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Did you hear in today's Collect of the Day the ultimate request of our prayer? We pray that “we may be delivered by Your bountiful goodness” from the bonds of our sins, which by reason of our frailty we have brought upon ourselves.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, the human flesh has made the same sinful choice over and over again. We have brought upon ourselves the bonds of sin: death, destruction, disaster, heartache, and suffering. Adam and Eve were the first foolish virgins who did not care to keep enough oil, who failed to believe and even care that their true Bridegroom was there for them. They are not the last fools. The word in the Greek for “fool” is “moron” — an apt description.
Jesus' parable is steeped in the traditions of the Palestinian wedding festivities and customs of his time, many of which can still be seen today in that part of the world. The bridal party waits at a separate location overnight as the groom and the father of the bride haggle over the dowry to be paid the groom to marry the bride. The dowry was set aside as a sort of inheritance. If something happened to the husband in the future, the wife would have some resources to fall back on. The longer the groom and father haggled over the dowry, the more the bride would be honored. It signaled to everyone that she was “quite a catch” — worth arguing about, worth every penny.
This wedding custom always started at sundown, the beginning of the new day by Jewish reckoning. So it was always an overnight affair. When the haggling was done, the groom returned late at night for the bridal party, and they processed with friends by torchlight to the father's house, where the ceremony and days of festivities would commence. When the groom returned, watchmen would announce his coming on the way. “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”
Everyone needed oil for their torches to make the traditional procession across town to the father's home. It seems like that would be a unique and memorable experience to walk by torchlight across town to your wedding with all of your friends and family.
But five of the bridal party in Jesus' parable do not have extra oil for the long night and the long journey. Perhaps they didn't bring enough oil because they didn't think the bride was worth haggling a long time over. Perhaps they never intended to even get to the marriage feast. Perhaps they didn't care for the groom. Maybe they didn't care if he came back or not. They knew the party was worth attending. It's just that they wanted to attend on their own terms. However you look at the five foolish virgins, they show little respect for the bride and the groom or for the celebratory feast being put on.
It would be like inviting someone to take part in your modern American wedding, and some of the bridesmaids show up for the wedding with unkempt hair or without their bridesmaid's dress that the bride has selected. Or it would be like some of the groomsmen showing up for the wedding drunk or about two seconds before the ceremony is to start or both. They do not care about this wedding. They do not respect the bride and the groom all that much. The party at the reception will be nice afterwards, but who cares about this new family God is forming.
The fool says in his heart: There is no God. The fool says: I don't need all this oil. I don't need baptism. I don't need salvation. I don't need the forgiveness of sins. I don't need to be a part of the Bride of Christ. I don't need to be a part of the Body of Christ. I can go and do as I please, when I want, how I want, where I want. The fool says: I can live for myself now, because I can make my way to the merchant for more oil later. I can arrive fashionably late at God's eternal feast, because I can get there at anytime. The fool says: The Groom is not returning for this Bride. I have plenty of time to live it up now and make up for it later. The fool says: I do not need or want to be delivered from the bonds of my sins, and I do not want that deliverance by God's bountiful goodness. They are like the foolish virgins.
For the foolish, time is wasting away. Do not be foolish. Repent and hang on by faith to Christ. Do not be one who never cared to have the fullness of the oil of the Gospel, who comes late to the party and cannot get in. May no one ever have to hear those terrible words: “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” But it is inevitable. People will foolishly hang onto the sinful flesh. People will not care about the Groom, our Lord Jesus, nor His Bride, the Church, nor about being present for His promised eternal Marriage Feast. And, at some point, it will be too late.
Repent, O foolish virgins! Jesus is coming again, and His coming is at any time. The Groom is returning for His Bride. He comes even now, through His means of grace.
Hold on to the oil of your baptism, by faith — to the anointing by water and the Word that made you a part of the Bride in the first place.
Hold on to the oil of the Gospel which is the story of Your salvation in Christ, the comforting absolution of Your sins which keeps your faith firmly planted in the Bridegroom.
Hold on to the oil that is your Lord Jesus' Body and Blood, which is your foretaste of the great Marriage Feast to come, your source of life and forgiveness.
Repent and hold on by faith to the bountiful goodness of God that delivers you from the bonds of sin and death which is revealed and found in the atoning life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You've just sung one of the most memorable hymns in all of Christian hymnody. It is called the “King of Lutheran Chorales (Hymns)” by hymnlogists. “Wake, Awake” was written along with our first communion hymn today, “O Morning Star How Fair and Bright”, by Pastor Phillip Nicolai. Pastor Nicolai was born in 1556, eleven years after Luther's death, and lived to 1608. He was a faithful Lutheran pastor.
He penned these hymns during the bubonic plague that ran unfettered through Europe. In the first six months of 1597, Nicolai presided over at least 1,300 funerals in his town of Unna, Germany. That is an average of nearly seven funerals per day for at least six months without a break. One day alone he buried thirty of his flock. Can you imagine this sort of ongoing death and sadness — the horror as one's village is being wiped out one person at a time, one day at a time?
Faith in Christ says that the Bridegroom is near to us, especially in the midst of sorrow and death and untold misery and fear. Faith in Christ says that even in death, the wise who remain firmly planted in Christ are prepared to meet and be in the heavenly feast with the Bridegroom. Faith in Christ confesses that if even death has no hold on us, how can any other problem that arises? Faith in Christ welcomes death, knows that God creates life out of death, knows that death is but the shining portal to joining with the choir immortal, to being gathered around God's radiant throne.
Faith in Christ looks up from a quickly overflowing cemetery, from daily grief and sadness, looks away from fear and affliction, stops us from gazing inward, and points us to our salvation in Christ, who delivers us by His bountiful goodness. This faith confesses even in the face of death:
Zion [you — the Bride, the faithful in Christ] hears the watchmen singing, and all her heart with joy is springing:
She wakes, she rises from her gloom.
For her Lord comes down all glorious, the strong in grace, in truth victorious;
Her star is ris'n, her light is come.
Now come, Thou Blessed One, Lord Jesus, God's own Son,
Hail! Hosanna!
We enter all the wedding hall to eat the Supper at Thy call.(Lutheran Service Book #516, Stanza 2)
Hail! Hosanna! Save us now! Come, Lord Jesus, come and bring Your faithful people home. Deliver us from this veil of tears by Your bountiful goodness, when it is Your will.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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