But what about that poor unfortunate man who didn’t meet the dress code in today’s Gospel? My God, he was thrown out on his ear into the cold of the night. . .
Jesus knows a good image when he finds one, and that’s why Jesus so often uses a wedding as the basis of a story in his parables. One of the privileges that we who are ordained into the ministry have given to us is the privilege of officiating at weddings.
During my parish ministry, it was my custom to spend the last few moments just before the ceremony began with the groom and his groomsmen, usually in my office. One of my important jobs was to peek through a slightly cracked open door to check out visually and audibly to determine how close we were to the start of the ceremony.
It would happen at almost every wedding. The groom would see me peeking out, and he would ask me, How many are out there?
Because of my vast experience, I learned to give each of them the same answer:
It’s pretty full, I’d say, It’s filling up fast.
This would almost always yield an ever-so-slight smile that said very clearly to me that he was pleased.
I have found that attendance is equally important to the brides as supported by the fact that nine times out of ten, brides will over estimate the attendance at a wedding by 10 to 20 percent. The fact is, that when two people do something as important as the sealing of a life-long covenant, they quite naturally want to be surrounded by their friends and loved ones.
This is what I find so awesome about the parable that Jesus tells in our appointed Gospel from Matthew. Royal Weddings are always the major political and social events of the year. Such weddings have sealed international agreements and brought peace to nations.
The Prince of Wales and Princess Diana’s marriage eventually failed, and the Princess died tragically, but do you remember when they were married? People set their alarm clocks for the wee hours of the morning, so they could watch it on TV here in America. How many would have attended, I wonder, if the invitation had been wide open to everyone?
The King in our parable is very concerned about attendance, isn’t he?
This parable is an allegory on the marriage of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, to his bride. . . The Church. And do you know what that means? It means that God WANTS, more than anything else, for the banquet hall of the Kingdom of God to be full. He wants standing room only!
How absolutely awesome it is that God considers each of us his friends, his loved ones, and wants us close by. He WANTS us to gather around his table in perpetual fellowship with him and with the saints!
Whether we’re rich or poor, even bad or good.
The good news of this Gospel is that GOD WANTS US THERE!
Why would anyone be foolish enough to turn down such an invitation?
And yet, they turned down the King. One by one so many made their excuses.
Try to imagine with me for a moment that your favorite candidate was just elected President of the United States. Then suppose within a few days, the mail delivery truck pulls up to your house, and you are handed an invitation to the Inaugural Ball. Now, I’m not talking about one of those pre-printed, Xerox-copied invitations that are sent out bulk mail. NO.
Your invitation is hand-written, signed in real ink by the President himself and sent to you by first class mail. What’s more, you don’t have provide your transportation to Washington D.C. because there are two round trip plane tickets inside, and you find out that Mr. President has already cleared it with your boss and made provisions for you to be away from your office. If this isn’t enough, he also gave you a gift certificate for an amount that will allow you to dress to the hilt.
What would you do? Would you punch out the mail carrier?
Would you make up some excuse for why you couldn’t attend?
That’s what those haughty folks did to the King in the parable. It’s almost hard to understand how they could possibly refuse such a free gift as an invitation to a Royal Banquet, but refuse they did.
God has issued his invitation. He hand delivered it over and over and over again. Why do so many make excuses? Why do so many fail to show up for the grandest of all celebrations, life with God?
We don’t have to provide transportation. God comes to us.
We don’t have to worry about whether our clothes are appropriate or clean because, as it says in the Book of Revelation, God has given us robes washed in the Blood of the Lamb.
It’s almost too good to be true isn’t it! But you see, I think that’s part of the problem. We’re so used to the idea that God is an old ogre, that he is a patriarchal despot who demands a pound of flesh daily. We’ve gotten so used to a God that we think lives and breathes by our standards of justice and fair play, by our standards of just desserts, that we just can’t believe that the invitation is genuine!
In the book Parables of Judgement, Robert Capon compares this parable to a scene on a used car lot:
Many are Called. There is no one in the whole world, good or bad or indifferent who hasn’t been walked around to the back of the lot by the divine salesman and offered the Kingdom for nothing. But few are chosen; because do you know what most of us do? First thing — before we let ourselves sink into the leather upholstery or listen to the engine purr — we get suspicious. We kick the tires. We slam the doors. And then, even if we do decide to take it, we start right in worrying about the warranty and fussing about the cost of insurance.
But God doesn’t help us with that tough customer routine. He just sits there in the front office and remains Mr. Giveaway, the Mad Dog Tyson of Parousia Motors, the Crazy Eddy of Eternity whose prices are insane!
The only catch? You have to be willing to believe in an operation that would put any respectable God out of the deity business!
You would think that such good news would be received with wide-open arms, but it isn’t. One of the hardest topics for a preacher to preach on is GRACE. Do you know why? Because you have to tell them that it’s unmerited, and it’s absolutely free! Almost always they come back and say, Well yeah, but there must be some catch. Surely God must stop short of giving it all away. Surely He must make some demands on us. Surely there must be some way a person can get evicted from the banquet hall?
The fact is, my dear friends in Christ, God does not do such things. God has expectations, hopes and dreams for us, but he lets us chart our course.
But what about that poor unfortunate man who didn’t meet the dress code in today’s Gospel? He was thrown out on his ear into the cold of the night. He wasn’t wearing the wedding garment. It wasn’t because he didn’t have one, for the King handed them out at the door. No. He came for the wrong reasons. He came with an attitude of disregard for the King and the others at the banquet. He wouldn’t even meet the minimal expectation of donning the garment that was handed to him for the occasion! And so he is living proof of my old adage that says, The only REAL excommunication is self- excommunication. He rejected the King and the other guests, and so he subjected himself to the cold and the dark of loneliness!
The wedding garment is the garment of Discipleship. There is a tension between God’s desire to invite everyone into the Kingdom and the need for those who accept the invitation to live the life of discipleship.
I know, for one, that I’ve tended to emphasize the invitation without counting the cost. To do so might be what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace.
Yes we’re all invited. And one of the reasons that we in the Episcopal Church are so fond of The Holy Eucharist is because we believe it to be a foretaste of the banquet that awaits: not just in heaven, but here on earth as well. It’s described as a wedding banquet because the King’s son once told us that he wants his joy to be complete in us. The banquet to which we are invited is a banquet of Joy.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that I think the King would have liked to blow up and hang in the banquet hall. It said simply, DON’T POSTPONE JOY.
Carl Jung once counseled a man who had been in therapy for six months and was getting no better. Finally Jung said:
Friend, I can’t do any more for you…. what you need is God.
How do I find God, Dr. Jung? the man asked.
I’m not exactly sure, said Jung, but I suspect if you find a group of people someplace that believe in him passionately and just spend some time with them, you will find God.
The man did just that and was healed!
So let us gather about our tables this week as a foretaste of the gathering that will take place out there beyond our stained glass windows. Let us adopt the slogan, JUST SAY YESwhen it comes to God’s invitation to his Son’s wedding. It is the wedding now of God and flesh. It’s our wedding and we must never postpone joy!
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