I was reminded of that because this very powerful parable that we just heard from Matthew’s gospel actually is based on the first reading, from the book of Ezekiel. And Jesus told, all together, in all the gospels, about five parables that involve shepherds in some way. All of them are rooted in the shepherd imagery from the book of Ezekiel, a little bit from the book of Isaiah, and the beautiful psalm we had as the psalm between the readings, “The Lord is My Shepherd.” The compound image has always been taken as one that is very gentle, very sweet, but the story in the first reading tells of a different tale.
And, since the story says that the master was gone for a long time, that means this money was invested in something that would yield a long term benefit, at least a CD. Nowadays, maybe one-and-a-half percent on a CD. But, in the stock market, which is ironically booming right now, that would’ve brought an enormous return on the individual investment. I mean an incredible amount of money.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.” And that’s kind of the message behind today’s gospel. That’s why I asked you to listen for its inconsistency. The motto at the end of the gospel says, “Therefore be alert,” or the translations say, “Be awake.” But it’s the wrong motto, it’s the wrong lesson for the story that Jesus just told.
Jesus tells us the story about being prepared. The virgins, some of them brought extra oil, some of them didn’t. They were unprepared. The inconsistency is that all ten virgins fell asleep. So, at the end of the story, you can’t say the motto is to be awake if all ten of them fell asleep. What happened here?
That’s because we were not aware. we were not made aware, that what we memorized was part of gospel passage. That, in fact, altogether there were nine Beatitudes, the last one aimed directly at Jesus’ audience rather than at a presumed group of people. The “this,” and the “that.” You, “you were persecuted in my name.”
In order to understand what we need to know about these Beatitudes, first of all we have to realize that when we were taught them they were treated as individual maxims, separate from one another. And that each one of them was analyzed for us as though a particular virtue, which was meaningful enough as it stood. But the way the gospels were formed tells us a very different story about the Beatitudes.