Matthew 25. 1-13 and the other stories that Jesus told which are recorded for us in Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s Gospel are wartime stories. That seems an odd thing to say about a story that is to do with a wedding and which does not mention war but the context in which Jesus told these stories to his disciples was one of trying to prepare them for a coming conflict.
Throughout the teaching recorded for us in Matthew 24, Jesus is telling his disciples about a coming crisis for which he needs them to be ready. This crisis will culminate in an invading army marching into Jerusalem’s Temple and laying it to waste. When that happens Jesus says:
“… those who are in Judea must run away to the hills. Someone who is on the roof of his house must not take the time to go down and get his belongings from the house. Someone who is in the field must not go back to get his cloak. How terrible it will be in those days for women who are pregnant and for mothers with little babies! Pray to God that you will not have to run away during the winter or on a Sabbath! For the trouble at that time will be far more terrible than any that there has ever been, from the beginning of the world to this very day. Nor will there ever be anything like it again.”
What Jesus is describing is a wartime scenario; people fleeing before an invading army. Some of you will have experienced this situation yourselves through active service and, for the rest of us, it is almost exactly what we have been seeing on our TV screens as we have watched images on the News beamed from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The wartime scenario that Jesus was describing here actually occurred about 40 years after his death and resurrection in AD70 with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the occupying Roman army.
What Jesus was doing through his teaching and through these stories was to try to get his disciples ready for the coming crisis so that they would respond appropriately. That is the point of each of these stories and of the one that we have heard read this evening. In this story, the coming crisis is the arrival of the bridegroom and only half of those waiting for that event are ready when the moment finally arrives. Half of the women thought ahead, realised that they may well have to wait some time and brought with them sufficient supplies of oil so that when they bridegroom did finally arrive, much later than planned, they had all they needed to be ready for his arrival, unlike the other five who had to go to buy more oil and then were too late for the wedding feast. Jesus wanted his disciples to be like the wise women; he was emphasising to them the vital importance of being ready and prepared for what was to come.
As loyal Jews their natural tendency might well have been to stay and fight but Jesus makes it clear to them that they must get out and run. What was going on? Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, explains:
“Jesus, speaking as a prophet, predicted that [the Temple] would fall, not as an arbitrary exercise of his prophetic powers but because the Temple had come to symbolise all that was wrong with the Israel of his day … And when the Temple finally falls, that will be the sign that he was speaking the truth. That will be his real vindication. His exaltation over the world, and over the Temple, will be written in large letters into the pages of history … the news of his victory will spread rapidly throughout the world. What people will see is strange messengers, alone or in small groups, travelling from country to country telling people that a recently executed Jewish prophet has been vindicated by God, that he is the Messiah and the Lord of the world.”
As a result of Jesus’ disciples fleeing Jerusalem, the message of the Gospel spread around the world. The destruction of Jerusalem forced the disciples to travel elsewhere and as they travelled they took with them the message that Jesus had been vindicated as a true prophet by the destruction of the Temple. Their message was that all that Jesus did and said was true and that this was confirmed by the coming to pass of his prophecy about the Temple.
How prepared are we, I wonder, for the crises that we face in our day and time and are we ready to use them as opportunities to share and show the good news of Jesus? That is ultimately, the challenge of this story for us. We can, in a sense, lay this story like a template across the crises that we remember and face and use it to assess whether we are more like the wise or foolish women in our response. Ultimately, in relation to the Second World War we would probably want to say that the country responded more like the wise than the foolish women. Whether we are talking about those who were on the front line or those supporting the war effort from home, the country was prepared to accept and make sacrifices in order that the war would eventually be won. But that is not always the case in situations of conflict. We could, for example, ask the same question of the current conflict in Afghanistan. If it is true, as senior people in the Forces have suggested, that our troops there do not have the equipment they need for the task they have been sent to do, then it may be that our Government has acted more like the foolish women in the story than those that were wise.
We can apply this story too to crises that are not to do with warfare such as the current credit crunch. The way in which banks have been prepared to lend money to those who have no means of repaying those loans, for example, suggests that they too have behaved more like the foolish women in the story than the wise. In the background of the credit crunch crisis as also the twin crises of climate change and the peaking of oil supplies. Experts tell us that as a human race we have only a short number of years in which to address these issues before these crises hit us full on and it will be too late to respond. As in Jesus’ story, the question is, how will we respond? Will our response be wise or foolish? Will we be prepared or unprepared for the crises that are to come?
For Christians the question of how we respond is also a question of how prepared we are to share the good news of Jesus in the face of the crises that we face now and those still to come. What have we to say as Christians about conflict within our world? About the credit crunch? About climate change and peak oil?
Jesus’ call is clear we are to be ready to face the crisis and prepared to share his good news. As we look back today to honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus’ question needs to echo and re-echo in our lives and world; are we ready?
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The Call - The Walls Came Down.
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