The Last Sunday in the Church Year

Trinity 27, Observed

St. Matthew 25.1-13

November 23, 2025

In today’s vernacular, virgin is synonymous with loser. Something is wrong with you, the culture assumes, if you remain thus until marriage. God’s Word declares the opposite. He made intimacy for marriage.

Some are, indeed, called to celibacy. There is nothing wrong with remaining unmarried. Yet, married or not, God made us for community. Of Adam God said, “It is not good that man should be alone.”

Virginity, then, is more than a condition or state—one who has not had conjugal relations. Virginity is a vocation, a calling to devote oneself to what God is preparing for you. In God’s plan, the one-flesh union is reserved for marriage, a gift of joy and self-giving leading to procreation. So the virgin is not one deprived, but one preparing, preparing for union, communion in marriage.

That’s important, because today’s Gospel is about preparing for the marriage, the end-of-this-age communion between God and man, between Christ and His Bride the Church.

In today’s parable, Jesus compares the waiting church to ten virgins. The church is described as virginal. Why? Not because Jesus idealizes celibacy. It’s because the church is preparing for, and pledged to, a marriage. The church is preparing for the wedding feast inaugurating God’s Kingdom.

And you are invited to that. Half of the wedding party, half of the church—represented by the five foolish virgins—forgot. They forgot who they were. They forgot what’s coming. They forgot the meaning and purpose of their lives.

Some people squander their lives by doing nothing. That’s not you. You’re impressive people. You’ve attended good schools, you have interesting jobs, you’ve been places and done things. And you’ve got big plans.

And that’s dangerous. Because you can start to think that the book you wrote, the business you built, the investments you made, the trip you planned – that these in themselves have meaning. As though life’s value can be calculated by ETF shares, electoral victories, or school admissions.

You were made for more. God made man to make the world beautiful. But even where there is great wealth, we’ve made it a gold-plated sewer.

We’re all narcissists. We all have main character syndrome. The parables of Jesus put us in our place. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we’re not the hero, we’re in the ditch. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we’re face down in the slop with the swine. And in today’s parable, we’re in danger of being locked out of the wedding hall.

Jesus tells these parables to shock us from our lethargy. He calls us to live a life of purpose now. And that purpose certainly can involve winning an election, writing a book, building a business. But what is it for? It all should be anticipating the wedding. It all should be oriented toward the kingdom – not yours but Christ’s.

“Thy kingdom come” is a confession that we’ve been seeking our own. No Kings? Ridiculous. Everybody Wants to Rule the World. “You should see me in a crown, I’m gonna run this nothing town.” “Let me be your ruler, you can call me ‘Queen Bee.’” “I could have been a contender.”

Hope and regret, aspiration and desperation, love and hate, we live in this mad scramble that ends in a whimper. Our nation is in decline. Churches are hopelessly divided. Art is trash, music is autotuned, college students can’t do basic math, your appliances connect to WiFi but don’t last a decade. To quote the Bible, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”

But it’s not like we can roll the clock back and it’ll be better. There was no golden age. East of Eden corruption ever holds sway.

But not with you. You were made for more. You were made for the kingdom. You are waiting for the wedding.

It’s dangerous to over-read the details of Christ’s parables. Not everything is a strict allegory. But the thought I cannot get out of my head for decades now is what the wise virgins tell the foolish, when they realize their oil has run out. “Go to the marketplace and buy.”

Of course, they can’t. The shops are closed. It’s midnight in first-century Judea. Even with the executive membership, the Jerusalem Costco doesn’t open up again until 9am.

But I think the point is this: What you need for the wedding, what you need for God’s Kingdom, you can’t get at Costco. Amazon doesn’t deliver it. What matters in life isn’t available in the marketplace.

We spend so much time thinking, “I want a car, I want a house, I want the Amalfi Coast vacation” - we envy the salaries of others, we resent the freeloaders … we’d be right at home with the foolish virgins in the parable. “Go to the marketplace and buy,” the wise virgins say - “because that’s what you always thought the solution was anyway, right? The answer is in money and markets, property and pensions.” That’s how the foolish ones think. And it’s how we think all too often.

Today, the Lord Jesus sets before us the kingdom, His kingdom, the coming marriage feast of the Lamb, and He warns us to put away the dreams of our own kingdom. There’s a battle going on inside our own hearts and homes: will we live like the foolish, or the wise? In his First Disputation against the Antinomians, Luther puts it this way:

The entire life of the faithful [is] an exercise and a certain hatred against the remainders of sin in the flesh, which grumbles against the Spirit and faith. The pious repeatedly feel terrors. Then faith battles against unbelief and despair, as well as against lust, anger, pride, revenge, etc. This battle remains in the pious as long as they live… They therefore have sorrow over and hatred of sin combined with faith. [Only the Decalogue Is Eternal, p60]

Luther here speaks about the pious and the fleshly, which corresponds to the wise and the foolish. The wise is terrified of his sins. He goes to war against lust, anger, pride, and revenge. The fleshly, the foolish, give up the battle. Their life is in the marketplace, where lust and pride are bought and sold.

These will hear the damning word at the end: “I never knew you.”

So here is our program, here is our goal, now at the end of the church year, at the end of our life, at the end of the world: We want to know, and be known by, Jesus – to know His Word, to walk His way.

And that way is the way of virginity, which means here remaining pure before the wedding. It’s abstinence, abstinence from the poison the world is peddling. Maybe they’ll call you a loser. Let them. They still have nothing won. The kingdom ours remaineth.

Repent. The end is near. Stay away from the cheap stuff: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. You were made for more. You were made for the kingdom. You belong to Christ. What you need can’t be bought in the marketplace. Hold fast to Jesus. His Word of grace is the oil, your faith is the flame. Don’t let it go out. Nothing else matters.