THE GUESTS WHO CAME TO DINNER
Text: Matthew 22:1 -14
Tell me if this sounds familiar? It dinner time, the meal is ready but everybody is distracted. Dad is watching a ball game and cheering loud. The daughter has on her head phones which is attached to her device, (iphone or tablet). The son is busy practicing guitar. The other son is talking to his sweetie on the phone. The other daughter is busy editing her paper which is due tomorrow. Dinner is ready and 10 minutes have passed and Mom has sent out three different invitations to come while the food is still hot. She will be very unhappy if they do not come to dinner!
This parable is not about food that gets cold. Nor is this parable about people who are worthy. This parable is about both God’s grace and the gratitude of those that God invites to His table. Lets explore the invitation, the guests and the genuineness of the response of those who came to dinner.
THE INVITATION
How many times have you been invited to a party where there was an RSVP involved? In modern day we call the response that one makes to such an invitation an RSVP: (French for re’pondez a'll vous platti which is in English our way of saying "please reply". (Webster's New World Dictionary. Second College Edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982, p. 1242). Everyone sitting here has more than likely received an RSVP kind of response request. The reason for the RSVP is to let the host of an event know how many to prepare for ---a head count.
How did those who were invited to the wedding feast in this parable respond? Like the parable of the of the Wicked Tenants, there were three different responses of the target audience. 1) Sequel?: Is it possible that this parable might have been an extension of the parable of the Wicked Tenants for that reason? 2) Evidence?: Doesn’t the abuse in the parable of the Wicked Tenants have a mirror image of the target audience in this parable? 3) Incriminating behavior?: Does this parable not present us all with a mirror of our own actions about our own response?
What about those who tried to make invalid excuses?
Call us anything but do not call us late to dinner right? 1) Excuses: Remember the one who went to his farm and the other who went to his business in verse 5? 2) Self-absorbed: Do we ever make light of God’s invitation because we are self-absorbed? If that question does not make us examine ourselves then maybe we aren’t taking it seriously enough! 3) Survey: God did not ask us to fill out a survey about the invitation citing the things we like and complaining about the things we don’t! 4) Blessed: We are blessed just to be invited and sometimes act as if God owes it to us to invite us! If God were to give us what we truly deserve, then would we not be escorted away ?
What about those who got violent and rebelled against the king’s authority? That is the topic of verses 6 and 7. Surely, that was just a literary motif to explain injustice right? WRONG! That is the way that some people actually treat God who gives them every breathe they breathe. Again, God does not owe anyone anything! The life we have been given and the time we are given for our lives are a gift that too many take for granted!
Have you ever heard of Raymond Albert Kroc better known as Ray Kroc? Ray Kroc’s name is synonymous with the fast food restaurant McDonald’s. How many of you have ever eaten there? Well the truth of the matter is that Ray Kroc entered into a business relationship with the original founders of McDonald’s. Although Ray was a business entrepreneur, he was also a conniving deal breaker who took the concept and the name of McDonald’s away from its creators. Check out the move called “The Founder” to see the history of how McDonald’s really came into existence. That kind of hostile takeover is possible between humans in a business world but it is absolutely impossible between human kind and our Creator! How many of us are willing to risk being thrown into outer darkness will there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?
Why did the original guests neglect their invitation? The original guests represented the Jews. Jesus came to His own people and His own people would not receive Him! Did they reject Jesus because they felt that God did not meet them on their terms? Or, was it that they preferred doing their own will to God’s will? Before we condemn them and write them off we must ask ourselves where we are in doing God’s will versus our own will! Isn’t it God’s will for us to reach out to the last, the least and the lost? Remember that God invited you to His table! Are we biding our time as we make light of that invitation?
THE NEW GUESTS
What did the new guest list look like? They were outsiders by faith, culture and social class. They were people like Matthew, Zaccheus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the Syrophonecian woman, the woman caught in adultery, lepers, the Roman centurion of great faith and others.
Do we follow the advice of verse 9 and invite everyone? The new guests were extended an invitation that they never would have expected. 1) First Note: Both the good and the bad were invited into the wedding hall, until it was filled. They were invited from the streets and the street corners. They were sinners in need of a Savior. Unlike the original guests they were sinners, but they knew it. Matthew 9:12 says "... it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick" (NIV). 2) Second Note: Romans 3:23, says that "... all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (NIV). 3) Third Note: Paul echoes a point that Jesus made in this parable. Galatians 3:28 says "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (NIV). So although they were sinners and Gentiles, they did not insult the king as the original guests had.
Are we filling God’s house with those we invite as verse 10 mentions? 1) Negligence: Or, are we neglectful because of how we are rebelling against God’s love instead of sharing His love with others? 2) Inclusiveness: If God is inclusive, and He is, then how well do we resemble that we resemble His ways as His children if we rebel against his love? 3) Stewards or owners?: Do we forget that we are stewards in God’s kingdom acting like we are owners instead? Doesn’t God love the red and yellow, black and white? Are we not all beggars at the feet of Jesus who gives us far better than we deserve?
What should our guest list look like? Consider this story in answering that question. “A widow who moved to a small New England town did an unusual thing to celebrate her birthday. She and her husband had retired o the charming-looking, quaint place after vacationing in the area for over 20 years, but the husband died a couple of years after settling in the new place. Although they had often joked at the way they were still regarded by the townspeople as "summer folk," the woman had not been aware how rigid the carrier was until she was left alone. True, she knew most of the town's inhabitants as acquaintances and was treated politely. But she realized that because she had not been born in the place, she was simply not one of them and of accepted. She knew that she was not deliberately excluded; it was a case just never being included.
Her birthday came again. Instead of moping in lonely isolation, knowing hat no one would know or care, she imaginatively decided to do something novel. She would throw a party! And she would invite the people whom she could never think of inviting! Instead of inviting the people everybody bought about—the "right people"—this woman carefully thought about those whom she would not invite under the usual circumstances. She chuckled to herself as she began to put together her unusual guest list. There was the dark-skinned Portuguese woman with such broken English at the bakery; the blind woman whose family had all moved out of town and seldom contacted her; the new, young schoolteacher in town, too shy to make friends; that divorcee with two kids who came to town from the city, lived on welfare, and was the topic of great gossip among the respectable housewives. There was mother widow who everybody knew had a drinking problem, and there was the wife of the new man in charge of the coast guard station out on the point. Who would ever have thought of including them? Our friend put them on her invitation list. They all came. Everyone had the best time in years. In fact, they agreed that they would meet again the following month in the tiny house of the Portuguese woman”. (William P. Barker. Ed. Tarbell’s Teahcer’s Guide. 86th Annual Volume. Elgin: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1990, p. 101). Doesn’t this story give us a mirror image of what God intended for us to do in filling His Wedding Hall with guests?
THE ATTIRE
There are social customs (habits) in every culture. In this parable Jesus addressed one of those customs. It was "... the custom of the host to provide adequate garments for his guests to wear at the feast" (Hoefler p. 119). The garment that the guest provided was necessary because a guest would not be seated without it. That was the custom. Jesus used this custom in this parable as a metaphor for impostors.
What was the topic of the metaphor that Jesus implied in wearing the Wedding Garments? The metaphor here is repentance because it is through Jesus Christ that we are justified. And there was this one man was not justified in his presence at the table of the Wedding Feast because he was not wearing the proper clothing. Galatians 3:27 says "for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (NIV).
Are there impostor’s at the table? As it was sinking, the Titanic’s Captain Smith gave the order to members of his crew to watch out for the women and children. It was obvious that he meant women and children first in the lifeboats. Daniel Buckley, a third class passenger on the Titanic, disguised himself as a woman so he could get on board one of the life boats. (Moody Adams. The Titanic’s Last Hero. Yucca, Valley California: Rocklin Press, 1997). In our world, we call those kinds of people impostors. God knows who the pretenders and the impostors are in His kingdom. If you are not clothed with the salvation of Jesus Christ as your wedding garment Jesus mentions, then you will be cast out!
It is the clothing of Christ that makes us righteous! Christ gave us His righteousness in exchange for our sinfulness (II Corinthians 5:21 NIV) so that when God looks at us He sees Christ and not our sin. For God cannot bear to look at the sight of sin (Matthew 5:46) which is why God turned His face away from Jesus on the cross as Jesus said: "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?" (NIV).
God has provided the wedding garment that we need through Jesus Christ. If God has already provided the clothing of righteousness through Jesus Christ then, why is it that not everyone puts on this clothing? We cannot be admitted without it. Our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). God makes us righteous through Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 5:21).
