Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St Matthew.
And we read from this gospel reading today:
The kingdom
of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.
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 follows on exactly from where we left off last week. Last week’s
reading was where Jesus tells a parable about a master of a house who least out
his vineyard to tenants. When the time came for the harvest, and to pick the
fruit, the masters sends his servants to go and collect the fruit. But the
tenants beat and kill and stone the servants. Finally, when the master sends
his son, they also kill the son.
Jesus is telling
this parable in the last week before his death on the cross. He is the Good
Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, as it says in the Gospel of
John. He knows he’s going to die at the end of the week, and so he dedicates
himself simply to teaching.
And in our
Gospel reading today, Jesus tells another parable, this time about a wedding
feast. He says: A kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a
wedding feast for his son.
It’s amazing
that here we are as Christians gathered together this morning to hear God’s
Word. And yet, here at St Mark’s Mt Barker, we’re not the only people who are
going to church. All throughout the hills, all throughout South Australia, all
through the country, there are also people going to church and will be hearing
this reading today. But also, there are people from all different countries and
all kinds of different cultures that are also coming to church today, and we
are all one church together with all of them too.
And as we
read the bible, we come to realise that are certain passages that sit more
naturally with different cultures, depending on our day to day experience. For
example, today Jesus says: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son. And we live in a society that doesn’t
have a king, or at least we have royalty that live in another country, but also
we live in a society where people rarely go to weddings. And this is going to
have a big impact on how we hear this reading.
We have to
understand first of all just what a wonderful thing a wedding is! Two people
coming together in marriage—two families celebrating with their whole community
as a new man and a new woman seek to join their lives together in love, and build
a home and a life and a family together. And this is not just any kind of
wedding feast in our reading. This is a royal wedding. This is a wedding feast
that a king is throwing. It is lavish, it is extravagant, it is expensive! This
is the kind of wedding that, if you were invited to it, is going to be one of
the best occasions you might ever go to in your whole life.
And who’s
getting married? It says: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son. Here the parable is about God the
Father who gives a wedding feast for Jesus Christ his Son. And who is Jesus
getting married to? He is getting married to his own bride, the holy Christian
church. St Paul says: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her. Here at the end of the week, Jesus is going to
suffer and die. He is going to give himself up for the church.
In the last
book of the bible, the book of Revelation, we read there about how the whole of
eternal life will be like one long wonderful glorious wedding banquet! It says:
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!
But even
today, here in our church, here in Mt Barker, do you know that we are joining
in with this wedding feast in heaven? Sometimes, we come to church, and we’ve
struggled to get out of bed and get ourselves organised, and we might be tired
and sleepy—but we are actually here today as part of a royal wedding feast.
Just imagine if you might have seen a royal wedding on TV—now times the
lavishness by 10, times the extravagance by 100, times the cost by 1000! Today
we are part of a wedding feast that has been paid by the most precious currency
in the world—the precious blood of Christ!
People treat
coming to church like we’re coming to a funeral. But this isn’t a funeral—this
is a wedding. And it is the most wonderful wedding feast that we can imagine.
Just look at all the different courses: We get the free forgiveness of every
single one of our sins. We hear the word of God, spoken to us from the other
side of the grave, and the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We
bring our needs and the needs of the whole world to God in prayer. We confess
our faith in the presence of God and of all the angels. We eat and drink the
body and blood of Jesus given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. We
receive the blessing of God on our bodies and our souls for the week ahead,
which is not just powerful for one week, but stretches into eternity. We just
can’t imagine what a wonderful thing it is to be a Christian, and we can’t
imagine what a wonderful thing it is to come to church. Even what we think is
the most boring of Sunday mornings in our eyes, in God’s eyes is the most
lavish, extravagant royal wedding banquet. And even if I were to keep on
talking about it for hours and hours on end, I would always fall short of
telling you just how wonderful it is.
Think about
this! If only we knew this and thought about this deeply! If only many more
people would realise just what God has prepared for them.
So we read
in our reading: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who have a
wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited
to the wedding feast, but they would not come.
They
wouldn’t come? Why on earth wouldn’t they come?
We read on: Again
he sent other servants, saying, “Tell those who are invited, See, I have
prepared my dinner, my oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered, and
everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” But 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.
This is just
weird! Wouldn’t you want to go to this wedding banquet? Nothing is required of
them! They are simply invited just to come! Come and enjoy the food, the wine!
Come and enjoy the music, the dancing! Why wouldn’t they come?
And yet,
this is exactly where we find ourselves in our church today! If only people
knew what the church was! If only those outside the church and those inside the
church knew that the church was Christ’s holy bride, maybe people wouldn’t
treat it like it were a stray dog. If only we knew that every church service is
a wonderful wedding banquet! And yet, what does it say? They paid no
attention, and went off, one to his farm, another to his business. The
people are apathetic, they’re not interested. They think that their hard work
on the farm or in their business is more important. They replace God’s work of
preparing a banquet with their own day to day work. And anyone who has tried to
invite anyone to this wedding banquet, whether they are a pastor, or whether
they are a person who loves the church and loves Jesus and wants more people to
be part of it, knows what this apathy is. And in our culture, we are especially
apathetic, because we are so careless with our use of language. People say all
kinds of things that mean nothing, and so when someone comes along and says:
Jesus is risen from the dead, they don’t think we are actually mean what we are
saying.
Do you know
that when God speaks his word, he actually means what he says and says what he
means? If only we knew just how precious a thing it is to hear this word of
God, and to know just what a wonderful thing it is to be invited to this
banquet.
We also
read: The rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed
them. Why don’t they want to come? Why do people treat the king’s servants
so badly? Is it because they don’t want to hear the word of the king? Is
because they hate their king and don’t want to enjoy his wonderful
extravagance? Not only are these people apathetic, but they are hostile.
See how the
people killed Jesus at the end of the week, and what a brutal, horrific death
they inflicted on him. And all throughout Christian history, people will treat
God’s messengers with hostility. Maybe you have tried to share the gospel with
a friend or a family member, and you have experienced this kind of hostility.
Jesus knows this hostility, and knows where you’ve been and what you’ve gone
through. It’s such a wonderful gift when people do listen though, and do take
up the invitation and want to come and enjoy this wedding feast.
We read: The
king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murders and burned
their city. Our Gospel reading speaks a judgment upon those who are
apathetic and hostile to God’s word. But then it says: 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.
Now the
first part of our reading deals with inviting people to the banquet.
But let me
now read you the second part of the parable. This part doesn’t just deal with
being invited to the wedding, but deals with the people who have come to the
wedding and are already there. Jesus says: 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.
There are
some jobs that require dirty clothes. There are some jobs that require a person
to get a lot of grease and dirt on their hands. But everyone knows that when
you go to a wedding, you put on your best clothes. It’s not the time for your
work-clothes, for your old jeans, for your tracky-dacks. When you go to a
wedding, you get a nice suit, a nice outfit—you put on your best clothes.
And the same
goes for this wedding feast. You know, the only people that are invited to this
wedding banquet are sinners. Sometimes even we as Christians are surprised
about this—we come to church and expect everyone to act like Jesus, only to
realise that our annoyance at them is hardly acting like Jesus either. We come
into God’s kingdom dressed in the filthiest of rags: we’re really so unworthy
of being here.
But Jesus
gives us himself as our clothing. Romans says: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. And also in
Galatians it says: For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put
on Christ. Ephesians says: Put off your old self, which belongs to your
former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be
renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after
the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Sometimes we
think: I’m forgiven. It doesn’t matter what I do anymore, what I say, how I
act. Even people say: it doesn’t matter what I believe.
Of course,
it matters. If you were going to meet the Queen, everything would matter – how
you shook her hand, how you stood, not just how you dressed. Just think how
much more everything matters when you’re going not just to the royal wedding of
the Queen’s son or grandson, like Prince William, but when you’re going to the
royal wedding of God’s own son.
But our
wedding garment is not our own. We must look at our life, and we may very well
see so many regrets, so many disappointment, so many lost opportunities, so
many sadnesses and sorrows, so many failures, so much sin. Are we allowed to
come to the wedding banquet with all of that?
Yes, and
Jesus gives you himself as your covering. He covers you over with his
righteousness, with his blood, with his forgiveness. The man in the reading
doesn’t want this. He wants to come along to the wedding for a free feed. He
doesn’t know what he has been invited to—a wedding feast. And he doesn’t know
in whose presence he is standing—the king of heaven, together with the king’s
son and his bride. He doesn’t honour the king, he just wants to come along and
half a laugh with the guests and make the king pay for it. And so the king
says: Get out. Bind him hand and foot
and cast him into the outer darkness.
What a
wonderful gift it is that Jesus not just invited us to his wedding feast, but
that he actually gives us his own self as a garment to put on! Jesus not only
baptises us with water and the word of God, but then he also covers us
completely over with this forgiveness of sins, and sends us the Holy Spirit to
believe this word. Jesus not only invites to come and eat the wonderful banquet
of the Lord’s Supper, but he also gives us his own body and blood to eat and
drink. All our weakness is covered over by his strength.
We look at
this wedding feast and we just see it with human eyes—we see it all covered
with human weakness, and human frailty. But we forget one thing—all this has
God’s word added to us—and so it is all clothed with divine power, God’s own
strength, God’s own authority, this is all clothed with God’s own majesty and
God’s own glory. This is the wedding feast of his Son, Jesus Christ, and you
are invited to it!
Amen.
Lord Jesus
Christ, come and clothe us today with every gift of your Holy Spirit,
especially the gift of faith. Our faith is so weak—if only it were stronger.
But we know that you cover over our weak faith with the strong power of your
word and of your promises. Strengthen and keep us firm in your word and faith
until we die. Amen.
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