Come to the Feast

Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

Most of us would probably say that we have never been invited to a wedding feast prepared by a king for his son. Nevertheless, if we were to take the words of Jesus seriously in our gospel lesson for today, we would have to say that, indeed, we have been invited to such a feast. For in the language of the church, using the words of Jesus in our gospel lesson for today, God is the King, Jesus is the Son, and the Church is the Bride. And you and I are those who have been invited to attend the marriage feast. The Bible uses this language over and over again, especially in Revelation 19, where it says: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!"

And these are wonderful words, because they include us. We have the invitation. It has been sent to us from the King. Now, the question for us is how we shall respond. Shall we respond to the invitation of the King like those in the parable, who didn't think they needed to come to the feast? Or shall we come, gladly, like those in the parable of Jesus who were truly unworthy of the invitation, but were glad they were invited?

Now, Jesus' parable of the wedding banquet actually carried with it a special meaning for the people of his day: It was an accusation against God's own chosen people. The guests who had been invited, and who when the time came refused to come, were those Jews who refused to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Ages ago they had been invited by God to be His chosen people; yet when God's Son came into the world, and they were invited to follow Him and to accept Him, they contemptuously refused the invitation. The result was that the invitation of God went out, instead, to the highways and the byways; and the people in the highways and the byways stand for the sinners and the Gentiles, who never expected an invitation into the Kingdom of God.

As the writer of the gospel saw it, the consequences of the refusal were terrible. There is one verse of the parable which is strangely out of place; and it is out of place because it is not part of the original parable as Jesus told it, but a comment and an interpretation by the writer of the gospel. This verse is verse 7, which tells how the king sent his armies against those who refused the invitation, and burned their city. This mention of armies and the burning of the city seems as first sight to be completely out of place when taken in connection with invitations to a wedding feast. But, let us remember when Matthew was writing his gospel: It was some time between the year 80 and 90 A.D. And what had happened during the period between the actual life of jesus, and the composing of the gospel of Matthew? The answer is, of course, the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome. In A.D. 70 Jerusalem was indeed destroyed. The Temple was sacked and burned; the city was destroyed so that there wasn't one stone left standing upon another, so that a plough could have been drawn across it. Complete disaster had come to those who refused to recognize the Son of God when He came. The writer of the gospel adds as his comment the terrible things which did in fact happen to the nation which would not take the way of Christ. And it is indeed the simple historical fact that if the majority of Jews had accepted the way of Christ, and had walked in love, in humility and in sacrifice they would never have been the rebellious, warring people who finally provoked the avenging wrath of Rome, when Rome could no longer put up with their political conspiracies.

And, perhaps this should be a warning to us, as well. As a nation, we have been blessed for the past centuries with great prosperity. And for much of that time we were a nation which worshiped God. But, now, as you can see, simply by looking around you, more people do other things with their Sunday mornings than worship in Church. As you leave here today, notice that there are people out mowing their grass, going to stores, and doing all sorts of work and other activities that simply do not allow them the time they need for God. And, often, this isn't by their own choice. Society, itself, has gotten to the point if a person wants to make a living, church attendance has to take the back seat.

And, incidently, if you've watched television, lately, you'll notice that ministers and religious people in general are depicted as either crazy, fanatical, stupid, or crooked, while it is the secular, non-religious person who is the hero.

And, so, I would have to say that perhaps we have gotten to the point in our own nation where we who were once chosen are now beginning to reject the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb of God. And I am beginning to fear the consequences: For as Israel met destruction because it refused God's invitation, how long will our own nation be able to put off the day of its own demise?

But, there is much more that Jesus' parable of the Wedding Feast should say to us.

Perhaps, more than anything, it should remind us that the invitation of God to us to be involved in the Kingdom of God is the invitation to a feast as joyous as a wedding feast. And, yet, many people have somehow gotten it into their heads that Christianity is a gloomy giving up of everything which brings laughter and sunshine and happy fellowship to life. I am amazed as I have visited churches all across the country to see how many Christians have trouble smiling in worship and in church. Somehow, many Christians have gotten the pious notion that being a Christian means being a critical, judging, sour puss. And having such a notion, my friends, is to mistake the whole nature of being a Christian. For it is to joy to which the Christian is invited. It is for celebration that we have been called. And it is joy and celebration that we miss if we refuse the invitation to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

But, more, Jesus' parable of the Marriage Feast reminds us that the things which make us deaf to the invitation of Christ are not necessarily bad things in themselves. Think about it: in Jesus' parable, instead of accepting the invitation to the feast, one man went to his home and the other went to his business. The didn't go off on a wild carousal or some kind of immoral adventure. Instead, they went off on the, in itself, acceptable and even excellent task of efficiently administering their business life.

Indeed, it is very easy for us to be so busy with the things of time that we forget the things of eternity, to be so preoccupied with the things which are seen that we forget the things which are unseen, to hear so insistently the claims of the world that we cannot hear the soft invitation of the voice of Christ. The great tragedy of life is that it is so often the second bests which shut out the bests, that it is the things which are good in themselves which shut out the things that are supreme. We can be so busy making a living that we forget to make a life; we can be so busy with the administration and the organization of life that we forget about life, itself.

But, there is something else that Jesus' parable of the Wedding Feast tells us: It reminds us that the appeal of Christ to us is not so much to think about how we will be punished as it is to see what we will miss, if we will not accept his Way. Certainly, those who wouldn't come to the wedding feast were punished, but their real tragedy was that they lost the joy of the wedding feast. If we refuse the invitation of Christ, some day our greatest pain will lie, not in the things we suffer, but in the realization of the precious things which we have missed, and of which we have cheated ourselves.

And, finally, Jesus' parable of the Wedding Feast tells us that God's invitation to us is an invitation of grace. Those who were gathered in from the highways and the byways had no claim on the king at all; they could never by any stretch of imagination have ever expected an invitation to the wedding feast, still less could they ever have deserved it. It came to them from nothing other than the wide-armed, open hearted, generous hospitality of the king. It was grace which offered the invitation, and grace which gathered them in. And so it is with us. For we do not deserve the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, God offers it to us with open arms, an open heart, and the generous hospitality of the King. Amen.