Jesus preached a second mountaintop sermon called the Mount of Olives Sermon (Matt 24:3-25:46). Jesus chooses the place with care; the Mount of Olives is where the Messiah arrives. Jesus speaks about the end times; the sermon is apocalyptic. In pop culture, apocalyptic means destruction and chaos, the end of the world, or the end of civilization. Countless movies and books tell of the chaotic end resulting from a natural or constructed catastrophe. This fad is not biblical! Biblical apocalypse is the revelation or unveiling of God’s plan. It is about God’s ultimate victory over evil and death (Rev 19-22). Apocalyptic authors imagine the victory as a new creation. They, too, tell of chaos and destruction, but it is temporary. The only way to the new order is through the old one. This literature inspires an active hope in believers to strive for fulfillment.
About halfway through the sermon, Jesus tells the Parable of the Ten Virgins. The parable leans toward allegory. The bridegroom is the Son of Man (Jesus Christ) coming in glory. The ten virgins are the church. The lesson is on waiting, how to strive for fulfillment during times of destructive chaos.
The young women, both wise and foolish, engage in normal activity; they sleep at night. Earlier in this sermon, Jesus spoke about the normalcy of discipleship. Before the flood at the time of Noah, people ate, drank, and got married (24:37-38). Men worked the fields and women processed the grain (24:40-41). Christians live discipleship in this world.
The difference between the wise and the foolish has to do with lit lamps. In the Sermon on the Mount, the first mountaintop sermon, Jesus tells his disciples that we are the light of the world (5:14). He commissions disciples: “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (5:16). The light is the deeds of the children of the Beatitudes—lifting the poor, comforting the bereaved, hungering for the right, showing mercy, working toward justice and peace. Disciples wait by doing good deeds for the glory of God.
The Mount of Olives Sermon reflects another characteristic of apocalyptic literature. It abandons linear time. We need not wait until the end, until time’s exhaustion, to reach our goal; our end (read, fulfillment) is meeting the Lord. The encounter can happen now. The culmination of the sermon is chapter 25:31-46. Jesus speaks: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (25:35-36). The wise women wonder when they met the Lord. He tells them: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (25:40).
The two mountaintop sermons echo each other on a crucial point for us. The foolish are not doubters, the agnostic or atheist. They are professed disciples who may pray and engage in devotional practices. But they let their lamps burn out because they did not also minister to people in need. They did churchy stuff. In the Sermon on the Mount, they claim to have prophesized, driven out demons, and done mighty deeds (7:22). When troubled, they know to cry out “Lord, Lord.” But they hear back “I do not know you” (25:11-12). The parable repeats the Sermon on the Mount: “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 in heaven” (7:21).
Waiting disciples live in active hope, doing the will of the Father, ministering to those in need.