Reflections on Matthew 23:1-13 prepared by Nathan Nettleton

If the end of the world was definitely coming tomorrow, how would you spend the last 24 hours before kingdom come? Last week we read from the book of Revelation, a book that tends to divide people into those who are absolutely fanatical about it and are always predicting the imminent return of Christ, and those who don’t know what to do with it so they mostly ignore it. Today we are not reading from Revelation, but we will have two scripture readings that both remind us that the choices we make here and now, and the lives we live in light of those choices do have eternal consequences, for us and for those around us. So what should those choices be? How are we to live as God’s people in a world of war and injustice and unrighteousness?

The parable we heard from Matthew’s gospel scares me, perhaps more than any other. Especially at the moment, it prods at a very vulnerable place in my psyche. It strikes the ear with a dissonant chord, seeming wildly out of step with the message of many of Jesus’ parables, especially his party and wedding feast parables.

The party parables in general speak with a generous invitation. Come, the Kingdom is open. Everyone is invited. Everyone is included. Even the people that many thought would be chucked out are embraced in the love of God and the great party of the Kingdom of God. The prostitutes, the outcasts, the lepers, the psychiatrically tormented, the traitorous tax-collectors, the demonised: all are welcomed, all are embraced, all receive mercy and are included in the great celebration of the Kingdom come in Christ.

I love those parables. The party for the prodigal son. The King’s wedding banquet. The workers in the vineyard all being fully paid even if they only turned up at just before knock-off time. Wonderful stories. They make me feel warm and secure; assured of my salvation and my reserved place in God’s kingdom.

But this parable. This one unsettles all that. If I did not follow the set cycle of readings in the lectionary, I would be giving this one a wide berth at the present time. Because right at the moment I feel decidedly insecure in the face of a parable like this one, because this one says the opposite. Instead of saying that those who you think are out are more than likely in, this one says that those I think are in may very well be out, including me.

I used to have an absolutely watertight doctrine of assurance. Assurance of salvation that is. I and the rest of my friends in a Uni Christian group could recite, in order, a logical sequence of biblical texts that proved absolutely that if you had prayed a prayer confessing your sinfulness and acknowledging Jesus as Lord of your life, then you were saved, secure in the Kingdom and no-one, not even the Devil could ever snatch you out of God’s hand. My confidence in that doctrine began to unravel when I was working as a street outreach worker and I discovered how many people prayed that prayer regularly as a way of winning handouts from street outreach workers.

That only rocked my faith in the doctrine, it didn’t threaten my sense of the security of my own salvation. But now, as our Sunday readings go through the cycle of Matthew’s judgment parables, I feel the finger pointing at me – which I guess is exactly what these parables are intended to do to each one of us. They point the finger and ask the hard questions. Who are you? What are you really living for? When it’s all boiled down what are you living for and what would you die for?

I suspect plenty of you are somewhat like me and you tend to read these parables with other people in mind instead. “Five were prepared and five weren’t. Yeah, I wonder which side Tim’s on.” I’m a great one for that. When I spent those three days at the monastery a couple of months ago, one of the brothers there told me that for many of them, when they started to spend significant time in silent contemplative prayer their lives fell apart. And I thought about that, and in typical Nathan arrogance, I thought, “Yeah, I can see that that would happen for Joseph, and maybe for so-and-so!” I didn’t think about it happening for me, because I thought I was in pretty good shape. The judgment parables weren’t written for me. Well I’ve been praying for only two months now and my counsellor told me on Friday that it’s successfully precipitated my mid-life crisis!

How can I be having a mid-life crisis? I’m not even 33 yet. Well he reckons, and he’s an expert in mid-life crises, that it usually starts in the early thirties but that most men manage to fight it off for ten years or so, but that regular silence and contemplative prayer brings you face to face with yourself in ways that undermine your defences. So here I am, staring bewilderedly into the mirror of my soul asking awkward questions like “Who am I? What is real in my life and what is fake? Is my ministry conducted with integrity or do I just manipulate people for the benefit of my own ego?” and along comes the parable of the ten bridesmaids to remind me that just because I might look to everyone else like I’ve got it together, it doesn’t mean I won’t be shut out when Christ’s Kingdom comes.

This parable gets me right where it hurts. This parable is written for us – the insiders. It is not about judgment for those outside the church, it is about those inside the church. The ten bridesmaids have all been invited to the wedding, and they’ve all said “Yes.” They’ve all put on their bridesmaid’s dresses and been waiting in the right place at the right time with their lamps aglow with expectancy. If you like, they’ve all heard the gospel and prayed the prayer accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour. They’re in. No-one can tell the difference between them.

But half of them don’t make it. That’s half of us. Look at the person next to you. They look okay don’t they? You can be pretty sure about them. So maybe it’s time to look at yourself. How should we be living? We’re in that in between time, between responding to the love of God and seeing it fulfilled in the coming of the Kingdom, in the completion of God’s project of uniting all things in Christ. We’re living in a world which is shaped by the values of competition, of prestige, of winning, but we’re responding to the love of God and following the God made flesh who values cooperation, humility, justice and self-giving love. How should we live? How do we live prepared for the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God?

Now you will find some Christians who say, and they can find support in some parts of the Bible, that you stay prepared by putting everything else on hold and waiting watchfully. You stay awake, watch and wait. You live in a constant state of anxious expectancy, for Christ could come at any moment like a thief in the night and you wouldn’t want to be caught napping. But Matthew’s gospel will have none of this. Matthew was probably thinking of such a view when he made sure he included into the parable Jesus’ comment that all ten of the bridesmaids fell asleep while waiting for the bridegroom. There was no difference in wakefulness among the ten. It was only when they all woke up, the bridegroom was on the doorstep, and they went to trim their lamps that anyone could see any differences among the ten. Five had invested in enough oil to last the distance, five had run out of fuel. Five had enough for the wedding to start whenever the bridegroom arrived. Five only had enough for their own time table. Five were prepared, even if there was a delay; five were not.

So what is this preparedness all about? What is this oil that we are to ensure we have enough of? What is this readiness that sets us apart as fit for the Kingdom or unfit for the Kingdom? Well, this is Matthew’s gospel and in Matthew’s gospel that question is pretty easy to answer. And as always Matthew makes it quite clear that it’s got precious little to do with what you believe in your head or what you say with your mouth. “Lord! Lord!” they cried, “Let us in.” But the Lord says, “I do not know you.” It is of course in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Matthew has no time for those who have got their confession right but do not put their lives where their mouth is.

Matthew is quite clear that preparedness is about living the life of the Kingdom of God now; living the quality of life set out in the manifesto for Christian living at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, the sermon on the mount. We read part of it last week, the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the humble, the peacemakers, the merciful, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is the oil you need for your lamp.

You see most of us can live that stuff for a little while, just on sheer effort, but when the Kingdom is delayed, that’s when the problems start. Perhaps that’s why so many Christians spend a lot of time trying to crack the supposed code of Revelation to work out exactly when the Kingdom will come. If we could know for sure that Jesus would return this time tomorrow, I’ll bet everyone of us could be astonishingly merciful and humble and generous with our possessions for 24 hours. But we don’t know, so what about the next day and the next. Being a peacemaker for a day is not nearly as demanding as being a peacemaker year after year when conflicts just keep breaking out like spot fires. Being merciful for an afternoon can be very pleasant in the right company, and even in the wrong company most of us could pull it off if we gritted our teeth and really applied ourselves. But being merciful for a lifetime, that takes preparedness. No one can do that just by being determined; that takes the reconstruction of your soul. And the reconstruction of your soul takes not just commitment, but time and space and quiet and prayer. It won’t happen in the fifteen minutes between leaving the office and crawling exhausted into bed.

But it’s easy for me to stand up here and talk about commitment, and prayer and spiritual living. It’s easy for me because I get paid to be committed and spiritual. I get to invest my time and energy in the ministry of the church without having to worry about how I’m going to keep my job and pay a mortgage. It’s quite a different thing for me to stand up here and mouth off about what you should be doing. But nobody said it was easy, and the truth is that getting paid for it only introduces a whole other set of temptations. I’m starting to see through a lot of my own propaganda and self-deception. Like many ministers, I suspect, all my professional training and theological knowledge has equipped me really well to fake my spirituality and manipulate people into doing things to make the church look good. But a faked prayer life and a ministry built on guilt-tripping people is not going to fill my lamp when the call comes. I need to hear this call as much as any of you.

Joshua put the call even more bluntly in our earlier reading. “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the Lord or the gods your ancestors served.” And then when the Israelites say they’ll serve the Lord, he goes on to warn that many of them won’t be up to it, that they’ll mouth their allegiance to the Lord, and betray themselves by their actions. Joshua’s warning and his call are the call to each one of us, “Choose this day whom you will serve” and follow through on your decision what ever it takes.

These stories are not good news to us in the church. They are harsh warnings and calls to repentance and the long slow task of being transformed inwardly by the values of the Beatitudes. They are the bad news that says that even if the Kingdom doesn’t come for a thousand years, if you just did your time in the church, regularly attending worship, saying the creeds and praying the prayers, contributing to the mission groups, massaging feet in Chapel Street, whatever, deep in the night you may be left outside desperately trying to fan a dying flame back to life as the oil of your spirit dries up. The good news, on the other side is that even if you only start now and Jesus returns tomorrow, it was not too late.