What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 9, 2011

Seventeeth Sunday After Pentecost
(Lectionary 23A)
Isaiah 25:1-9 • Psalm 23 • Philippians 4:1-9 • Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

What a doozy of a Gospel text we have before us this morning. How are we to make sense of this? As we take the lectionary readings back up again into our weekly worship, we enter into a series of very divisive and heated parables in Matthew that Jesus tells the Pharisees the week before his death. What are we to make of the people too busy to accept a king’s invitation to his son’s wedding banquet? Does this represent people turning away from the invitation to return to God? What are we to make of the king burning the city of those who do not accept his invitation? Perhaps the hardest question of all about this parable comes in the ending, which is unique to Matthew’s Gospel: how can a king who goes to great lengths to have his servants invite everyone, the common people, to fill up his wedding banquet hall--“the good and the bad”--and then, throw one of the guests into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, all just for not wearing the right clothing?

Let’s focus on this last question, because it is one that I think most convicts us but also offers us an invitation into God’s promises. To start with, the king’s actions of inviting “everyone [that his servants] find” is nothing short of miraculous. Normally the guests who were invited for such royal festival occasions were the most honorable, elite and powerful in society, so that their status could match the social honor of the host king. But this parable's gracious king welcomes all who are out on the streets, “the good and the bad”, the people who would have brought shame upon the elite in society....but on this occasion, they brought the king honor, by not leaving his son alone at such a festive occasion.

Kings in that day and age would have provided everything for the guests at these events, including the appropriate attire of robes. When the king, then, notices a man not wearing one of the provided robes, he wonders why this man will not put on the clothing that marks the joyful nature of this occasion. Yes, we could say that the king lowered his standards when he opened the door to let everyone come to the banquet...but that did not mean that there were no more standards to be kept at this banquet. The king still had expectations of his guests.

Could Jesus’ parable somehow be holding a mirror up to ourselves? Does this story not connect with our own hypocrisy to claim to be members of the banquet feast of God’s grace...but yet our lives all too often reflect our resistance to living as a part of that feast, and our unwillingness to being changed by God? In baptism it has been customary throughout the church’s history for the baptized to wear a white garment—like what this story’s wedding guests wore. We have been clothed, therefore, in our baptism, with the right attire. We have been welcomed by God—but can we profess to have lived up to the honor of such grace as has been poured out upon us?

The jarring conclusion of Jesus’ story asks us to look at where we wish to stand in this story: do we want to be a part of the feast of love given to us by God, or do we wish not to join the celebration on God’s terms but on our own? Do we want to push God’s invitation to us aside, because leaving our old life of isolation, shame and aimlessness for a new life of purpose, community and grace involves letting go of too much? Or can we dare to bring all that God asks of us—our whole lives—to God’s banquet where God gives everyone the clothes to wear that take away the nakedness of our shame—the clothes that take away the power of brokenness, the clothes that transform lives with love stronger than death, the clothes that don’t just turn us from bad people into good people but that put Jesus on us and lead us from death into life, the clothes that make us his followers? Can we dare to be seen with the clothing of Christ on?

As much as God wants to clothe us with honor, and cover up our greed, our pride, and our cynicism with the robes of righteousness, God desires a response from us. God wants us to live with the robe of Christ on! God desires for us to come and join the feast we are all privileged to be invited to, to be drawn in and forever intertwined and interconnected with the justified saints and sinners of God’s people. The joy of God's banquet came at a great cost, the cost of Jesus whose self-sacrifice included his own robes and garments being stripped from him, before he went to the cross. With such a high cost, God’s grace does not come to us cheaply. But it does come...it comes to we who are not the hosts but the guests at God' banquet...and the invitation remains extended...to the good and the bad...to join in the celebration...the celebration that death is no more...that there is enough for all...that God’s love does get the final word.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most well-known Lutheran theologian of the 20th century, a German who died in the underground resistance to Hitler, believed that our lives cannot be let off the hook by self-congratulating ourselves for just showing up at God's banquet. Bonhoeffer said, "Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. . . . Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." Bonhoeffer contrasted “cheap grace” with “costly grace”, grace that changes us forever, that bears fruit in our lives...that invites others to see the goodness of the Lord that has been opened to us by Jesus. We are always the guests at God’s invitation—it's up to us what we will do with it.

Perhaps what we need, and what this guest who chose not to put on the robe of God’s gift needed, is the promise that although grace is costly, there is more than enough of it to go around. Maybe what kept the person in Jesus’ parable from joining the banquet was disbelief that a king could be as just as to truly invite the dishonored to be guests of honor. Perhaps they disbelieved that they were truly worthy of being there. Perhaps they believed they had to be a more “pure” person to deserve such a feast.

Thankfully we don’t deal with a God who sees any of these things as obstacles to dressing us for receiving and living in the gift of grace. All it takes to join in this feast, is just enough faith to realize we are naked but for the love God clothes us with. All it takes to participate in God's banquet is a heart that we are willing to throw over any barrier thrown in our path...trusting there is room enough in this world for God’s abundant mercy to catch us...and sustain us.

The robe of the righteousness of Christ is not the flashiest piece of clothing out there—it’s nothing that would ever even get considered for display on a fashion runway—but that's not what it is for. It’s not bestowed on us to make us popular. This robe of Christ has the power to to clothe our insides—our hearts—with joy and celebration, with passion for all who are dis-honored because God has set us free...free from justifying ourselves, free from wearing the tattered clothes of our fallen nature...free to set others free by inviting all to the party where the king has more than enough garments of grace to go around.

It's time to don our robes. Put on Christ. Come to the celebration of shame turned to honor. God has made us worthy. Extend this host's invitation. Come to the banquet, for all is now ready.

Amen.