13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
26 But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.
45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” [Matthew 25: 13,26-27,45-46, NRSV]
The Parable of Wise and Foolish Virgins, by Peter von Cornelius c.1815
As Matthew’s Gospel draws closer to the climax in Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, the Evangelist inserts a long speech by Jesus known as the end-time discourse (or eschatological sermon) in 24:1-25:46. This is the last of the five discourses in the Gospel. The occasion was Jesus responding to disciples who asked about the destruction of the Temple and the time of his second coming. The Church selects these readings as it enters the final weeks of Ordinary Time. The focus of the readings now shifts to the eschatological to talk about death, judgment, heaven, hell and our readiness for them.
In the discourse, Matthew first lays out a series of warnings issued by Jesus (24:1-36). The key is watchfulness, which underlines that one cannot know the day and hour when the Son of Man is coming. The Parable of the Unfaithful Servant serves to warn unfaithful Christians and perhaps even more so the church leaders, that when the Master comes, they will be put out with the hypocrites (24:51), for they will be judged no less harshly than the scribes and the Pharisees (24:37-51).
Our interest is then drawn to the three emphatic reminders in which Matthew lays down in his famous chapter 25, where Jesus asks his followers to ponder his return. The speech consists of three parables, “the Ten Bridesmaids” (25:1-13), “the Talents” (25:14-30) and “the Last Judgment” (25:31-46). Evidently, Matthew underlines three reminders: that the Lord will come again at the end of time, that everyone without exception shall have to give an account of one’s life to the Lord when he comes again on the Last Day, and that the Lord will judge us according to our deeds.
The fist striking element about the three parables that make up the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is that those who are condemned in all three parables are not described as wicked, immoral or sinful people. On such close reading, Matthew surprises in not seeming in any way to seek to impress his readers with tales of explicit sins against which ferocious punishments were in order. To the contrary, Matthew seems clearly to imply that being afraid to commit sin is no guarantee of a fast-track to heaven.
- Instead, the five maidens excluded from the Bridegroom’s presence were simply behaving foolishly. “Keep vigilant” (24:42,44) literally means “keep awake”. Notice, however, that wise and foolish alike have gone to sleep and no blame attaches to them for that. The penalty of exclusion was imposed on the foolish for what they failed to do before they went to sleep. They failed to make necessary preparations. So the Matthean lesson here is constant watchfulness – to be ready, to be prepared – which the five failed to keep. [See F.W. Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew, 483.) If we imagine the kingdom of heaven as a state of inner consciousness with matching outer action that Jesus embodies and offers to his disciples, what is missing in the foolish virgins becomes clear. And it happens at “midnight”, the darkest hour.
- The third servant too did nothing immoral. By digging a hole to bury the talent the master had entrusted to him, he was simply being lazy and afraid of the master. Burying his talent under the ground for safekeeping cannot be classified as sin. He did not act immorally; he was seeking to avoid trouble. He did nothing evil. The problem is, he did nothing good either. For fear of the master, this servant had failed to do the good expected of him, which was to put to good use the talent entrusted to him by the master. Here is the clearest lesson of the insufficiency of an attitude in the kingdom of God where one seeks merely to avoid trouble without actively working to promote the kingdom.
- As for the Last Judgment, those “goats” who ended up being condemned to eternal hell fire are not painted as a notorious gang of criminals either. The focus was not on any bad deeds that they had viciously committed, but on the good deeds that they had failed to do. When the Lord comes again, he will be the end-time Judge of all people. His judgment will not only be based on the evil we do but even more heavily and decisively, on the good deeds that are expected of us to do but which we have omitted doing or worse, refused to perform. The failure is heightened wherever it relates to the Poor – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the marginalized and the down-trodden.
The message for Matthew’s readers does not focus on meriting reward but on a wake-up call to be vigilant and spiritually awake (“be watchful”), to not be spiritually indifferent (“do something”), and to be fruitfully responsive to God’s gifts in and through Jesus Christ (“be kind to the Poor especially”). Being watchful and ready for the Lord’s Second Coming means being involved as servants in the ongoing ministries committed to us by our Lord. Matthew combines the three parables to drive home the message that in the lives of the Christian disciples, constant watchfulness must be accompanied not only by fruitful action, but even occasional boldness as well in carrying out positive actions.
At the final judgment, all of humanity shall be judged according to acts of kindness done to poor and suffering people. In common understanding, entry to heaven shall ultimately be judged according to sin. But sin is of two kinds, one of commission where we actually do something evil, the other of omission where we omit doing the good we are supposed to do. At the end of the day, Matthew points out, “salvation” is more than just a matter of avoiding evil or avoiding sin. He seems to point us to the inescapable reality that when the time comes for us to meet our Ultimate Judge, what tips the scale is whether in life we commit to doing good more than avoiding evil. We should be afraid to omit doing good.
The unique and impressive message Matthew conveys revolves conspicuously around the Poor, of which Raymond Brown critically observes:
- “The admirable principle that the verdict is based on the treatment of deprived outcasts is the Matthean Jesus’ last warning to his followers and to the church, demanding a very different religious standard both from that of those scribes and Pharisees criticized in chap. 23 and from that of a world that pays more attention to the rich and powerful.” (Introduction to the New Testament, 199)
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, November 2023. All rights reserved.
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