Sermon: Wednesday of Trinity 20 - 2018

14 October 2018

Text: Matt 22:1-14

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Our Lord explains the kingdom of heaven by means of another story known to us today as the Parable of the Wedding Feast.  It could have just as easily been named: the Parable of the Ungrateful Invitees.  

As the story goes, a king gives “a wedding feast for his son.”  Servants are sent to the invitees with invitations.  Of course, this is a really big deal: a royal event.  It is a privilege to be invited to something like this, a high honor.  And when the invitees “would not come,” the king tried again, using different servants to deliver the message this time.  But again, the king’s gracious invitation is spurned.  Some preferred to work the farm rather than join the wedding feast.  Others ran businesses that kept them away.  And there was a third group that did what we call today “shooting the messenger.”  For they “treated [the servants] shamefully, and killed them.”

Now we have moved beyond contempt to actual violent rebellion against the king and his rule.  So he is angry.  He makes war on the rebels and burns their city.

But even after all of that, there is still a wedding to be held.  There are still seats to be filled.  So he tells another group of servants: “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.”  He tells the servants to go bring in anyone to fill the seats, “both bad and good.”  And so the wedding hall was “filled with guests.”

This sounds like a happy-ending fairy tale.  But it doesn’t stop here.  For there is an impostor at the wedding: a man who snuck in without the required wedding garment.  He was removed and put into prison: a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This is a story that can be understood on many levels.  

Of course, God the Father is the king, and the son is our Lord, the Son of God.  Our Lord Jesus is often called the “bridegroom” and the Church is His bride.  God chose His people, the descendants of Israel, to be His very own, His beloved bride.  But of course, many times in their history, they ignored the Word of God, and they even mistreated and murdered the prophets who carried the invitation to welcome the coming Messiah.  At times, Israel is cast as an unfaithful wife.

And so the promise to be the people of God was extended to the roads leading all over the known world.  The kingdom of heaven was extended by grace to “both bad and good.”  God calls people who will repent and be baptized into the name of the Father who invites them, the Son who redeems them, and the Holy Spirit who draws them in.  Being the people of God is no longer about being part of the right family or nationality.  It is a matter of being called and chosen, of wearing the right garment: a garment given by God Himself.  

And so this explains the last part of the parable: the “man who had no wedding garment.”  He was trying to enter the eternal heavenly banquet by some means other than what God designed.  He had no invite.  He had no ticket.  He was not wearing the uniform issued by the king.  He thought that didn’t matter.  Maybe he thought that he deserved to be there by his own merit.  Maybe he was depending on his ancestry.  Maybe he thought the king just invited everyone.

But he was wrong.

Dear brothers and sisters, our Lord is trying to teach us that “many are called, but few are chosen.”  He is trying to teach us to wear the wedding garment of being baptized and of believing. For being part of the great eternal banquet has nothing to do with how wealthy you are, who your parents are, what your reputation is, or how much you think you deserve to be there.  Instead, Jesus uses the word “chosen.”

We do not choose Jesus.  We do not make a decision for Jesus.  We do not choose to be a Christian.  We don’t even really choose to come to Church.  We aren’t that good or that smart.  As we confess in our catechism: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

Jesus chooses us.  “Come, follow Me,” He says to His disciples, including us.  He calls us through Baptism, and He chooses us when we respond to His call, taking up our cross, and following Him.  And when we do, we are given a wedding garment.

Dear friends, let us not spurn the gracious invitation.  Of course, we have to tend to our farms and businesses, but let us not make them our priority.  Let us not mistreat the Lord’s servants who come to us with an invitation.  Let us not take the invitation for granted or claim that we are entitled to be at the banquet because of something our grandfathers did, because of our nationality, or because we think that we’re better than those “bad and good” that we find ourselves eating with.

Let us rather come to the table of the Lord graciously and gratefully, knowing that this little feast to which we are invited on this Lord’s Day is a foretaste of the grand feast to which we have been invited in eternity.  For this Supper is a small preview of the wedding feast of the Bridegroom.  Here in time, we who have been called and chosen join the Bridegroom at the table.  We eat the choicest bread and the most magnificent wine, for they are His very body and blood.  Jesus Himself invites us: “Take eat, take drink.” 

And even as our Lord was dressed in royal robes of mockery at His trial before He was stripped of His garments at His crucifixion, He clothes us more magnificently than Solomon in all His splendor, giving us a baptismal garment to wear that grants us admission to the Everlasting Feast.  His blood is the Lamb’s blood that makes death pass us over, but it is also incorporated into that robe that sets us apart as worthy guests at His banquet.  

“Everything is ready,” dear friends.  “Come to the wedding feast,” both here in time, and there in eternity.  Amen.

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