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Text: Matthew 22:1-14, Isaiah 25:6-9 W 21st
Sunday after Pentecost Many Are Called … In the name of him who bids us,
“Come to the wedding banquet”, dear friends in Christ: You know, if you’ve ever organized a big
party, or a reception, or a wedding, that you plan for a certain number of
guests; but then you go ahead and send out invitations to a lot more people
than you planned for. Why? Because you know that not everyone you invite
is going to show up. Some folks you know
won’t come because of their health or the distances involved – these are the
ones you invite just to be polite because they’re family or something. The invitation you send them is a way of
saying, “We wish you could be here. Send
a present anyway”. Other folks you
invite won’t be able to come because they have other commitments. Some will plan to come, but something will
pop up at the last minute to prevent their attendance, and still others,
perhaps don’t want to come at all and will claim
to have other commitments or a last minute excuses. And you know from having been on the
receiving end of invitations for various things, whether you are part of this
last category depends a lot on the nature of the event and who it is that’s holding
it. If the governor of the state, for
example, were hosting an elaborate dinner to recognize citizens who had made
significant contributions to the good of society, and you were named as one of
the guests of honor, chances are you’d be there. If, on the other hand, your irritating neighbor
– the one who talks nonstop about his favorite subject: himself, and whose vegetarian wife invariably
prepares one of the three tofu recipes she knows (one of which you know from
bitter personal experience to be thoroughly disgusting, and the other two are
rumored to be even worse) – if they invite you over for a dinner and karaoke
party featuring the music of Barry Manilow, chances are you’d find a reason not
to be there. (I’m going to pause here to
apologize to those of you who actually like tofu and Barry Manilow music: I’m so sorry … for you; so very sorry.) With all this in mind, we turn our
attention to this morning’s Gospel lesson.
There our Lord Jesus tells us a parable about how the kingdom of heaven
is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. And to help us really understand this, we
need to know a little bit about weddings in first century Palestine because
that’s the context in which Jesus’ original hearers would have understood. In our day, weddings can be pretty big affairs
– but few of them could hold a candle to what was typical back then. If someone here and now gets elaborate,
you’ll have an afternoon wedding and maybe a dinner and reception that goes
into the wee hours of the night. Back
then, at that point the party would be just getting started. Wedding celebrations would typically last a
whole week what with feasting, dancing, games, and who knows what all. And that was for the common folk. What Jesus describes in the parable is a
wedding feast for the king’s son, presumably the crown prince. This would have meant pulling out all the
stops. It would have been a weeklong
national holiday even for the citizens who were not invited to the wedding
itself. Ah, but if you were one of the
chosen few who got an invitation, well, then you’d know two things. First, you’d know that the king was bestowing
on you a very special honor indeed; and second, you’d know that you were in for
one heck of a party. You could literally
count on getting the royal treatment:
the best gourmet food, the finest wines, spectacular entertainment,
lodging in the palace, and some pretty costly gifts and party favors that would
be generously distributed. And you’d be
enjoying all of this lavish excess for at least a week. Oh, and you’d know something
else. You’d know that to decline the
invitation would be not just a show of ingratitude; no, it would be deeply
insulting to the king and the crown prince, insulting to the point of being
treasonous. You see, a royal wedding
holds the promise of the continuing succession of the royal family, and
therefore the continued peace and prosperity of the kingdom. The only people who don’t want that and who
would be so rude as to snub the king by turning down his invitation would be
those who are in open rebellion against him and who would like very much to see
the end of the king and his family. That is precisely what we get in the
parable Jesus tells. A number of the
chosen invitees (just about all of them, it seems) decide not to come when the
wedding celebration is announced.
Perhaps that needs a little explanation.
In our day we set precise times for such events as weddings to take
place and then scramble like crazy at the last minute to be sure everything is
ready. The poor bride is usually on
maximum stress overload when she finally walks down the aisle. In Jesus’ day, the invitation would be more
general, like, “the wedding will be some time in June”, and then, only after
all the preparations were done and everything was set would the call go out to
those who had the invitations, “We’re ready now. Come to the feast.” So you have to envision this huge
decorated hall with the tables all set and laid out with the china and crystal
and silver. The king and his son are
standing there by the door ready to meet their guests … and no one shows
up. It’s embarrassing. The king is especially uncomfortable because
it’s his beloved son that’s being slighted here. More time passes … the ice sculptures are
melting, the shrimp in the cocktail appetizers already set at their places on
the tables are beginning to dry out and get tough and chewy, the whole lambs
turning on the spits in the kitchen are getting overdone. It’s terrible. The king demands to know what’s going
on. Where is everybody? The servants have to explain, “We told them,
but they all said they couldn’t make it.
They had other things to do.”
“Well go tell them again”, the king orders. “Take more messengers with you. Tell them, ‘I’ve spared no expense. The feast is ready now.’ Tell them to come to the wedding banquet for
my son.” So the servants go; but this time
they don’t just get refusals, they get abuse.
Several of them are physically attacked and beaten. Some are even killed. The bruised survivors limp back to report
these latest developments to the king, who is enraged. “This is war”, he declares, and he dispatches
his soldiers to kill the insolent rebels he had invited to be his guests and he
has their city burned to the ground. But
the wedding feast still must go on, so he sends his servants out again to bring
in whomever they can find. The
invitation is extended now to everyone they encounter: rich, poor, noble, common, young, old, healthy,
sick or crippled … it makes no difference.
Everyone is invited to the feast to celebrate the wedding of the king’s
son. And soon the banquet hall is full
of guests enjoying the king’s bountiful hospitality. That’s the story; but what is it all
about? Well, it is on one level a
parable of the nation of the Jews. They
were God’s chosen people, the special ones he singled out of all humankind to
invite to the great reception to honor his Son, their long awaited
Messiah. But when the fullness of time
came and Jesus proclaimed that the great feast of the kingdom of God was about
to begin, they turned the Lord down cold.
They rejected Jesus, the Son, and in rejecting him they were
dispossessed of the promises pertaining to the coming kingdom. They were destroyed as a nation. In AD 70, their city, Jerusalem, was completely leveled
and burned. Meanwhile, the invitation to
come into the kingdom to celebrate the wedding feast of the Son was extended to
the Gentiles, the Gentiles who rejoiced upon hearing the Good News of the
Gospel and who came into the Christian Church in droves. You and I are included among them. But because we are, we can
understand this parable on a different level entirely. You see, now we are the ones with the
invitations to the Feast – the big one that will take place when the Son of God
returns a second time to take those who await his coming to the heavenly
banquet: the wedding feast of the Lamb
in his kingdom that has no end. But for
the time being, while we wait, the wedding feast takes place in miniature every
Sunday here in the church. That’s really
what our weekly worship is all about. We
gather here as both the guests of God and as the bride of Christ to be
with him and interact with him and share the gifts of his grace. And Jesus himself joins us here. He comes to us in his Word by which he enters
our hearts, and he comes to us in his Holy Supper by which he feeds physically
with his body and blood that he sacrificed to pay the penalty of our sin. Through these means he grants us salvation
and life eternal – which is why we sing that it’s “a foretaste of the feast to
come”. Sadly, our attitudes about it are
often more like the Jews who turned down the invitation because they thought
they had better things to do. I can’t say it any more plainly than this: we communicate to our Lord exactly how much
we think of the gifts he offers us here by how much priority we place upon
being here to receive them. What does
your practice tell him? Now, someone
will say, “You’re right, Pastor; but you’re preaching to the choir. We’re here.
You should be telling this to the people who aren’t here.” There’s some truth to that – and feel free to
take a copy of the sermon to those who didn’t make it today; but even if you
are here, you really ought to question your own attitude. I use this example when talking to the
confirmands about the third commandment:
what if I told you that from here on out we would be distributing checks
for a thousand dollars to everyone who shows up here on a Sunday morning? Would you be more encouraged to come? Would you make sure you were here every
Sunday? Of course you would. And you’d continue to show up even if your
bank account was overflowing – you can never have too much money. But here we receive Jesus. We receive more of him and his wisdom and his
Holy Spirit to strengthen our faith every time we come. How much is that worth to you? A thousand dollars? I sincerely hope you value it more than that. And what if do you already have Jesus? Can you ever have too much of him? Can you ever get to the point when you can
say you don’t need any more? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled”. And for the past two weeks as we’ve come here
to worship, we’ve been stressing that idea.
We’ve been talking about the ongoing need for repentance in our lives as
Christians … this constant awareness of our sins we are to have that makes us
feel spiritually hungry and thirsty for the forgiveness that God that grants to
us in Christ Jesus. Our understanding of
and our shame over our sins is what makes us want to quench our parched mouths
and fill our starving souls with Jesus’ own righteousness – his righteousness
that he gives to us by faith when we hear his word and receive his Sacraments. So let me suggest this: if you don’t feel that hunger and thirst to
be here, it’s because you really don’t think you’re that much of a sinner. That was why the Jews rejected Christ. They thought they were good people who didn’t
need a Savior from sin. That’s why they
rejected the Lord’s invitation to come to the feast. A lot of people treat the Christian
faith like an inoculation against the flu.
“Just give me a shot once in a while.
That should be enough to ensure that I have what I need to get by.” And for such people, it really is an
inoculation; but not the way they think.
You see, when you get a shot, what you get is a few dead flu viruses
that cause your body to produce the antibodies that prevent you from catching
the real thing, the illness caused by the live virus. That’s what some folks get with the
faith. They get what they think is the
minimum required dose: baptism, confirmation,
the kid’s service on Christmas Eve, and who knows, maybe a funeral now and
then, and that’s about it. They think
they’ve got what they need; but what they’ve really got is dead, just enough to
prevent them from coming down with a case of real Christianity. Now, you’ve probably heard me say that the third
commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, is really more Gospel
than it is Law. And so someone may ask
the question, “Is it really necessary for a Christian person to attend
worship? to gather with the faithful and
hear God’s Word and receive the Sacrament of the Altar? The answer is that it depends on what you
mean by necessary. If you mean, “It’s a
legal requirement; you have to be there or else”, then the answer is “No”. But then we shouldn’t think of it as a legal
requirement, but rather as more of a health issue. That is to say, we could ask, “Is it
necessary for a person to eat?” Strictly
speaking, the answer is “No, he doesn’t have to eat”. The problem is that he won’t live very long
if he doesn’t. The same is true of
us. If we starve ourselves spiritually,
or keep ourselves on famine rations, we guarantee that our lives of faith will
always be weak and anemic, far more likely to die if placed under stress, and
never develop a fraction of the potential that the Lord desires to fulfill in
us. And the parable reminds us that there are serious
consequences for walking too close to the line.
Those who consistently find excuses for not answering the Lord’s
invitation, who disregard or insult the messengers the Lord sends to them,
whether they be pastors or lay people who encourage them to come to the
banquet, such as these eventually wear out the patience of the King and their
invitations are withdrawn. They are
counted unworthy to attend because they despised the King and his Son. That’s a warning for all of us, a warning
that should cause us to repent of the casual attitudes we have regarding
worship and the lack of emphasis we place on the gifts of grace we receive
here. But there is another warning in this parable. It’s a warning for we who have come into the
banquet hall, and who perhaps do so religiously and regularly. It happens that when the feast is going on,
the king goes out to see his guests and to visit with them. As he’s doing this, he spies a fellow who has
come in with the rest, but he is not wearing a wedding garment. And to understand this, you have to know that
people who were just grabbed in off the street aren’t likely to be walking
around in their tuxedos and formal gowns.
No, at a wedding like this, the king himself would provide a change of
clothes for all the guests. It would be
one of the many gifts they received. So
what we’ve got here is a fellow who thinks his own street clothes are good
enough for the royal wedding. He thinks
he doesn’t need one of the fancy robes the king is giving away to ensure
everyone is properly attired. Again,
it’s a picture. We understand that the
wedding garment the king gives his guests is the white robe of Christ’s
righteousness that is given to those who grieve over their sins and come with
repentant hearts. They are covered, as
it were, with Christ and the blood he shed for them. So what we have here is a picture of someone
in the church who thinks that by virtue of having come in he’s done something
good, a work that ought to please the king.
This is the smug person in the church who keeps score and counts his
attendance record at worship as a feather in the cap that earns him the king’s
favor and salvation. That too is a
grievous sin – a sin we are all tempted with as we compare our own records with
others and thereby judge who is faithful and who is not. And we see what the end result of this sin is
when the man is tied up and cast into the darkness, where there is weeping and
gnashing of teeth. So, interestingly
enough, it’s a lack of repentance that keeps people from answering the
invitation, and a lack of repentance that gets some who do answer it kicked
out. Jesus said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” As it turns out, everyone is invited
to come into the kingdom to celebrate the wedding feast of Jesus, the Son. The chosen are those who by the power of his
Holy Spirit see their sins, repent, and hunger and thirst for the feast of
grace and forgiveness the Lord offers here every week. Today we’ve seen the sins– or at least some
of them. May this recognition keep us
mindful of our need and faithful in answering the call to come to the feast of
is grace and mercy. In Jesus’ name. Amen Soli Deo Gloria! |
