Torches!
Proper 27, Year A; Matt 25:1-13
Matthew has five lengthy discourses, of which this—a “Judgment” or “Eschatological” discourse, chapters 24 and 25—is of course the last, and the second-longest in the Gospel after the Sermon on the Mount. Like Mark, Matthew places a set of parables and sayings at this point close to the climax of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem, which concerns not so much Jesus’ own impending end, but the end of Jerusalem (foreshadowing the war that would take place a few decades later, in AD 70) and the end all things, yet by implication linking all three.
The lectionary has actually skipped over a large chunk of material, including the whole of chapter 24, which offers confronting if opaque detail about the coming of the Son of Man. Now, in these last three weeks of the liturgical year, we read three parables which assume such interest in the last times, but pursue a right response to the news that these various ends are nigh.
This parable is found only in Matthew. We are again at a wedding feast (cf. 22:1-14), but just as the last time, this is a place not only of joy, but of judgement. Two bits of translational work might help us think of this scene with fresh eyes. First, there are no “bridesmaids” in this story despite the NRSV, but simply young women (“virgins” in older translations); we are (mercifully) not meant to imagine something like a modern western set of “curated” attendants, but a whole section of an extended family or village, playing the part expected of them in a community celebration. These are imagined not as specific attendants, but as all the bride’s friends and companions undertaking a collective duty. This way we sense the wideness of the call to welcome the bridegroom, like the comparable invitation to the banquet of chapter 22.
Second, there are probably no “lamps” here to pray (or sing) that we might have oil in and thus “keep me burning”; the word used here suggests torches, since lamps were for use in interiors, not for carrying around in the streets. Yes, there is oil of course, but it might have been envisaged either as fuel for soaked cloths bound around the staves of the torches, or poured into oil vessels with cloth wicks, set at the tops of the staves. Either way, these torches would have been brighter and faster-burning than an oil lamp, and the predicament of the young women thus easier to imagine.
The precise setting for where the women are doing their waiting has to be inferred; it is not stated, for instance, that they have gone out into the streets or into open country. Even though their torches imply that a procession will take place when the bridegroom comes, this is not yet. They could just be at one of the bride’s or bridegroom’s houses. They need the torches for the procession, not to see in the dark.
Although these elements may help us into the world of the parable, here as often Jesus is not the narrator of common-sense wisdom, but of unusual and confronting circumstances that cut across the readers’ expectations of the world he evokes. While we can readily imagine such a celebration, and that some young women might have extra fuel in case of a delay and others not, the subsequent events are not expected. A delay until the middle of the night makes little sense, and it was not usual for the doors to be closed on such a feast. The point is not that weddings work like this, it is that the kingdom of heaven works like this.
What then is the “foolish” attendants’ problem? It would be tempting to read across from other parables and sayings, and to imagine that it is lack of alertness in the precise moment; yet in fact all the young women sleep, not just the foolish ones. What matters here, and what distinguishes the two groups, is what they had all done before the crisis; this previous action, not mere attention to the coming of the bridegroom at the exact right time, is what constitutes readiness and wisdom.
There are parallels between this and the other wedding banquet parable of a few weeks and chapters ago, where the guest list is re-worked but even one of the revised attendees is thrown out, to their consternation. In both cases, guests are not included despite wanting to be there, but something turns out to be lacking which they had not thought they would need—a wedding garment, or now oil.
Both parables become at least partly allegorical as they go on, meaning that we see the world of the story fall away to reveal the meaning about Jesus and his work quite openly. So here the excluded attendants call out “Lord, lord,”—not the way to address a groom, but a Messiah perhaps; and he responds “Amen I say to you” just as Jesus would. The scene has thus shifted from a party to the final judgement—but we are never told exactly what the missing oil (or garment) was. It is simply that there is a real possibility that wanting to be part of the wedding banquet—the kingdom of heaven—will not be enough.
What would the “oil” be? This we must infer from Matthew’s Gospel as a whole, which consistently limits the value of personal religiosity or merely intellectual versions of faith, in favor of participation in God’s reign as a matter of faithful practice. This should not be confused with later debates about justification; Matthew is not imagining that we earn favor or credit with God by actions, merely presenting the consistent view that actions, not feelings or propositions, are the real evidence for faith.
These actions are also the meaning of the readiness this parable urges—the oil. This is not about some sort of constant state of alertness for an immediate crisis, let alone about the silliness we sometimes encounter of predicting the end of all things, but about having made proper provision for the crisis whenever it comes, whether to us or to the world. Matthew is not fueling but correcting the sort of piety that imagines watching the clock and looking for the kingdom to come are the point; rather, he advocates watching the present world, and accounting for our role in it. There is (in Matthew’s parabolic terms) sowing, leavening, fishing, buying fields and pearls, and stocking up on extra oil to be getting on with. When Jesus’ own end comes, as it will shortly in this narrative, he will have shown his place in the kingdom by his actions; so must we.
Absolutely excellent piece! Thank you for this.