I got an offer last week that I almost didn’t refuse. It was from a travel company who, in return for my coming to a one-hour pitch for their company, would give me 4 free days and nights in any one of dozens of different destinations, and if I came between Tuesday and Thursday they’d double the offer. As I said, I almost took them up on it. So we started trying to set up a time when I could come. This week was out. In addition to all the usual stuff, I did a wedding yesterday up in Sewell, and I also had to prepare for this afternoon’s musical tryouts. OK, next week. Well, this afternoon I’m driving up to NY to spend the Columbus Day weekend with my sister, and by the time I get back - well, you get the picture.
Everything I already have planned over the next 2 weeks is more important than a free vacation, and they wouldn’t schedule me out any farther than that. Oh, well. They’ll probably call back in a couple of weeks, at least they said they would, but I’ll probably be just as busy then.
If I had really, really, wanted that free vacation, I could have found the time to go listen to their sales pitch.
And that’s true for all of us, isn’t it? We find time for the really important things, the things that we care about. What is it that always gets done, around your house, or in your life? In a real time crunch, what goes, and what stays?
We’ve spent the last few weeks looking at some of Jesus’ parables, as retold by Matthew. Two of them appear in response to the Pharisees’ challenge to his authority. First we heard about two sons, one of whom said he would go work in the vineyard, but didn’t, contrasted with the one who said he wouldn’t go, but later did. And then last week we looked at the parable of the vineyard owner whose tenants refused to give him the profits from the harvest.
Jesus then adds a third parable - actually a two-parter - to the set. The first part concerns a king who gives a wedding banquet for his son, but the people invited make excuses and refuse to come. So the king, understandably miffed, scours the countryside for a more grateful bunch of guests.
This parable appears twice in the Gospels. In addition to the one we’ve just heard, there’s another version in Luke 14. And in that one the excuses take center stage. Where Matthew says only that the invited guests “made light of [the invitation] and went away, one to his farm, another to his business...” [Mt 22:5] Luke gives us a whole verse for each excuse. One has just bought a field, and has to go see to it, another needs to try out his new oxen, the third has a new bride and wants to spend time with her. The focus is on all the many things that get in the way of hearing God’s call - work, possessions, even good things such as family relationships can crowd God out right out of our lives.
But that’s not where Matthew is coming from. He skips right over the excuses and goes straight to the consequences. And scholars think that Matthew added verses 6 and 7 to give the story a whole new twist for the benefit of the Christians who were Matthew’s audience. Because, you see, Luke doesn’t include the bit about people being killed and the city destroyed. And indeed, it does seem to be a rather drastic reaction to a bunch of rejected party invitations. But it is likely, if not certain, that by the time Matthew’s gospel was put in written form that the city of Jerusalem had already been destroyed.
And so the message his listeners needed to hear was not that the Pharisees and all the others who didn’t listen to Jesus were going to be replaced as God’s chosen by the new Church. They knew that.
No, the emphasis in this retelling is on what happens to the second guest list. The replacements.
There they are, jammed into this churchly banquet hall, both good and bad, no doubt looking surreptitiously at one another, wondering “Who are these people, anyway?” and waiting for the buffet line to open.
At this point, however, something rather odd happens. The king himself arrives and surveys the hodgepodge collection of partygoers, only to spy a man not wearing a proper wedding suit. The king reacts harshly. “Friend,” he says to the man (and, in Matthew, the word “friend” isn’t very friendly; in fact, it’s positively hostile), “how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” The man is left speechless, so the king orders the man booted, not merely out the door, but “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The obvious objection to this strange twist in the story is to protest that the man could not be expected to have on a wedding garment. Because he, like the other guests, was recruited off the streets. A man plowing a field or tending a shop cannot be expected to pack a wedding garment in his lunch box just in case a late-breaking invitation slides down the chute.
But this is no ordinary story. It is an allegory, and each element in it represents other things. You already know most of them. The king, of course, is God; the son, Jesus; the first guests Israel; and so on. The banquet itself is the wedding feast of the Lamb, which will take place at the end of time. And the “wedding garment” symbolizes the Christian life. There are other clothing metaphors in the New Testament. Paul talks about putting on Christ, being clothed in the new self created in God’s likeness, adorning oneself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, and so on.
And so, you see, the scene in which the king catches the man without a wedding garment is actually a picture of the last days, when God comes as judge. Not all those who cry, “Lord, Lord, look at me over here in your church,” will be welcomed. Because it isn’t your presence at the punch bowl that is needed but a “wedding garment.” What is required is a changed character, a changed attitude. Matthew’s closing line, “Many are called but few are chosen,” is a traditional Jewish saying that basically means “everybody is called but not everybody turns up ready for or worthy of it.” Or, in the context of this parable, “God wants everybody at the party, but not everybody knows how to behave when they get there.”
This parable reminds us with considerable force that being part of the Christian community should make a real difference in who we are and how we are to live. There should be a sense of awe and responsibility about belonging to the church, belonging to the community of Christ, being a child of the king. Sure, the spotlighted guest in the parable was pressed in off the street unexpectedly and was probably wearing cutoffs and clodhoppers, but when he got inside, only a fool would fail to see the difference between what he wore and where he was. He was in the banquet hall of the king; for goodness sake, at the wedding feast for the royal son. The table was set with the finest food, the best wine flowed from regal chalices. He is the recipient of massive grace. Where is his awe? Where is his wonder? Where is his regard for generosity? The other guests humbly, quietly, trade their street clothes for the festive garments of worship and celebration, but there he is, bellying up to the punch bowl, stuffing his mouth with fig preserves and wiping his hands on his T-shirt. When the host demands to know where his wedding garment is, he is speechless, as well he should be. In his self-absorption, he hadn’t the foggiest idea until that very moment that he was at a wedding banquet at all. Just so, to come into the church in response to the gracious, altogether unmerited invitation of Christ and then not conform one’s life to that mercy is to demonstrate spiritual narcissism so profound that one cannot tell the difference between the wedding feast of the lamb of God and happy hour in a bus station bar.
I can’t help but notice the contrast between this party and the party the Israelites put on while waiting for Moses to come back from Mt. Sinai.
There are two main differences, I think.
The first big difference is that the Israelites threw the party themselves. It was all their idea, and they provided all the ingredients. They took their own jewelry to make the golden calf and contributed the refreshments from their own food and drink. They were feeling abandoned and insecure, and so they decided to self-medicate.
The second big difference is the kind of entertainment provided. The Israelites’ idea of a good time was, apparently, an orgy. We don’t have a whole lot of detail, but considering that Moses and Joshua could hear them singing from way off, and that to Joshua it sounded like a battle, it was probably a pretty rowdy affair. It’s the kind of hearty party that some of us may remember from our misspent youth - college or service or whatever - too much to each and drink, bad jokes and questionable behavior, the sort of night that leaves you exhausted and fuzzy headed the next morning, with an empty wallet and a bad taste in your mouth.
At the wedding feast of the Lamb, on the other hand, the entertainment isn’t, in fact, entertainment at all. Entertainment is superficial, something to pass the time or deaden the pain or quicken the blood. At this banquet the attraction isn’t entertainment; it’s recreation - in its most profound sense of re-creation. At this banquet we will be renewed, re-energized by the presence of Life itself, Joy itself. What this feast offers isn’t something we can grab and stuff into our pockets; it’s something we can only enter into and be saturated.
And it is all God’s idea. We don’t pay for it, and we don’t set the time or place. It’s a privilege to receive an invitation, don’t you think? The least we can do is have a little respect, a little gratitude.
And yet people nowadays seem to think that heaven is a guarantee. Polls show that most people think they’re going to heaven simply because they think of themselves as good people - or at least no worse than everybody else, and how can God hold their lapses against them, after all, God is love, isn’t he?
Do you know that the baby boomer generation earns more than any generation in our history, and yet has saved the least? Why do you suppose that is?
I think it’s the same reason that people think they’re going to get to heaven regardless of how much attention they’ve paid to God.
It’s a question of entitlement. It’s the culture of rights. It’s the belief that someone, somewhere, owes us, and that it’s unfair somehow, almost immoral, to expect anything in return.
That party guest who didn’t bother to put on the clean clothes the host had thoughtfully provided for him, but dug straight into the chips and salsa before the guest of honor had even appeared, is like the person who thinks that wearing a T-shirt covered with obscenities shouldn’t get him sent home from work, or school - after all, he has a right to express himself, doesn’t he?
And of course you know I’m not talking about clothes. I’m talking about respect for our Creator God, about not taking him for granted. God is love. And he loves us, and accepts us, and welcomes us into his presence whether we’re wearing jeans or a three-piece suit. But when even “our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth,” as Isaiah 64:6 puts it, the only polite thing to do is to put on Christ, who has graciously been provided for us. Actually, it’s not just the polite thing to do. It’s the only safe thing to do.
There’s no such thing as a party crasher at God’s banquet table. Everyone is invited. But whether or not you can stay depends on how you respond to Jesus Christ. Assuming you can come as you are because, “Hey, you’re only human” misses the whole point. It is because we’re only human that we can only come into God’s presence under Jesus’ sponsorship, and covered with his grace.
