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[Preached twenty times from 12/1/63 at Elvet to 11/6/05 at Newton Hall]

This is a good parable. It is true to human life. Some of us, in our most cynical moments, may feel is not the proportion of wise to foolish rather too high at 50 percent, but at all events it recognizes that we are a mixed bag. More than that, and more seriously, it rightly represents the Church as it lives between the two Advents.

THE TWO ADVENTS

This portion of Matthew reminds us that Advent, if we rightly understand it, means always not one Advent of Christ, but two. In the parable there are two elements of great importance. Interpreters have nearly always seen in it a reference to the future coming of Christ. The bridesmaids wait for the coming of the bridegroom that they may go out to meet him; the Church awaits the coming of the Lord to bring judgment and redemption. A generation or so ago, however, perhaps because people were finding the idea of a future coming of Christ difficult, they picked on another point; the fact that the all important question in the parable is whether or not you have oil in your lamp, and in your vessels here and now. That is, the distinction between the wise and foolish virgins is made not in the future, but in the present.

Which of these ways of interpreting the parable is right? They are both right. All through the Gospels, the Kingdom of God has a future and a present aspect. One must make decisions here and now that will decide the issue in the future. Seed sown now yields a harvest in the future. A person must be ready to venture all his wealth now, to buy a field, which will yield him treasure in the future. He must sacrifice all the pearls he has collected in the hope of obtaining the pearl of great price. And so on.

You can’t get rid of these past and future elements, and between them the past and future control the present in which we live. Of course the coming of the bridegroom is a metaphor, and how God means to wind up history and make up his accounts with us is more than I can say; Christ is the end for Christ is the beginning. Christ is the beginning, for the end is Christ. Now if we may for a moment go back to the parable, one thing you don’t expect in a wedding is to swap bridegrooms part way through. There may be a case for a substitute in a football match part way through, in a wedding, most weddings anyway, a similar move would be distressing. I hope I am making my point clear. There is a unity all throughout the Christian story, and the unity is Jesus Christ. I suggest two aspects of this.

First, the future advent, however we may demythologize it, means judgment. And we cannot pretend we don’t know the basis upon which the judgment will proceed. Not that Jesus ever laid down a code of rules with penalties for transgressions neatly attached. It is enough that we know that he who shall come to be our judge is—Jesus. A late parable puts it in this way, that which makes the difference between the sheep and the goats is whether they have or have not clothed the naked, fed the hungry, cared for the sick, visited the stranger in prison. Has it occurred to you that what this amounts to is the question: Have you treated your fellow human beings as Jesus treated them? For there is no doubt as to his attitude towards the sufferer, the needy, the oppressed.

Second, he whose coming puts us to the test, is also the one who appoints us our task and equips us for it. Have you considered the ghastly blasphemy of some of the medieval pictures of Christ, in the apses, for example, in some of the medieval churches in Italy and Sicily. Again and again Christ appears as a frowning judge, with no hint that he is more. Yet it is he who not only calls us, but supplies us with the strength to do his service. He who shall be our judge is he who made and makes possible the life of obedience, releasing persons from sin, from all the forces that bind and constrain them and make it impossible for them to live the life God wills. The process is a unity through all

Bishop Lightfoot, in one of his ordination charges, transported the ordinances from the day of their ordination to the day when they should render account of their stewardship. “It is no longer a matter of the making of the promises, but of the fulfillment of the promises. The ‘wilt thou’ of the ordination is exchanged for the ‘hast thou’ of the Judgment Day, ‘Hast thou been diligent in prayer, hast thou formed and fashioned thy life?’” My point is that that belongs not only to the ministry but to the very stuff of the Christian life, for all persons. We live, so this parable teaches us, between the “wilt thou” with which Christ challenges us, and the “hast thou” with which he called us to estimate our own faithfulness. How are we to conduct ourselves during this period? The parable has a further lesson for us. We must watch in the ordinary course of life.

WATCH IN THE ORDINARY COURSE OF LIFE

Here is the odd thing about the parable. We learn (vs. 13) that its message is that we should watch. How did the ten girls watch? By going to sleep—all of them, not only the foolish but the wise too. While the bridegroom delayed, they all fell asleep and remained asleep. This does not mean they spent the whole time asleep, it simply means that when the appropriate time for sleep came, they slept. They proceeded to conduct their life in the ordinary way.

Now this is true of Christian watchfulness. It is desperately important that the Christian should be prepared for Christ at every moment of his life; but he should do this within the ordinary framework of his existence. He is no better prepared if he goes out of the world to live in a monastery. He is no better prepared if he spends his life in a constant round of prayer meetings. He is no better prepared if he spends as much time as he can on Church premises. The place where you should prepare to meet your God is in the daily round of life, with its duties and its services to your fellows.

Let us be quite precise about this. If you are an undergraduate, your preparedness for Christ does not vary directly with the number of hours you spend at Meth Soc, or S.C.M., or D.I.C.C.U business.12 The first obligation of a Christian student is to be a student. I suppose you will think that this is the university establishment getting at you, but indeed it is not. This is the plain, simple, Christian doctrine. Of course it may be less interesting and exciting to live like this; you can get a wonderful glow out of spending two hours with a group of friends, telling the Americans, in absentia of course, how to deal with the same problem. But it may well be more Christian to spend the two hours on differential equations. Don’t think that I am saying that being a Christian makes no difference to life. It does, but the most important difference is within the daily round of duty and service. And so with others, with whose life I am less familiar. If you are a Christian butcher, baker, or candlestick maker, your first Christian duty is to be a good butcher, baker or candlestick maker. If there is something in your daily life that will not form part of your readiness, your openness, for Christ, that does not mean you should give up ordinary life; it means that you should reform it. It does not mean that you should become a monk or a minister, but that you should be an honest person with a sense of responsibility for the world you live in. The last point the parable teaches is the individualism of Christianity.

THE INDIVIDUALISM OF CHRISTIANITY

This is an unpopular theme in these days, and I do not propose to minimize the importance of human life in society, or team research in the natural sciences, or of fellowship in Christianity. As a “serious man” once said to Wesley, “the New Testament knows nothing of a solitary religion.” This is true, and yet New Testament Christianity has a strong streak of individualism in it. Go back to the parable and recall the brutal words of the five wise virgins, tough young ladies those. “Give us some of your oil,” said the foolish virgins, “our lamps are going out.” “By no means,” answer the wise. “There won’t be enough for both.” There are some things which are incommunicable.

Any one of us can help his brother or sister greatly on the way to faith. There must be few of us who call ourselves Christians who do not think with immense gratitude of those who pointed out to us the way. But in the last resort there is a step that only you can take. No one can take it for you. This is true of all of the most worthwhile things in life. In education, this process of casting sham pearls before real swine. It may be that just occasionally one of us lets fall a real pearl, but even so he cannot make the hearer pick it up. If you will not think for yourself, you will not think at all. Or I may offer friendship whole-heartedly but friendship exists only when one will receive it.

If you are to believe, you must believe for yourself. No one can do it for you. If you are to have oil, you must get it for yourself. Fortunately there are those who sell it. God himself offers you the life of constant readiness and openness.

How shall I fitly meet Thee And give Thee welcome due?The nations long to greet Thee And I would greet Thee too O Fount of light, shine brightly Upon my darken’d heart That I may serve Thee rightly And know Thee as Thou art. (Bach, Christmas Oratorio)

12. Editor’s Note: Meth. Soc. is the college student Methodist Society, S.C.M. is the Student Christian Movement, and D.I.C.C.U. is the Durham Christian Union group.