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Matthew 22:1-14 [NRSV Text from BibleWorks]

22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 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.' 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' 10 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. 11 "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. 13 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.' 14 For many are called, but few are chosen."

READY FOR THE FEAST?

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Surely you’ve heard that old phrase, “I don’t go to church because of all the hypocrites.” Maybe even you have said it, too. Well, we’re going to think about that line today as we consider Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast.

Let’s start first of all with what the church is. The Greek word for church “ekklesia” is defined literally as “a calling out” as in the assembly of Christians – the gathering of the called out ones. In terms of Jesus’ parable, the church is the gathering of the invited ones that responded to the King’s invitation. The church is, first of all, the gathering of those that showed up when they were invited. Please remember that lurking behind this parable is the familiar image of God as bridegroom and Israel as God’s bride.

Now here’s a little cultural background to Jesus’ story. In that day, it was common to invite guests to the elaborate wedding festivities well in advance of the day. And then a reminder invitation would go out just before the feast. To have been invited not once but twice and then not to have attended would have already amounted to a great slight to the host. But in the Lord Jesus’ parable that’s not the worst thing that happened! The guests not only didn’t show up, they abused and even killed the king’s messengers that came with a reminder invitation.

Within the context of Matthew’s Gospel, this parable typically is read as a slap at Jews who did not respond to the Lord God’s invitation to recognize Jesus as God’s incarnate Son. Because the story is grouped with a series of judgment parables that appear shortly before the suffering and death of Jesus, Christians typically hear this parable as a judgment on the Jews that persecuted and killed many of the prophets and then finally killed God’s Son Jesus.

Christians also typically see themselves as the ones that got invited after the enraged King allowed the original wedding guests to be destroyed. Hence, Christians have typically seen the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jewish people in 70 AD as God’s revenge for their rejection of Jesus.

In that traditional anti-Semitic way of reading Matthew’s Gospel and particularly this parable, Christians come off in a triumphalistic light as the good folks that heeded the King’s invitation – unlike those that went before them.

The problem with reading the parable in that way is that the Lord Jesus, his inner circle, and most of the early Christians were Jews. Jesus’ followers continued to gather for Jewish worship and observe God’s Law, not only prior to the crucifixion and resurrection, but even after the ascension of Jesus and the birth of the Christian church at Pentecost. The separation of Christian Jews from Jewish synagogues came later in the first century AD than Matthew’s Gospel.

Now, it is patently obvious that within Matthew’s Gospel the rejection of Jesus by Jewish religious leaders is a key part of the narrative leading up to the trial, suffering, and death of God’s Son and that is an inescapable part of the story. It is also patently obvious that within Matthew’s Gospel the contrast is drawn between the joyous welcome given Jesus on Palm Sunday and the bitter rejection of Jesus by the crowd at His crucifixion. But Matthew doesn’t tell us this story in order to build up Christian antipathy towards Jews, for after all, Jewish Christians were the most significant part of the early church.

I submit to you that Matthew’s intent by including this parable is to address the problem of hypocrisy – calling oneself a Christian and yet neitherresponding to the Lord’s invitation to His feast like those that stayed away in the story norbeing ready for the feast when one did show up.

That’s, of course, not the popular reading of this parable today. Many Christians today read this parable as a word about inclusion: that everyone is welcome to come to God’s feast just the way they are.

British bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright comments: “We want to hear a nice story about God’s throwing the party open to everyone. We want (as people now fashionably say) to be ‘inclusive’, to let everyone in. We don’t want to know about judgment on the wicked, or about demanding standards of holiness, or about weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew for Everyone: Part Two, 82).

Unfortunately for those that want this to be a story about “inclusivity”, first of all, many people in the story didn’t show up for the feast even though they were invited – so they aren’t included. And the last word in today’s reading is a word of judgment on those that show up but are unprepared for the feast – they aren’t included either.

Now Episcopal epicurean theologian Robert Capon would respond to his sometime brother across the pond that only an idiot would not come to a feast that is free. And he would add his ditto regarding someone that is given a free set of wedding clothes (the garment of Christ’s righteousness) but refuses to wear it. Capon would say hell is only for idiots that refuse to come to the party wearing the free duds provided them.

And any Lutheran worth her or his salt would doubtless want to make sure that Bishop Wright wasn’t implying that the invitation was not a free gift in Jesus Christ and that the bishop also wasn’t implying that the wedding garment was something we put on by our own effort or merit. (Elertian Lutherans everywhere would shout “Jesus plus is Jesus less” – if you need something more than Jesus’ death, then you don’t need Jesus.)

But both Fr. Capon and the crucified-Jesus-only-Lutherans need to hear Bishop Wright’s admonition (ala Bonhoeffer) that the grace of God is refused and the death of Jesus gets wasted when the resurrected and ever present Jesus has no place in the lives of the hypocrites that call themselves Christians but don’t come to His feast, as well as, the hypocrites that call themselves Christians but don’t put on their free baptismal wedding garment daily by repentance in word and deed.

It is a lived out caricature of monergism (the belief that grace means God does all the work) that leads to synergism (the belief that one must cooperate with God’s grace). Indeed the Anabaptist (re-baptism) movement at the time of the Reformation (that is, in part, the ancestor of evangelicalism today) was as much a response to cheap grace as the letter of James was to a misreading of Paul. In the first century, James had to say “faith without works is dead” precisely because antinomian (lawless) Christians were refusing to come to the feast or were coming blissfully clothed not in Christ’s righteousness but in their own rebellious daily wear. Paul himself had already said “NO” to such cheap grace.

Fr. Capon may well be right in his books on Jesus’ parables that only idiots choose hell over a free feast with free clothes. But the fact remains that indeed Jesus’ parable makes clear (and Matthew wants us to hear Him) that hypocrites may call themselves Christians but they will finally not be included at the heavenly feast, and it will be their own fault!

Bishop Wright concludes: “His [Jesus’] love reached them [those that were invited to the feast] where they were, but his love refused to let them stay as they were. Love wants the best for the beloved. Their lives were transformed, healed, and changed.”

“Actually, nobody really believes that God wants everyone to stay exactly as they are. God loves serial killers and child molesters; God loves ruthless and arrogant businessmen; God loves manipulative mothers that damage their children’s emotions for life. But the point of God’s love is that he wants them to change. He hates what they’re doing and the effects it has on everyone else – and on themselves, too. Ultimately, if he’s a good God, he cannot allow that sort of behaviour, and that sort of person, if they don’t change, to remain for ever in the party he’s throwing for his son....”

“The point of the story is that Jesus is telling the truth, the truth that political and religious leaders often like to hide: the truth that God’s kingdom is a kingdom in which love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness reign unhindered. They are the clothes you need to wear for the wedding. And if you refuse to put them on, you are saying you don’t want to stay at the party. That is the reality. If we don’t have the courage to say so, we are deceiving ourselves, and everyone who listens to us” (Matthew for Everyone: Part Two, 84-85).

Several decades ago singer/songwriter John Prine wrote a clever piece entitled “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” If I were to paraphrase Prine based upon today’s Gospel, I would write: “Your Hypocrisy Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.”

That means that if you stay away from God’s weekly feast because of all the hypocrites that are in church, you’re just as much of a hypocrite if you claim to be a Christian but don’t answer God’s invitation to the feast. Remember: the church is the gathering of those that have answered God’s gracious invitation. His gathering happens every week in anticipation of the final gathering at the great and promised heavenly feast.

Furthermore if you do show up for the feast but you want to stay just the way you are, you’re a hypocrite, too, if you call yourself a Christian. Christ Jesus died on the cross for the ungodly, for your sins and mine, but that’s not the end of the story; it’s the beginning. In the early church, and still in some places today, a new Christian was baptized naked and then was clothed with a white robe, signifying that the person had died to sin with Jesus and been raised to a new life, clothed in Christ’s righteousness.

Christ’s righteousness is a free gift. The wedding garment for the marriage feast is a free gift. God’s grace is a free gift. Only a hypocrite, someone play-acting at being a Christian, comes to the feast but wants to remain clothed in her or his sinful daily wear. That is why Baptism is a way of life. A Christian daily renounces hypocrisy, the pretense that she or he is a joyful guest at God’s feast clothed in Christ’s righteousness while still parading around for the Lord God and all the world to see in the same old everyday pre-baptismal rebellious wear.

Are you tired of hypocrites in the church? Gladly answer God’s call to come to the feast, where you will receive the body and blood of Christ in your empty hands. Gladly take off the filthy old clothes of your rebellion, and put on Christ Jesus every day.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[An MP3 version of this and each week’s sermon is available by 8 p.m. Saturday, Eastern Time (USA), at www.stmatthewsch.org]