Given at St Mary’s, Potterne
Reading—Matthew 25. 1-13
William Blake, The Wise and Foolish Virgins (ca. 1800). Owned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York; not currently on public display.
The story of the human race has been one where we gradually, but continually, amass more knowledge, more advanced technology – and more power. Even before writing was invented, we were already unique because of the wheel, the domestication of fire, the domestication of other species, and perhaps most of all speech. These things also made us uniquely deadly to other life forms. Our kingdom is very much of this world.
In recent generations, we’ve also potentially become lethal to ourselves. We’ve lived with the risk of nuclear war for 81 years now, and the wars unfolding in different parts of the world at the moment are frightening and violent events. Experiments in Genetic Modification of humans and other life forms are rapidly increasing in ambition and potential to do good, but also in risk of disaster. But it is Artificial Intelligence that is currently most in the public eye as a potential risk to our survival. One after another, some of the world’s top computer scientists – in many cases people instrumental to making Artificial Intelligence a reality – have either quit the field warning that it could lead to our extinction, or called for development to be slowed dramatically to allow adequate safety checks before AIs are made more powerful.
The logic of human relationships, however, is such that the two great empires of our time, China and the USA, must race as fast as they can to develop more powerful forms of Artificial Intelligence. This technology could be as transformative of human existence as the wheel, or fire, or speech, perhaps even more so. If one country blinks, it risks ceding the future to the other. Such are the constraints that govern how human kingdoms relate to one another.
The kingdom of God is different. It lives in its citizens often because of what they are and how they approach life as much as what they do, still less what they achieve. It doesn’t have a capital city or any fixed territory to defend.
That doesn’t mean it’s all cuddly and cosy. We too often try to domesticate the teachings of Christ, to make them non-threatening, especially to ourselves; to pretend that an all loving God will ensure that actions don’t have consequences.
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins resists that domestication. Told by Christ in the first Holy Week, just before His crucifixion, it contains a sharp warning: some of His followers will be ready for His return; others will have neglected to keep working at the Faith they encountered. The oil can’t be borrowed, it seems: you can’t run on someone else’s faith.
For a long time nice, I was one of those nice, tolerant, mainstream Christians who dismissed talk of Jesus’ return as being something for nutters, probably in places like the American Bible belt or, you know, Northern Ireland. In this era of AI, GM, and drone wars, I think the prospect of Armageddon is a realistic one and the idea of Christ returning to judge the world is not threatening but hopeful.
Hopeful? Yes, indeed. We should have a healthy respect for how Christ will judge us as individuals, but that should be tempered by our faith that He who will come to be our judge is also He who died on the Cross to save us.
There is much that troubles me at this frightening moment. But I do not fear what the ultimate future holds for me or for humanity, because I trust in Christ’s promises to return.
Keep your lampstand of faith burning and full of oil – because you do not know the hour.
Amen.
Thank you for these helpful words Gerry.
Thank you, Elaine.