(Please read Matthew 25:1-13)
When I was a student in college and seminary, I maintained desperately frugal ways, particularly when it came to squeezing a maximum period between trips to the gas pump. Old habits die hard, so later, when my wife and I stopped by the airport to pick up a fellow pastor and his wife for the CLC convention, we arrived with my gas gauge tickling the ‘E.’ We left the arrivals level and accelerated onto a ramp with a long-sweeping curve, bound for the highway and parts east. That’s when my little 4-cylinder started to buck and cough. “What’s wrong?” someone asked. I admitted that we might be a little low on gas. “Well, Pete” chipped in my colleague, with a knack for deadpan, “If we’d known you needed gas, we would have brought some.”
It’s no fun to run out of fuel. Is that the lesson of the Ten Virgins? Well, perhaps. But the larger lesson is about readiness. This parable was told by Jesus as part of what is known as the Olivet Discourse. It took place during the week leading up to Jesus’ Crucifixion. Leaving the city one afternoon, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives and answered the disciples’ questions about His predictions that Jerusalem would be destroyed, that there would be signs leading up to that event, and that He Himself would return. The parable itself comes specifically in connection with talk of Jesus’ (the “Son of Man”) coming at an unspecified time (Matthew 24:36-44).
So the message of the parable is really very simple: Believers, be ready! It doesn’t take a whole parable to convey that thought, but any reader is bound to be moved by the rich detail and powerful imagery Jesus uses to underscore what His coming means to us. The group of ten virgins is central to the parable—the number ten typically indicates completeness, a whole; the virgins, young women of the wedding party, convey the ideal of innocence and purity. This party represents the visible Christian church, the total number of those on earth who profess faith in Christ. Alive by faith in Him, they are quickened by His groom-like promise: “I will come again and receive you to myself.” (John 14:3)
It is late, dark, and their lamps are their Christian confession. The wedding custom behind this parable is this: at the height of the wedding feast, the bridegroom leaves his house to go to the bride’s family home, collect his wife, and bring her to their future home (a 19th century commentator asserts that the custom in Palestine in his own day still followed this pattern). As the bridegroom approached the bride’s childhood home, the virgins would wait to meet him and accompany him to the celebration. The procession would offer a striking image: lamps swaying and bobbing in the darkness, a chatter of voices, singing and laughter filling the dark void.
But light requires energy; lamps require fuel. Here Jesus divides the group: half were wise, and half were not. The wise made sure there was fuel for the journey; the foolish failed to look ahead. A lamp does not shine on yesterday’s fuel.
What does it mean that they “slumbered and slept” (verse 5)? Since this detail is said of all the virgins, it is hard to say that it applies in a specific way to the reality of the Kingdom. It may simply be a necessary detail for the parable to work. At a time when nobody was particularly thinking about the bridegroom showing up, He did. The disembodied announcement “Behold the Bridegroom!” (verse 6) may relate to “the voice of an archangel” ushering in the Day (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
So if the lamp represents one’s Christian confession and expressed hope, the oil that fuels that hope and activity is the work of the Holy Spirit. When the wise tell the foolish “no, lest there . . . not be enough for us and you,” they are affirming that no one can claim entrance to the Wedding Feast based on some near and dear person’s faith: not a son on his mother’s, not a wife on her husband’s, not a parishioner on her pastor’s, not a citizen on his ruler’s. We stand or fall before the Judge based on our personal faith in Christ—ours alone. Whoever lacks faith must find it in the Means of Grace: the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, and when the Lord comes, that store will be closed.
The wise virgins, warmed and aglow with faith, will enter with joy into the presence of their Lord. The foolish, who once professed such a hope as well, are excluded because they had nothing but cold, dark faith-lamps to show when the Day arrived.
I hope that these notes offer a helpful commentary on this parable. For a truly wonderful commentary on this whole scene, I urge you to look up Philip Nicolai’s hymn “Wake, Awake!” (See The Lutheran Hymnal, #609).
The curve straightened out, my little motor settled down and purred on until we could get into a nearby gas station. Our journey continued as planned, and we arrived at the convention at the appointed time. May the Lord grant that all who read this, all who wonder at this parable, all who await the Day of the Lord, will daily and faithfully hear the Word and attend to the task of welcoming Jesus in His Day.
is a former pastor who now teaches English at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. He makes his home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
