We get so many of Jesus’s teachings here during the first part of Holy Week. From Thursday onwards, the main focus is on the events of the Passion – His betrayal, trial, scourging, sufferings, bearing His cross, leading up the Crucifixion itself. But the time up to (and including) the Last Supper is a time of tremendous teaching. We get Jesus’s declaration to ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’, and His explanation of the two great commandments. We get the parables of the talents, the ten virgins, and the sheep and the goats. We get Jesus’s description of the events and conditions leading to His second coming. And we get Jesus’s condemnation of the hypocrisy of the apostate Pharisees – those who should be leading and nurturing God’s people to greater spiritual growth, but who are instead impeding them in their spiritual progress.
It’s impossible to write properly on all these themes in such a short space of time, but it might be useful to try to identify any overarching themes of Jesus’s teaching during this week. One thing to note is that although Jesus thoroughly condemns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees – that is, those who are meant to teach and lead – He does not allow this to become an excuse for unrighteousness and hypocrisy in the ordinary person. There are oppressive systems, absolutely. And those oppressive systems are to be condemned, to be countered, to be rectified. Yet, Jesus speaks to the individual in any system, and teaches them to focus on their own agency, their own relationship with God, no matter their particular circumstances. I think this is one reason why I find the gospel of Jesus Christ to be so empowering. Although our individual circumstances matter very much, ultimately Jesus points us away from victimhood. In every interaction He had with individuals, He encouraged them to be righteous, no matter their status, position, occupation, gender, ethnicity, or nationality.
And there are lots of ways in which we, as individuals, can use our agency wrongly. The three parables of the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats – which are told together in Matthew 25 – seem to point toward the different uses of agency, and the ways in which we can go wrong in our spiritual growth and preparation. I’m going to focus here on the first parable of the three.
In the Parable of the Ten Virgins, we are told that this is a metaphor for the ‘kingdom of heaven’. In the kingdom of heaven, some people are wise and some are foolish. The word for wisdom here is based on the Greek word phronesis, which means ‘practical wisdom’. This is important. The wisdom to which Jesus is referring is not so much a contemplative wisdom, but a practical wisdom. In ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelianism, the person with practical wisdom is good at deliberation, which is the reasoning process used to decide how to act. This is a particular kind of reasoning process, in that our actions incorporate both our reason and our passions. So the idea here is that in order to be good at reasoning how to act, your passions have to also be good – that is, your passions have to be moderate, restrained, and also trained to love good things.
So, the wise virgins are those that know how to deliberate well regarding their everyday actions. These are people that love the good, and they let that love guide their reasoning process about how to act. Since, in this Christian context, God is the ultimate good, we could say that the wise virgins love God with all their heart, might, mind and strength. But in addition to this, they have learned how to reason well about how to let their love of God govern their actions. We don’t understand these things all at once, and learning how to live the gospel well is a process and a journey. So, these are people that don’t give up in their gospel journey. They are intentional about it, learning as they go, and being strengthened as they continue trying to stay on the covenant path. And, this seems to be why they have enough oil to last until the bridegroom comes.
Those who are foolish, however, only take the oil that is already in their lamps. They don’t take any more than that. When they need more, it’s too late. ‘Foolish’ here means something like ‘mentally dull’, so there really is a kind of thoughtlessness here, a kind of stupidity. The foolish virgins don’t bring what they need, and the point is that they could have had what they needed, if they had only thought to bring more. This is something that could have been avoided, and actually rather easily avoided. And here is where we see a wrong use of agency. The message here seems to be that you don’t have to be a bad person, filled with malice and hatred, to miss out on the blessings of eternal life. There is no mention that the foolish virgins are particularly bad people, but they are very thoughtless, and this thoughtlessness impedes their daily practice of the gospel, to the point where one day they will lose their testimonies. Indeed, it is because of their thoughtlessness that Jesus will say to them that He doesn’t know them.
And maybe, in the end, it does point back to the first great commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might, mind and strength’. Perhaps the foolish virgins do love God in a way, but in order to truly do this, you cannot be thoughtless about your love for God. You have to let your love for God change you, shape you – and this is done through an interaction between your mind and your heart. To have Jesus say ‘I never knew you’ is unspeakably devastating indeed, but surely the parable ends this way because we, in our thoughtlessness, have not come to know Him.
The Light of Christ in the Darkness 