The parables of the Bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13), the Talents (25:14-30), and the Judgment of the Nations (25:31-40), all serve as warnings. To understand them, we need to recognize what warnings are. Warnings tell us the future, but they don’t tell us the future as a fact; instead, they tell us the serious possibility of what might go wrong if we don’t change our ways.

How bad might it be? Much worse than you would expect, as you start to make your way through each of these three stories. You’d think that unprepared bridesmaids might miss the ceremony, or that an overcautious servant might lose his job: but the girls face an I-do-not-know-you rejection that leaves them on the outside (25:12), and the servant is cast into the weeping-and-gnashing-of-teeth outer darkness (25:30) – and just in case we don’t quite get what that symbolism means, when the goats miss their opportunity to care for Jesus’ little brothers and sisters, they end up quite explicitly in the eternal fire (25:41, 46). It turns out that heaven and hell are on the line here.

We might conclude from this that some people are just doomed. But why are they doomed? Because they failed to make full preparations, like some of the bridesmaids? Because they were over-cautious, like the third servant? Wait, that’s me, a lot of the time: not as well prepared as I ought to be, and scared to take too much risk. Am I just inescapably doomed, then?

Actually not, if we read the text properly. We need to recall that it is the nature of warnings to warn. They do not proclaim my pre-set inevitable fate; instead, they warn me about my risk of creating a bad future IF I continue along my current path. More than that, warnings are there to tell me to mend my ways, so that the predicted unhappy consequences do not come to fruition. Their purpose is first to help me recognize that I am dangerously unprepared, timid, and blind-to-the-needy, and then to urge me not to stay that way. There is still time to repent; I can respond to this gracious invitation, and learn to be ready and brave and compassionate.

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Grant me a heart of repentance, O Lord, that I may be your faithful servant. Teach me to be ready to move when the moment for action comes, to be bold to risk everything for you, and to be visionary to offer compassionate care when I see you in the face of the sick, poor, and hungry.