October 11, 2020 | Rev. Graham McCaffrey
Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14
Later in the service after communion we will say together:
Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen
We say this doxology, together every Sunday at the close of our service of Holy Communion, and what a way to end our services it is. In it we collectively affirm, celebrate and proclaim God’s glory and power working in us, through the church and in Jesus Christ. We stand together and affirm that God’s power is working in us, that in us his power can do more than we could ever ask or imagine. Although we claim God is the focus – and perhaps sometimes He is – it is easy for us to shift the focus away from God and on to our place in God’s action. We can easily become the subject of the doxology, the hinge on which the whole glorious hymn resides. The same is often true of Scripture.
We always seek to find ourselves on God’s good side, never accepting that he might be speaking to and about us. This temptation is no different in our Gospel reading for today. In our reading today we heard the parable of the wedding banquet.
A king is throwing a wedding banquet for his son and invites people to celebrate with him on this joyous occasion. They ignore his invites, but he then he sends out his servants again, with a message about how glorious a banquet it will be, this will be the party of the year. This time his invited guests beat his servants, humiliate them and kill them. After punishing those people who murdered his servants, the king finally sends more servants into the streets to invite all manner of people to fill his banquet hall, both the good and bad. And lastly when the king enters into the feast he notices a man who is improperly clothed, and has his servants kick the offending man out.
This last section of the parable, verses 11-14, can be particularly difficult for us as readers. We certainly would never identify ourselves with this man who is “bound and thrown to the outer darkness”! Neither would we identify ourselves with the first people who are invited to the feast – they rejected God’s grace, some violently, after all – we would certainly never do that! And so we are left identifying ourselves with those people who are brought into the wedding banquet, both good and bad (though of course we’re the good), and are fit to stay, those people who although we were not invited in the first place, do receive God’s grace and remain in the kingdom of heaven.
But what if, what if we are not called to find our place in the Scriptures but to find God’s? To seek out what the Scriptures tell us about God and who he is? What if this parable is not about who we are, and who we identify with, but who God is? What if we ask the question how is God revealed to us in this text? How is he glorified?
In our focus to find ourselves in the Scripture, we forget the very nature of what Scripture is, a revelation of God – a testimony to the whole grand story of God’s creative and redemptive self – not a self-help book, not a book to find ourselves, but a book to lose our “selves” in God’s Word revealed to us through his Son Jesus Christ. In light of this let us turn again to our Gospel reading for today, seeking to understand what it tells us about God.
The parable begins with the affirmation that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his Son. Here, Jesus is making a two-fold affirmation, firstly he is revealing that he is the Son of God, he is the one for whom the wedding banquet is held. Secondly, in speaking about the wedding banquet, Jesus is alluding to Isaiah’s prophecy of the end of the age, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” Jesus’ link to the Old Testament is no coincidence or prop; he is showing that this is what God had intended all along, that the kingdom of heaven was like Isaiah’s feast for all people.
In the next verse we learn that the King has invited guests to this banquet, after all what would a wedding banquet be without any guests. Although guests are pretty important for the feast, it is by the King’s grace that the guests are invited; it is by his grace that they will partake in the wondrous feast. Despite this grace, the initial invitation is ignored, the King’s guests have better things to do than go to the Son’s wedding banquet. Despite this his grace is extended further, he sends out more servants to call in the guests, proclaiming the wondrous bounty of their Lord’s Table. The first four verses of the parable highlight God’s graciousness, God’s desire to be in relationship with humanity. God is inviting us to celebrate with him a most personal event, the elevation of his Son Jesus Christ. God’s graciousness is repeated even when it is ignored, like the King who sends out his servants again and again God is continually gracious, his invitation is extended again in spite of rejection.
In verses 5 and 6 we hear again how the King’s subjects ignore his invitations to his banquet, and not only ignore but defy and abuse the King’s grace by beating, humiliating and killing his servants. And so the King, in verse 7, sends his armies and enacts judgement upon the perpetrators. In these verses it can be difficult for us to see God as anything but vengeful or angry; however, we must understand that it is God’s nature to utterly detest and be disgusted by Sin and the disruptive effect it has on our relationship with Him.
Here we are not talking about the sins we may be guilty of day to day, but Sin with a capital ‘S’, something far bigger than anything any one of us does. It is visible in the way corporations treat workers in sweat shops, it is visible in the way we pillage the earth to create more things we don’t need, it is visible in the way people of colour are oppressed, it is visible in the way people and politicians flout COVID-19 restrictions and endanger the lives of vulnerable people, it is visible in the way the way our culture has built up the individual as Lord of themselves and it is visible in the worldwide church’s failing to effectively speak out and stand up against all of these.
And yet God’s grace abounds even in the face of this disobedience towards him and our rejection of his love and mercy. In God’s mercy and graciousness he moves against Sin and destroys it, like the King of the parable. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God destroyed the power of Sin; God enacted his vengeance upon Sin on the cross for the sake of whole world; that is the epitome of God’s grace.
The three verses following this describe how the King sends out his servants yet again, this time to invite all the people of the city so that the banquet hall was filled and so the servants gathered up all the people of the city, both good and bad so that the room was filled. God’s grace is boundless; like the King of the parable, he seeks to invite all people into his kingdom, sending his servants out to gather up every sort of person no matter who they are.
God invites people into his kingdom, gathers them up into it and pours out his grace upon them, not because of anything they have done but because of what he has done. The invitation to enter God’s kingdom is offered to every one of us – the good and the bad – all are present at the celebration of the wedding banquet. In these verses we see the whole scope of God’s love, he embraces all people so that all people may glorify and honour him at the elevation of his Son Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven.
By God’s own efforts Sin’s embrace on our lives is removed; we are free to bask in communion with God by the gracious gift of faith in his Son Jesus. From God’s gift of faith flows obedience, the true freedom to be holy in the sight of the Lord.
It is in this context we must understand the final four verses of the passage, the man who was thrown out of the hall for not wearing the correct attire. Certainly from the outset the King appears unfair, uncompromising and downright ungracious and unmerciful.
How could the King throw out this man, how was he to know what proper wedding attire was? He just came off the street! It is interesting to note however that he is the only person who had forgotten wedding attire!
On the surface it is definitely difficult to directly parallel God and the King at the end of this parable, unless we want to assert that God is unfair, uncompromising and ungracious and unmerciful. That is after all not what God is, so how can we understand theses verses?
God requires obedience, not as a condition for his inviting us into the Kingdom of God, that has been done for all in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Obedience is required as a result of our invitation and being gathered in to the kingdom, being holy in the sight of the Lord is only possible after God’s gracious gift, but it is our choice to put on the wedding attire, it is our choice to be obedient to God, basking in communion with him.
The man who is bound and thrown out of the kingdom has been disobedient, he has come to the wedding banquet and thought he could act as he had before, believing that God’s grace has brought about no transformation in him. Without an outward transformation we remain disobedient to God, refusing God’s gracious invitation. Ultimately God’s grace is transformative.
As we finish our service of Holy Communion today and say together the great doxology, remember why we are here, remember the gracious God whose name deserves all honour and glory, remember that we are part of his story and he is the focus when we say together:
Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen