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.
“THE TALENTS”—Matthew 25.14–30
[Preached twenty-eight times from 12/17/61 at Bishop Auckland to 8/15/04 at Howden-le-Wear]
There are few better-known parables than this; and few that are more inadequately interpreted and understood. As a rule, we generalize it completely, make it mean whatever gifts you have, you ought to use. If you have a gift for study, you shouldn’t be idle, but make your contribution to scholarship. If you have the gift of music, you should use it, make music for all to hear. If you are good at business or administration, or at politics, you should use your ability for the common good. If you can paint you should paint; if you can write you should write. And so on.
Now, all this is true, and from time to time (at School Speech Days and the like) it is worth saying. But we did not need Jesus to tell us this. It was familiar long before his time. When he used this parable, he had more specific things in mind. For example, he was probably thinking of the Jews of his time. They had been entrusted by God with a priceless gift. Through their laws and their prophets, they had a way of knowing God that no other people had ever had. And what were they doing with that gift? Instead of making something out of it for the benefit of all humankind, they had so effectively hidden it that they were on the point of crucifying Jesus.
But we do not stop there. We are not Jews of the first century, yet the story applies to us also. Indeed, it applies especially to us, and in a way we ought to especially to thinking about at Advent time, for it reminds us we stand between the two comings of Jesus Christ, our absent Master who has left us to look after his affairs for us. The two Advents give us our duties and our responsibilities. From the first, about which we read in the Gospels, we learn what the Lord himself is like, and what sort of life he would have us live, and from the second, for which we look unto the future, we learn that someday, somehow we shall have to give an account of our stewardship to the same Lord who entrusted it to us. We don’t know the when or the how, and we only make ourselves ridiculous when we speculate about them. But . . . Christ is the end, for Christ is the beginning. What this means, in practical terms, is that this parable gives us a picture of the Christian life, a picture that is not simple moralism, telling us all to pull our own weight, but one that goes down to the roots.
IT IS ABOUT THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST
There are no downright bad people in this parable. There is an “unprofitable servant,” but there is no one like the “unrighteous steward” who simply cheats and embezzles. There are no enemies attempting to steal his goods and attack his household. That means that the parable is about us, the disciples, not the world, not the wicked. It is simply for us to take to heart.
And you will note that we are described as servants, more accurately, as slaves. That is not the only word you can use of Christians. We shall see in a moment that, in any case the slave of Christ is an uncommon kind of slave. Yet this is one word for Christians and it has the sanction of being used by Jesus himself, and it is supported by many things he said. What it means is he claims our service, and that he has a right to claim it. He is not going to be put off by a pious “lord, lord.” There is only one way, he says to secure a well-founded