or someone, basking in the light of
a hidden treasure, picking up one necklace and holding it up, putting on a
crown, putting on a gold ring. That’s what it’s like every time we ponder and
meditate and think about all the different promises, and truths, and words, and
sentences in God’s word.
There are
two things that are hidden in our Gospel reading today: The oil and the
banquet. The oil is hidden in the lamp, and the banquet in hidden behind the
door. And this is how it is—many people don’t believe that there is a banquet
to enjoy, an eternity of heavenly promises. But the word that promises these
things is spoken to us by a Jesus who has returned from death, and he speaks
his words from the other side of the grave. And all these wonderful realities
are completely hidden. The banquet is hidden from our eyes, and so we are told
about it so that we can hope for it in faith. And the word about the banquet,
the oil, is then hidden in our lamps, hidden in the lamps of our heart.
So there is
one issue in the church today—and there has only ever been one issue in the
whole history of the church. And that is this: what oil are we dealing?
In our
congregation’s constitution, it says this about God’s word: The congregation
declares that it accepts without reservation the Holy Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, as a whole and in all their parts, as the divinely inspired,
written and inerrant (inerrant means it has no errors) Word of God, and
as the only infallible (infallible means that it makes no mistakes) source
and norm for all matters of faith, doctrine and life.
When I was
ordained as a pastor, I was asked if that was my own confession of faith, and I
said: Yes, I do.
Our
congregation, and for that matter, all Lutheran congregations, are supposed to
profess that the Holy Scripture is the purest oil that can be found anywhere in
the world to fuel the lamp of our hearts.
When the
word we speak is the pure and holy word of God, then everything that people
need to fuel their lamps is given in the church. And so, our number one prayer
as Christians must be that the word of God may continue to be taught in its
truth and purity. Without that, the church is nothing.
In our
society today, we have such a thing as “church shopping”. The fact that people
shop around for a church, means that they know that not all churches are true.
Sometimes people are shopping around for the wrong oil. Instead of God’s word,
they look for entertainment or something that they think is relevant, but not
necessarily true. Entertainment doesn’t fuel lamps. A church that wants to
entertain people is not the church.
And so
sometimes it happens—and don’t we know it—that there are people who are
awakened in their faith from their sleep, and then they want to go and buy oil
from the dealers, and it’s too late. Maybe they go back to their childhood
church where they heard the bible stories, and the word of Jesus, and they go
back there, and the word of God is nowhere to be found anymore. Instead, the
church is saying to them nothing that they can’t read in some second-rate
self-help book. The other situation is where people go to a church where they
actually do hear the word of God, and they don’t fill up on it. They want to
put some dynamite in their lamp instead, to make a big bang, and destroy the
lamp.
In 2 Peter,
it says about these churches that they are: waterless springs. Can you
imagine: here is our needy world, travelling aimlessly through the desert, and
it sees some palm trees up ahead, and it goes there, and there’s no water! Do
you know what that’s like? The book of Jude says they are waterless clouds,
swept along by the winds. The farmers with their dry crops know what it’s
like to stare up at the sky, to stare up at the clouds day after day, and
nothing comes out of it. Jude says further that they are fruitless trees in
late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wildwaves of the sea, casting up the foam of
their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been
reserved forever.
We Lutherans
aren’t exempt from any of this, you know. Do you think that our church is better
than everyone else? Even many of our own churches don’t teach the faith
anymore. And we’ve let down the youth of our church—instead of filling their
lamps with the oil of God’s word, we filled their lamps with everything but.
And then when we blame them for walking away from a faith that we never taught
them. They came to us looking to fill up their lamps, but by that stage it was
too late for them, because the only dealers they could find were ones that
wouldn’t sell them the oil they needed, because we thought the word of God
would be too boring for them—and the word of God was too boring for us! Here we
have a church that began in this country from German migrants coming across the
sea from the other side of the world to preserve their faith, only so that 200
years later, we would all lose it?
Where
there’s oil, there is fire. Where there is the word of God, there is the Holy
Spirit. Where there is no word of God, there is no Holy Spirit. When we lose
the Scripture, when we lose the truth and purity of the bible, then we lose
everything, even the blood of Christ.
But when we
have the word of God, we have everything. We have Christ’s blood, his death,
his resurrection, his forgiveness, and the heavenly banquet. We have lamps
aflame, and we have entrance into the eternal banquet hall.
Amen.
Lord Jesus,
we commend into your hands our weak faith, the small flame in our hearts, but
we ask that you strengthen and encourage us with the truth and purity of your
word, and set our hearts aflame with the living fire of your Holy Spirit. Amen.
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