Ten virgins take their lamps to meet the bridegroom. Five are foolish and five are wise. When the foolish took their lamps, 3"they took no oil with them," while the wise 4"took flasks of oil with their lamps." The bridegroom is delayed, and 5"they all became drowsy and slept." All ten fall asleep, wise and foolish alike, and the two groups look the same while they sleep. The difference appears only when the cry comes. What separated them was decided before midnight, in the ordinary hours when one group filled a flask and the other did not.
At midnight a cry announces the bridegroom and calls them out to meet him, and the foolish discover their lamps are going out. They ask the wise for oil, and the wise answer 9"there will not be enough for us and for you." The foolish go to buy, and 10"while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came." The wise go in to the marriage feast, and the door is shut. The time to prepare has run out. Whatever the oil stands for, it is the kind of thing each person has to carry for himself. No one arrives at the last day on borrowed readiness.
A chapter earlier Jesus told his disciples to stay awake because no one knows the day (Matthew 24:42). This parable closes the same way: 13"Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." Even the wise virgins slept, so readiness here cannot mean constant, wide-eyed alertness. It means a reserve laid up ahead of time and kept filled through the ordinary evenings when nothing seems to be happening.
Because the hour stays hidden, faithfulness has to be a habit. If the day were known, readiness could be saved up and spent in a final week of frantic preparation. Instead it has to be tested on whichever ordinary evening it falls on. The wise virgins are remembered for what they had done quietly, flask by flask, before the cry went up. The preparation that matters most is the kind no one sees.
The other virgins arrive afterward and say 11"Lord, lord, open to us." The bridegroom answers that he does not know them, and the answer lands heavily. He knew their faces, since they were part of the wedding party. What he denies is a relationship. Earlier in this Gospel Jesus said to people who called him Lord, Lord, and expected to be recognized for their works, "I never knew you; depart from me" (Matthew 7:23). Two different crowds assumed that nearness was enough.
The door that shuts in this story is the mirror image of an invitation that stands open today. Anyone who will come and be known by the bridegroom may do so before the midnight cry ever sounds.
Ask what you are doing on the ordinary evenings that will matter when the cry comes, and begin with one habit of staying close to Christ.
Prayer
Father, keep us from mistaking nearness to your people for a true relationship with your Son. Forgive us for the seasons we have let our lamps run low, comfortable in the thought that there will always be more time to fill them. Thank you for Christ, who invites us to know him today, so that whenever the cry comes we are found already known and loved by him. In Jesus' name, amen.