Let me begin by acknowledging what we are all thinking…we don’t like this parable. This is one teaching from Jesus that we would rather just skip right over; and we often do! We like to hear about how much God loves us, and about how Jesus died for our sins. We like to be affirmed that by our belief in Jesus Christ, we are saved. And indeed, these things are all an important part of the “good news” of the gospel story. But one of the things we often forget (or chose to ignore) is the fact that the gospel story is also a challenging message. Jesus talked more about money and riches, and how we should give them away, than any other subject besides the Kingdom of God. Yet how many of us take these teachings seriously? Most of us give “just enough”, but don’t ever take that life-altering step of giving sacrificially. In the same way, we like to picture ourselves living for eternity in God’s favor, but chose to ignore the fact that we must actually live different lives as Christ-followers, or our experience could be quite different.
So it is that I would like us to spend some time studying this parable this morning, and wrestling with it’s meaning for each of us. Let’s begin by simply making sure we are all on the same page about what is happening here. Prior to telling this parable, Jesus has been challenged by the religious leaders as to the source of his authority. This parable is a part of Jesus’ response to their challenge, and in essence, Jesus’ message is that those who you think have authority may not, while those who seemingly have no authority actually do.
As he begins to tell this parable, we quickly understand that the King throwing the wedding banquet represents God. As the parable unfolds, we see two lists of invitees to the banquet emerge. The guests invited first are often understood to represent the Israelites, God’s chosen people. But these guests reject the invitation saying, essentially, “we are too busy.” As a result of their behavior, this passage has often been cited down through history as a source of anti-semitism. I think that is completely unnecessary, and I think we would do better to understand that the first guests invited to the wedding banquet can be likened to any who somehow view themselves as favorable to God for any reason. But in their rejection, and subsequent violent behavior, the first invitees lose their place at the banquet.
So the King sends out his servants again, this time with a different guest list. Tradition would have you believe that these guests represent the Gentiles, but again, I think a broader view is more appropriate. I would liken these secondary guests, essentially, to those people who have no prior relationship with God. These guests graciously accept the invitation, and so the wedding banquet proceeds. But then the King appears to see how things are going and he discovers that there is one guest who is not dressed appropriately. We might speculate that the mis-dressed guest did not own the appropriate clothes or could not afford them, but that is of little consequence because when the King asks why the man is not dressed appropriately, he gives absolutely no explanation. It’s almost as if he just doesn’t really care. And then we get to that part of the parable that we really don’t like. The King throws the underdressed guest into the “outer darkness” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And all we can think to ourselves is, “Where’s the grace? At least he showed up! At least he didn’t murder the King’s servants! All he did was dress the wrong way and he gets thrown out!”
Where’s the grace? That’s the question I want us to consider together today. Because, you see, the way I read this parable, it’s all about God’s grace and the appropriate response on our part. In order to frame our thinking about the movement of God’s grace in this parable, I want to begin by sharing with you John Wesley’s teaching about grace. Wesley taught a lot about God’s grace, and one of the distinguishing features of Wesley’s teaching about grace is that it can be divided into three distinct parts; prevenient (or preventing) grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. If you think of it like a house, prevenient grace is the porch on the outside. Anyone can walk up onto a front porch, right? In the same way, God’s prevenient grace is available for all people no matter what; it is God’s grace at work in our lives before we are even aware of who God is. To continue the house analogy, justifying grace is like the door that leads from the porch to the inside of the house. Though all people can walk up onto a front porch, not all people will enter a house, will they? So justifying grace is the grace that changes us when we make a decision to commit our lives to God in Christ Jesus. You can liken this to the “born again” experience, or the “change” that we signify in baptism. Finally, there is sanctifying grace, which is the grace constantly at work in our lives, helping us to grow in our relationship with God and in our Christ-likeness. To use the house analogy, sanctifying grace is like the stairway leading up; in this case, upward to a closer relationship with God in Christ Jesus.
So, prevenient grace is the grace that goes before us, available to all people. Justifying grace is the grace that moves us from our old selves into a new covenant life with God, and sanctifying grace is the grace by which we grow in our Christ-likeness. It is important to note here that Wesley taught that we can “backslide.” We could be justified and on our way toward sanctification when we sin and take a few steps downward. Or some people may even renounce the faith and find themselves standing once again on the front porch, no longer in a covenant relationship with God. But the thing of it is, though we may backslide, we will never “fall from grace” as some say because at worst, God’s prevenient grace is still moving and working in our lives. However, if we make the decision to never enter that door, or we backslide to such a degree that we set ourselves back on the front porch, what we are missing out on is the abundant life possible through a covenant relationship with God.
Okay, now, with that in mind, let’s go back to the parable and fit the pieces together. The invitations that the King sends out are like God’s prevenient grace. Not once, but twice the King sent his servants out to summon the wedding guests; he was persistent just as God persists in grace. But both times, the guests ignored the summons, and the second time, they actually abused and killed the servants who had come bearing the invitation. These guests made a conscience decision not to be justified, not to walk through the door into the house of the King’s presence. And what happened? Death. They lost their chance for a life-changing, life-giving relationship with the King.
But God’s grace is not limited to a few. So when the first guests refuse to appear, the King sends his servants out again; this time, to the edges of the town, to invite anyone and everyone they come across. This broad invitation is a clear example of God’s prevenient grace available to all people. The King made no distinction in his invitation; it was for everyone—evil and good, rich and poor, friend and foe, widow, orphan, and outcast. And the people came. Jesus tells us the wedding banquet was full of guests. These people had welcomed the movement of God’s grace in their lives, and they stepped off the front porch and into the presence of the King. But when the King appeared, he noticed one of the guests was not dressed appropriately, and that’s where this parable gets nasty again. In other words, the guest had walked into the King’s presence, but his life had not been changed. This is a common metaphor in the New Testament, where the donning of wedding garments represents a life changed in relationship to God. This one particular guest had chosen not to change, and to the King that means his life had not changed—he does not really desire to be there, so he is thrown back out onto the porch, into the “outer darkness,” apart from any meaningful, much less life-giving relationship with God.
Now, with that in mind, there are two lessons for us today. The first is this: even in the “outer darkness,” we are not apart from God’s prevenient grace. We may chose to stay in that place, or we may chose not to change our lives, or we may backslide, but even still, even though we are stubborn, broken sinners, God in God’s infinite grace will continue to reach out to us, calling us into God’s presence. Whether we chose to respond or not is entirely up to us, and you can discern from this parable the consequences of not responding to God’s grace.
But therein lies the second lesson. If we do chose to respond to God’s invitation of grace, to step through the door of justification and into the King’s presence, then it means our lives MUST be changed. Otherwise, we are no better off than we were standing on the porch. Within Christ’s church, there are those members like the ones in the parable who refuse the invitation from God in one way or another. One colleague put it this way, “They want the safe, soft side of discipleship, but they shy away from the more difficult work of outreach and social justice. They want blessings from God, but they cannot be found when it is time to share in the work of ministry. They can always be counted on to share in a free dinner at the church, but they are not willing to serve a meal in the hunger center or hand out a bag of groceries at the food pantry. They want peace on earth, but they do not want to work toward that end. They want to end world hunger, but they do not want to miss a meal themselves or make a contribution to work toward that end.”
Living in God’s presence means living differently. The invitation has gone out. The question is not whether you can manage to fit this party into your schedule—and your life, because this IS life. This is about living in God’s grace. This is about a new life through God in Christ Jesus, and how we respond makes all the difference!
