The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 10/11/2020 |Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14| by Paul Bieber|

 

Matthew 22:1-14 Revised Standard Version

22 Again Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, saying, ² “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son, ³ and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast; but they would not come. ⁴ Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, Behold, I have made ready my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ ⁵ But they made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, ⁶ while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. ⁷ The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. ⁸ Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. ⁹ Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.’ ¹⁰ And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

¹¹ “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment; ¹² and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. ¹³ Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’ ¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

 

also

Isaiah 25:1-9

Psalm 23

Philippians 4:1-9

 

 

 

 

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

 

Jesus tells us last parable in this sequence of parables told during the first part of Holy Week as he teaches in the temple. In this final story in the series, he compares the kingdom to the marriage feast at the king’s son’s wedding. As the vineyard owner in last Sunday’s parable of the wicked tenants had done, the king sends messengers. These messengers are sent to those who are on the invitation list. They were aware that the banquet would be held; now all things are ready and the servants call them to the king’s table. But they will not come.

 

Again as in that parable of the vineyard tenants, the host of the marriage feast is nothing if not persistent: shrugging off the indifference of the invitees, he sends more messengers. The reactions of those invited vary: some make light of the invitation; they prefer to go about their daily business; they don’t think the feast is as important as the things they’d really like to do, or the things to which they’ve made a real commitment. Surely, God’s good nature will excuse us if we’ve made other plans.

 

Others, insulted by the persistence of the invitation, mistreat and kill the messengers. And here we skip to the end of that preceding companion story—and go beyond it: the angry king destroys the ungrateful guests and burns their city—while the festive dinner is waiting to be served. This is crossing people off your list for good. The first have become last with a vengeance.

 

Two weeks ago, the teaching of the parable of the two sons was that to reject John the Baptist was to exclude yourself from the kingdom. Last Sunday, the tenants of God’s vineyard rejected his prophetic messengers and, when he sends his Son, the wicked tenants kill him and the vineyard, the kingdom, is taken away from them. Now the axe that was laid at the root of unfruitful trees falls: the parable’s God character has his ungrateful invitees destroyed and their city burned.

 

But we Christians can, we think, breathe a sigh of relief. Like the disobedient son and the wicked tenants, the guests who kill the messengers are surely the parabolic stand-ins for Jesus’ interlocutors, the Jewish religious authorities who will be crushed by the Romans, and Jerusalem burned, in AD 70. Yes, but that is not all. These parables do speak of the historical rejection of Jesus when he comes to his own, and his own receive him not. But they are also the Word of God for us. Our task is to find ourselves in Jesus’ parables. Both last week’s tenants and today’s wedding guests are walking the earth today and in every age.

 

The king’s son’s wedding feast is the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Son, lifted up, has drawn all to himself. To accept or decline the king’s invitation is to accept or reject Jesus’ invitation to believe in him. Many are called, but those who spurn the invitation, whether it’s because they have better things to do in their own eyes or because they’re just plain vicious, though they be first on the world’s list, find themselves last.

 

The king’s son’s wedding feast is Isaiah’s feast of victory. Usually we hear this text at Easter, beginning at vs. 6, the feast. But first comes God’s triumph over his enemies; in vs. 2 a city is destroyed. The city is a place of organization and order—the world’s, but God has made it a ruin. For all peoples and nations to be drawn to worship this God, the world city must be destroyed, death swallowed, all tears wiped away for the poor and needy, the blind and lame, the last, lost, and least, who find themselves going first into the kingdom.

 

They go into the wedding hall, filled with both bad and good; the king’s invitation is pure grace. The kingdom may be compared to this gracious invitation to both wheat and weeds, like a net dragged through the whole world, gathering good and bad. Yes. We want to hear about God throwing a nice inclusive party characterized by universal acceptance. But we shouldn’t forget the end of the parable of the weeds, and of the net, or think that they can be separated from the gracious gift. Some even think of the vignette about the guest without a wedding garment as a separate parable. But the mystery of God’s forgiveness is not something to be taken for granted. God loves us just as we are, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is all right just as they are. The gracious invitation to the mystery of the kingdom calls for a response. We are to be attired in a wedding garment.

 

Some commentators think that the host of this kind of wedding feast would have provided festal garments to the guests, sort of an ultimate goody bag. Others believe that a guest was called quickly to put on his best clothes, at least clean clothes—some indication that she recognizes the importance of the wedding.

 

St. Augustine, in his Sermon 90, asks the question, “What is the wedding garment?” After dismissing several aspects of the Christian life in which both good and wicked people participate, he concludes that the wedding garment is the love that springs from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith. If you have this, he says, your place at the Lord’s table is secure.

 

Well, my heart is impure, my conscience clouded by sin, and my faith is of the “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” variety. The love that springs from these is inadequate clothing indeed. I do not have the sense that my place at the Lord’s table is secure, under Augustine’s interpretation of the wedding garment.

 

And so, when the king comes into the wedding hall to look at the guests, I’m afraid that he’s looking right at me, the one who somehow overlooked the gift of the festal garment, whose clothes are no cleaner than my heart or my conscience. How did I get in there without a wedding garment? I believe that I am called, but how can I know that I have been chosen?

 

I want to suppose my heart is just pure enough, conscience just clear enough, faith just warm enough to show enough love to appear as a wedding garment? I want my merits—such as they are—to be enough. But I know that they are not enough. All my striving to have enough—of what the world values, of what the church values, of what God values—can never succeed. And it doesn’t even count. The merit that counts is Jesus’ merit. Those who respond to the invitation and the gift do so because God has chosen them.

 

Augustine says that the wedding garment is not Baptism; that garment is worn by both good and wicked. But perhaps we might gloss the great theologian of grace: both good and bad are called to the banquet hall, but how do they wear the garment of their Baptism? The wedding garment is not Baptism as such, but the baptized life of daily dying and rising that bears fruit worthy of repentance, every day embracing the gracious invitation anew in trust.

 

To be found without a wedding garment is to reject the new and holy identity God offers and instead to cling to the old life that can never be enough, but can never stop trying to be. If you refuse to put the wedding garment on, you’re saying that you don’t want to stay at the party. If you don’t want to be a guest at this party, or don’t even want to try to put on the wedding garment, or don’t even think it is necessary to want to try, the host will not make you stay. But holding on to your old life will mean bitter consequences: a lot of weeping and teeth-gnashing. If grace is refused, it falls as judgment.

 

But when it is received in trust, even by outcasts and failures, problem people, the unimpressive last, lost, and least, they are clothed in the righteousness from God that comes from faith in Christ. And they are not left speechless. Their tongues are loosed to rejoice in our God’s salvation—always.

 

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

 

 

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net