The readings for All Saints’ Day, Yr. A were: Amos 5:18-24; Psalm 70; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13. This sermon was preached at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church in Palmyra, VA on November 8, 2026.
This is a whopper of a parable. Listening to the words again as I prepared to speak now, it struck me. It is something that can really frighten people. It can make people feel guilty, and in the wrong hands, it is something a pastor or others could make you feel guilty about. “You are not doing enough! You must do more!”
When Jesus was earlier explaining why he spoke in parables way back in chapter 13 of Matthew, Jesus said to his disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 13:11-12). Not everyone will accept the gift of salvation, and some Christians will deny him, sometimes unwittingly or unwisely throwing that gift away.
In Matthew’s account, Jesus has recently cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit, reflecting (as many believe) his anger and sadness that so many of the chosen people of God among the Israelites are not reflecting the fruits of the Kingdom. (The fig tree was a common symbol for Israel.) He’s been parrying and thrusting intellectually with pharisees and other enemies who challenge his authority and teachings. He speaks of upcoming destruction of the Temple and persecution for his Church. He also speaks about his Second Coming, and thus the end of the world as we know it.
So, note that it is immediately after these teachings and events that Jesus shares the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (or sometimes people say Virgins). How should Christians live as they wait for Jesus’ ultimate return? If we are truly saved by grace alone, listening to ancient understandings, the voices of those Christians closer to the time of Jesus as well as the voices in scripture, we learn that as his saints we are not to fear Jesus’ return but to welcome it. His promises to save us will prove true. Jesus doesn’t lie[i].
So, when Jesus speaks of the End Times, he often couches it within a celebration, often a wedding celebration. All his promises will come to fruition. Suffering will cease. We and all the saints will live with our Triune God and the Heavenly Host in a new Heaven and Earth forever. And so, the healthier voices in the Church call us to expectantly welcome that day as we watch, wait, and serve. “Come Lord Jesus, come!” we pray as Church.
In using wedding celebrations, Jesus is drawing from a rich history and tradition of prophetic proclamation. Such allusions help us understand deep truths about God’s love for us, but they also explain to us our own covenantal obligations in this relationship.[ii] (Relationships are two-way streets when they are healthier.) In response to divine love, we are called to active discipleship, not because it will save us, nor get extra credit for heaven, but because we are now Christ’s body, the Church. It is who we are, our true selves.
Receiving grace without a willingness to take up our crosses and die daily through obedience is a very cheap idea of grace indeed, as Dittrich Bonhoeffer wrote about. As Jesus teaches, we have the gift of grace, but we are to be awake and ready for his return. We have a job to do. This parable serves to remind us of our spiritual obligations (or expectations if one prefers) recalling that Law and Gospel always go together to help us.
As I hope we all understand, our Lutheran theological lens repeatedly denounces any human work as saving. Yet Martin Luther himself, with all his human shortcomings, was no fool. As much as he struggled with the Book of James and its focus on works, he could not deny its truth, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:14-26). True faith moves us toward holy works – the love of God and others.
Even as the chosen people of God, we aren’t meant to live isolated from the world’s troubles or focused solely on our needs. Luther explained this mystery with these words in 1522 as he preached on this parable:
“Therefore, let each one see to it that he has these two together: the oil, which is true faith and trust in Christ; and the lamps, the vessel, which is the outward service toward your neighbor. The whole Christian life consists in these two things: Believe God. Help your neighbor. The whole Gospel teaches this. Parents should tell it to their children at home and everywhere. Children, too, should constantly foster this Word among themselves.”[iii]
So, I understand why some people can grow fearful or feel guilty hearing this parable. They are wondering if they will be found to be one of the five wise or five foolish bridesmaids. I often wondered, too, when younger – more immature and foolish in my faith.[iv] To be left outside of that celebration, left in darkness where there will be lamenting and gnashing of teeth, is a frightening future.
So, Martin Luther pastorally responded to those around him with such fears. And reading his words helped me grow more mature and certain in my faith. Luther asked them to remember and trust that God is love. First and foremost, God is love.[v] Jesus died for all our sin, even that which we have not done yet. And forgiveness is always available through our confession and heartfelt repentance because God wants us to succeed. We also have access to means of grace, the sacraments of the church, where we are told that we can find forgiveness of sin.[vi]
Regarding fears of Judgement Day, which there were many in the Medieval period, Martin Luther told people to remember their baptism where God claimed them forever. If struggling with sin, he wrote to his friend and fellow Reformer, Phillip Melanchthon, “be a sinner and sin boldly, but [emphasis mine; this end part of the quote is often sadly left out] believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly [emphasis mine]” This doesn’t mean that we should seek out sin or that some won’t fall and fail in their Christian, much as demonic angels were cast out of Heaven, but to struggle with our faith and sin is part of our human condition even as we remain saints, claimed by God. Don’t be so fast to cast ourselves and others into hell. Trust in Jesus.
Within this parable, the primary consensus over the ages understands that Jesus is talking about his Second Coming or as what some people call Judgement Day. And in Jewish culture, I think it no coincidence that the number ten reflects divine perfection. So, we have ten bridesmaids. Here, in this primary interpretation, the Church does not represent Christ, nor does the bride necessarily represent the Church as common in some other parables and writings, but our focus is primarily drawn to the ten bridesmaids.
Although details of such ceremonies are lost to history, we understand that the parable echoes practices of the day with roots dating even further back to the Babylonian Exile. There would be a grand procession at night with the groom, a celebration of the entire village for what God was doing in the lives of those two people. And he would be welcomed with lamps, torches, and joy by the bridesmaids as he arrived at his bride’s family home.
Yet once the bridegroom arrived, a contract or covenant of sorts was drawn up, the Ketubah. It was not a ceremonial document, prayer, or even anything about the approval of God or society.[vii] According to one Rabbi,[viii] “The ketubah restates the fundamental conditions that are imposed by the Torah upon the husband,”…These are the husband’s obligations…five obligations: core marital duties (provide food, clothing, and regular marital intimacy); an endowment, a potential divorce cushion, if that day comes (to protect the woman); a dowery (which will return to the family if the marriage devolves); and a traditional promise of additional funds which would usually make arbitrary divorce difficult. The agreement protects the wife, and if the proposal was accepted, the marriage would happen. The bride and groom would then be escorted to their new home together.[ix] (Another common End Time image we hear from Jesus is his having a place for us within his mansion or house.)
So, in this parable, I think Jesus is promising to care for those who hold on to their faith, even if imperfectly. For note, all ten bridesmaids fall asleep…all of them have failed or sinned in their obligation at some level…as much as his beloved Apostles in the garden of Gethsemane did. To ancient Jews, five often represented the core texts and structure of the faith.[x] For example, there are five books to the Torah, which primarily speak of Jewish obligations under the covenant of the Ten Commandments. Here, five bridesmaids are ready to fulfill their obligation to serve. Five are carelessly, foolishly unprepared. They forget their oil, their trust in Jesus, and their lamps, their love of God and neighbor, cannot shine.
We learned with the Beatitudes, echoing earlier Jewish understanding, that the righteous will need to wait for their reward, but they are always blessed as they wait. Matthew’s community had begun to see people drift away. People experienced a challenge to their faith as the Temple was destroyed. Christians were cast out of both synagogues and families because of their faith in Jesus, and people died with no sign of Jesus’ return (at least not yet). People expected Jesus to return quickly, and he did not. We learn from their experience that following Jesus takes trust, patience, and persistence.
Yes, the truth remains that we never can know or do enough. We can never be fully prepared on our own. We need God’s help, and we need to try to trust that help is on its way just as promised. For “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1-3). And in this context, each of us must decide our response to Jesus, an individual choice to believe…to trust and let that trust reshape our lives. We call that accepting the gift of faith.
And although we cannot give the gift of faith to others (that’s ultimately the Spirit’s work[xi]), we can seek to support and encourage one another as we wait…pointing others toward faith in Christ – no matter how much faith we have; no matter what we understand or don’t; no matter our own struggles. We can direct others toward Christ as the source of abundant and eternal life just as Jesus asked of his disciples in scripture to do.
As someone noted at our Bible study last Wednesday, it seems awfully selfish that the five wise bridesmaids did not share oil with the unwise, the unprepared, those who accepted cheap grace or a counterfeit Gospel offered by the world. Yet, Jesus a chapter before already compared his Second Coming to be like Noah’s flood. The unwise “were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” until the day when Noah entered the ark. They remained unaware, lived without care, until the flood came and suddenly swept them all away (see Matthew 24:37-39).[xii] We are asked to not only trust in God’s grace but also God’s fair and loving judgement with a mystery to large for us to comprehend.
In Matthew 7 as part of his Sermon on the Mount, in conjunction with the Beatitudes and Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught, “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 who is in heaven.” Today’s Gospel reading is a parable, not a command to ignore those outside of the faith or those thought by some to be unredeemable. It is a teaching story making a comparison to the suddenness of the End Times and revealing how the choices we make matter eternally, especially if we claim Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
If we regularly ignore his teachings and examples willfully and habitually, if we despise God’s will in word and deed even out of ignorance, if we fail to love God and neighbor as ourselves without concern for Christ’s commands, if we ignore, deny, or dishonor the Spirit that now resides within us through our faith and baptism and choose to conform to the world instead, we have a rather low view of grace. We aren’t really putting on the mantel of faith in Jesus Christ but the yoke of the pharisees. He will not know us, because he will not see himself in us in how we live. Our words, “Jesus is Lord,” prove empty, because our hearts have proved empty toward God and neighbor.
Ultimately…and this is the Good News…to be ready is not a state of perfection. To be ready is to know the source of all life is Jesus and to seek him throughout our lives. To be ready is to live in hope of Jesus Christ and share that hope in him with others. To be ready is to trust that the bridegroom is coming, surely coming, no matter what is causing us to fear or doubt, and our heart remains open to welcoming him with joy. To be ready requires that we be prepared to wait, and while we wait, we seek as best we can to love our God and neighbor in all that we do. We don’t do so for credit. We never do it alone, for we are gifted with the Spirit and the Church. We do so because we are now the children of God, and Jesus is truly our Savior. Amen.
[i] Martin Luther often said, “Jesus doesn’t lie” or similar words to remind us to trust.
[ii]Long, P. J. (2012). The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels: An Intertextual Study (Doctoral dissertation, supervised by Richard Choi, Ph.D.). Downloaded at https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3257&context=auss on November 6, 2026.
[iii] Martin Luther, “Sermon on the Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Trinity (October 21, 1522),” in Luther’s Works, Vol. 79: Sermons V, ed. Christopher Boyd Brown (Philadelphia: Fortress Press / St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016), 281–282.
[iv] “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1Corinthiasn 13:11).
[v] This is supported most clearly by 1 John 4:7-21, but God’s love for us is revealed throughout scripture from Creation to promises of the new Heaven and Earth.
[vi] Lutherans have two Sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, also called Holy Communion or the Eucharist) where we believe the Spirit is active and encountered. These are not exclusive means to encounter God’s grace, but they were instituted by Christ and have physical signs (water for Baptism, bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper), so they are considered primary means of receiving God’s grace as gift.
[vii] See https://www.betemunah.org/five.html
[viii] See https://www.betemunah.org/five.html
[ix] See https://www.betemunah.org/five.html
[x] See https://www.betemunah.org/five.html
[xi] See Matthew 16:17 and 1 Corinthians 12:3 for example.
[xii] Allen, O.W., Jr. (November 2026). Commentary on Matthew 25:1-13. Working Preacher. Downloaded at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-32/commentary-on-matthew-251-13-10 on November 6, 2026. – Referencing Matthew 13, the author also rightly adds, “In 24:36–44, Matthew portrays Jesus as drawing an analogy between the parousia and the flood in Noah’s day: Those in the ark were left behind, but those caught in the waters were swept away in judgment. This is the opposite of the way popular culture talks about the “left behind” today based on 1 Thessalonians 4:17, where those saved are caught up together with the resurrected dead to meet Jesus in the sky and taken away, and those judged are left behind.” Most of the worldwide Church echoing the witness of the earliest Christians understands the theological arguments for Dominionism and Rapture as being in error. Yet, these arguments remain a matter of faith for some Christians particularly among Baptists, Evangelicals, and Charismatic/Pentecostal churches.
Below, please find a video of our worship service. The sermon starts at about the 30:09 minute mark.
© 2026 The Rev. Louis Florio. All content not held under another’s copyright may not be used without permission of the author unless under terms of fair use and properly attributed. Scripture passages when used are from the NRSVue translation unless otherwise indicated.
