Rev. Charles Lehmann + Last Sunday of the Church Year + Matthew 25:1-13
In the Name of + Jesus. Amen.
The bridegroom has been delayed. For nearly two thousand years, the Church
has waited for Him. Every moment we should be quaking in eager expectation of
His arrival, but two thousand years is a long time. When Jesus ascended into
heaven, most of our ancestors were primitive pagan idolaters in Germany and
England. Hundreds of kingdoms have risen and fallen in the years since then.
The earth is filled with the billions who have been born, lived, and died since
those days.
In Sudan, Christians are slaughtered for their faith. In Turkey, there
were millions of Christians a hundred years ago, but there are less than one
hundred thousand alive today. The rest are dead, their grandfathers and
great-grandfathers murdered at the point of Muslim swords.
Christians are constantly being led like sheep to the slaughter. We live
and we die, but mostly, we die. The bridegroom has waited these two thousand
years, and now it's hard to live each moment it could be now, right now, that
Jesus will come for us.
We know well the prayer that is prayed by the martyrs who are under the
altar of heaven. In the book of Revelation they say, “How long, O Lord, holy
and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who
dwell on the earth?” The shed blood of millions of slain Christians cries like
Abel from the ground.
We are not dead, but we are dead tired. Though our graves are still empty,
we know their coming. Our joints ache. Our heads hurt. We cough. We sneeze.
We get the swine flu. Our bodies constantly betray us, and our doctors are
able to build summer homes in Ocean City just from the money they get from
keeping our bodies and souls together.
On top of all of that, we fight with our wives, we are harangued by our
kids, we are forced to deal with bullies at school, and there never seems to be
enough money to pay the bills. And sometimes it's even worse than that. Our
parents get Alzheimers, our friends have car accidents, and our own march
toward the grave becomes more and more visible to us.
It's tiring, and that's why all ten virgins fall asleep. To the world,
they're all Christians. They're all in the in crowd. They're on the inside
track to the best real estate in the great hereafter. They're virgins, pure
and waiting for the bridegroom. They seem undefiled by the messiness of the
world.
But we know the truth. The virgins may be in the church, but they're
tired. They feel beat up and they don't know how to make it even another day.
In the parables, the virgins are distinguished from one another in only one
way. The wise have oil for their lamps. The foolish do not. It is only the
oil that makes one virgin wise and another foolish.
It is not that we have five sinful virgins and five sinless ones. All of
the virgins are sinners. All of them are like Peter, James, and John in the
garden of Gethsemane. Though they are commanded by their Lord to stay awake,
they're just too tired. They are wearied by the endless grief of the world.
Instead of living each moment in eager anticipation of the Bridegroom's
arrival, they fall asleep. Their hope wanes. Sin is even able to dampen their
joy over an impending wedding. The fruit of our weariness is most often doubt.
Jesus has waited a long time to come and claim us as His own. This can make
us wonder if He really loves us. The world is filled with evil, and we want it
all to end. We want Jesus to restore our world to the perfection it enjoyed
before the fall. We want the hungry to be fed and the poor to become rich. We
want the end of sin, sorrow, pain, and death.
How long, O Lord? How long?
Peter answers our weariness in his second letter. He writes, “But do not
overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his
promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any
should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” It has not even been two
days since our Lord's ascension, and certainly that is not too long to wait.
Because we are weary, we are also impatient. But God is long-suffering.
Though He could have come at any time up until now and executed His wrath and
judgment against the unbelieving world, He has not. Every day that the Lord
has waited has been a day of mercy instead of wrath. He has given you
thousands of days to tell your unbelieving friends what He has done for you,
and He has given to your friends thousands of days to hear it. He does not
desire that any perish, but that all come to the knowledge of the truth.
We do not know when the Lord will return, but we do know that He loves us.
Throughout the Scriptures, God loves to find excuses to show mercy instead of
wrath. When He proclaimed His wrath against Nineveh it was so that He could
show them mercy. When the crowds assembled before Pilate cried, “His blood be
on us and on our children,” He said, “Father, forgive them.” For all the
thousands of years the world has existed, we have done our best to make God
hate us. And throughout all those years, time and time again, God has withheld
his wrath. He has loved His enemies, even when they nailed Him to the cross.
“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” Our parable
gives us ten virgins. Five are wise. Five are foolish. The difference is
oil, and the oil, dear friends is faith. It is by oil that a lamp gives light.
It is by oil that the wise virgins see the Bridegroom when He comes. It is by
the oil of faith that you hold onto the Bridegroom as your Savior. It is by
faith that Jesus is yours. It is by faith that you receive all of the benefits
of His suffering and death on the cross.
The wise virgins have the oil, and they know where they got it. They tell
the foolish virgins to go to the vendors and buy it for themselves. But, where
is faith given? How is it received? Who are the dealers, and what is the
cost? Faith is given by the Word of God, and that saving Word is received when
it is heard and the Holy Spirit creates faith in your heart. The dealer is the
Church, and the price is Jesus' own death on the cross. The wise virgins have
heard and believed the Word. They have received it by its proclamation and by
its union with water in baptism and with bread and wine in the Lord's Supper.
They have received it in the absolution.
Faith comes by hearing, and the wise virgins have heard. The Word is
proclaimed in the church, and the wise virgins have been there to hear it. The
oil has been bought with blood, and it is given wherever the Gospel is
proclaimed.
You, like the wise virgins, are in the place that the Word is proclaimed.
God has claimed you as His own through Jesus death for you on the cross. Your
Savior has done all that is needful for your salvation. He has filled your
flasks. He has sustained the light of faith that shines forth from your lamps,
and He has said, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
We do not know when He will come, but we know the difference between the
fools and the wise. Be wise. Listen to your Savior. Believe His Word.
Receive the salvation that He won for you on the cross. Believe that when I
say that your sins are forgiven that they are forgiven. Remember what God has
done for you in your baptism. Eat the Lord's body and drink His blood whenever
they are offered to you from this altar. These are all ways that God has
promised to create, nourish, and sustain faith in your heart. They are the
ways that He has been pleased to nourish all the wise virgins for these past
two thousand years.
The Lord is not slow in the way that we count slowness. He is slow because
He is merciful. He loves you. He wants you to be His forever. He has gone to
incredible lengths for thousands of years so that you can hear His promises to
you this morning.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and
minds in faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Charles R. Lehmann
Pastor, Saint John's Lutheran Church, Accident, MD
http://www.stjohncove.org
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