Trinity 20 [Matthew 22:1-14] (13-Oct-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am, lay reading), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 22:1-14)

Tell those who are invited, See I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

 

Our Gospel reading today comes from Matthew 22, which is a very special part of St Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey on Palm Sunday in Matthew 21, and in Matthew 26, he is betrayed by Judas and arrested. So our reading today comes between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, during Holy Week. This sets the mood and the character for what Jesus tell us today. Today’s Gospel is spoken by Jesus right before he goes to the cross: he knows he’s going to die at the end of the week, and yet he dedicates himself to feed his hearers with his teaching.

 Right before our Gospel reading, Jesus tells another parable about the tenants. Here we read about a master of a house who planted a vineyard and leases it out to tenants and goes away. Then he sends his servants to come and collect the fruit, and the tenants treat all the servants badly. However, when the master sends his son, they kill him and throw him out of the vineyard. So Jesus explains this parable by saying: Therefore I tell you the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

 
After this we read that the chief priest and the Pharisees were seeking to arrest him.

 

Now, since Jesus had said the kingdom of God will be...give to a people producing its fruits, he tells the parable of the wedding banquet in our reading today. He wants to describe to us what sort of a people this is.

Our Gospel reading also starts by saying that Jesus answered and said to them in parables. There are all sorts of places in the gospel where it says Jesus answered people when nobody asked him any questions. However, Jesus knew that the high priests and the Pharisees were seeking to arrest him. So he gives an answer to their hidden thoughts. Jesus is the only one who answers the secrets of our hearts and the plans of our minds. He is our Rock and our Redeemer who tests the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts.

 

Jesus tells us the parable of a wedding banquet. In this life, the wedding banquet is speaking about the church. We are all invited to the supper. But in the next life, the wedding banquet is speaking about the company of heaven. Now there is a difference between the church on earth and the church in heaven, in the sense that there are always false Christians who like to enter into the church in this earth, but in the next life, no one will be able to enter under pretence, or by paying God off with a bribe at the gates. We are not saved by church membership, but by faith in Jesus Christ. You can see that there is a difference between the church in this life and in the next life in our parable, because once everyone is invited, there is a man who is thrown out into the darkness, for not being dressed in the right clothes. He is not dressed properly.

The king said to him:

Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?

 Let’s take this warning of Jesus to heart with all seriousness.

The whole of the Christian faith is a wonderful wedding banquet! Everything is a banquet, a delightful feast. All the food comes out of the oven, course by course, and as the waiters bring each course into the room, the smell fills the air and goes up into the nostrils, and each guest can’t wait to put on their napkins and tuck in! Think of each course part by part: we have God’s marvellous creation of the world. We have God’s wonderful protection of his chosen Jewish people. We have the conception of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, when the Angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary. We have the miraculous birth of Jesus, when all the angels filled the dark night with the sort of harmony and music that could only come from heaven! We have the suffering and death and burial of Jesus. We have his resurrection on Easter morning. We have his ascension to his father’s throne! In the future, we still await to feast on some more banquets: the return of Jesus at the end of the world, the resurrection of our bodies, the enjoyment of his everlasting kingdom!

 Taste and see that the Lord is good! How sweet are your words to my taste!

 What a wonderful banquet we have to enjoy as Christians!

We read:

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.

 What a wonderful king we have, our heavenly Father, who reigns over the kingdom of heaven! What a wonderful Son he has, Jesus Christ, who shares his kingdom with him! What a wonderful thing it is to be part of this kingdom, as servants and guests, together with the angels and archangels, the royal armies and legions!

[The king] sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast. God our heavenly Father, the king of heaven, sent out all through history his servants to call people to enjoy the great wedding banquet for his Son. Just think of all the different people God sent: Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all the prophets, the Apostles: Peter, John, James, St Paul, the evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John… then think of all the thousands of pastors and evangelists he sent out into the world all through history carrying on this apostolic faith. As we say in the Nicene Creed: I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic church. We could also say instead of “Christian” the word “Catholic”, which means the church of all places, of all times, of all peoples. For us today, it’s often hard for us to use to word “catholic” without thinking of the Roman Catholic Church. However, right from the day of Pentecost, we read about the first Christians that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. This is what it means to be a truly apostolic church: to be devoted to the faith of the apostles. And for every pastor in history, we seek to fulfil the words of St Paul where he said: I delivered to you...what I also received. The living church passes on the living eyewitness of the apostles who saw the living and resurrected Lord. And so the king of heaven, our heavenly Father, always continually sends out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast.

 

However, we read: but they would not come.

 

The king of heaven doesn’t give up though. Just as he commands and encourages all of his servants not to become weary in doing good, God himself does not grow weary in sending out his messengers. Because those who were first invited would not come to the wedding banquet, he sends out a second invitation. We read: Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have ben slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.' He tells them not just that the wedding banquet is happening, but he tells them about what they can expect: the best Texan barbecued brisket! The best roast beef fresh out of the oven with potatoes and parsnips and all those delicious roast vegetables with all the gravy to cover your plate! The best eye-fillet steaks, with pepper, and delicious sauces, and tasty condiments--you name it! See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Just think about how each year, we go through the cycle of the church year of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and all the wonderful church festivals! Each Sunday is like another course! Each Sunday is like another roast dinner of the word of God. God is the one who prepares the dinner, and the Holy Spirit goes out from it like the tasty smells--smells to our ears, not to our noses!

 

Everything is ready, says the king.

 Everything that you need for salvation is found in my Holy Scriptures! I have prepared it all! You won’t need to bring your own drinks or sandwiches or potato salads or desserts! This is not a “bring-a-plate” event. You don’t need to bring any of your own works or fancy ideas, or family traditions. Everything is ready and prepared for you in my word. Just come and believe in it.

Come to the wedding feast, he says, not with your feet, but with your hearts, with your souls, with your mind, with your strength! Come and delight yourself at the king's expense! Lift up your hearts! Let them be lifted up to the Lord.

 

But, we read, they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants treated them shamefully and killed them.

 

There’s nothing wrong with farming, nothing wrong with business, but the time comes when the header goes in the shed, the cow-milking machine can have a rest, when the cash register’s rhythm can be interrupted, because it’s time to go to a wedding! You wouldn’t miss a good wedding! And Jesus calls himself our brother! Jesus said to Mary Magdalene on Easter morning: Go to my brothers! How are you going to explain it to Jesus said to your brother that you missed his wedding because you were out on the tractor or packing shelves at Woolworths? Life is too short to miss out on that heavenly kingdom which is not of this world.

 

It’s no wonder, then, that we read:

The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.

Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

The call to the wedding feast goes out to all, both the good and the bad. The church on earth is filled with both good people and bad people. There are people who feel their sin and want to be free of it, but then there are people who want the freedom to continue in sin and to enjoy their sin even more. One person will say, I hate my sin and I want to be rid of it. To this person, when they hear the sweet forgiveness of sin, it will be like a soothing lotion to an open wound, like a refreshing cool drink on a hot day in the sun. But the other person, the forgiveness of sins will just be an excuse to keep on doing what they were always doing. We’re not saved by our good works, but we can always be excluded from the kingdom of heaven if we persist in our bad works. Flee from sin into the arms of Jesus! Seek all your comfort from his precious wounds!

Just imagine if two homeless people just happened to be invited to meet the Queen of England. One of them did everything he could to borrow the best suit he could find, but the other person did nothing and showed up wearing his smelly old shirt. What sort of respect is that for the Queen! Doesn’t he know that he going to meet the Queen?

So now there comes a sifting of the wedding guests:

“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The hypocrite when shown his hypocrisy is always speechless. There is nothing to say when we have spent our lives using the gospel as an excuse. There will come a time when there will be no more excuse.

When you go to a wedding, you put a good suit. You put on your best dress. Everyone knows that. How much more when we are in the presence of Jesus, and are gathered to his wedding feast, don’t we want to take a shovel out to the backyard and bury all our unfashionable ties, all our cheap plastic jewellery and wear something nice! St Peter says:

Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

In Revelation we read:

 Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!

Dear Christian friends, our Christian faith is a great banquet, a wonderful wedding banquet that we are called upon to share. Christ himself is the bridegroom, the food, and the feast. And such a banquet deserves the best clothes, the best of our Christian efforts, the finest of our Christian virtues. However, St Paul says:

All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.

 But what seems shabby in our eyes, is precious in God’s eyes:

 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

The garment that we wear to this wedding is not our own righteousness, it is Christ’s righteousness. This garment is not your works, it is Christ’s works! He gives his own blood, and his own suffering, his own death to us. And through faith alone, it is ours. We stand in the wedding hall clothed in Christ himself! St Paul writes:

you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

How could you possible want to clothe yourself with yourself! How could you possibly reject this wonderful covering of all of Christ’s works given for you free of charge!

What a wonderful gift he gives to us! What a wonderful Saviour and prince and bridegroom we have! May all the praise, glory and honour be to him!

Amen.

Lord Jesus, gather us to your wedding feast, and clothe us with yourself that we may enter as worthy guests, not by our own works and merits, but by your holy and precious work on our behalf. Send us the Holy Spirit, and clean us and purify us and make us holy according to your good and gracious will. Amen.