Trinity XX [Matthew 22:1-14] (24-Oct-2021)

          

This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am

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

See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and 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 in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. 

Our reading today tells us of a parable of Jesus about a royal wedding banquet. And this parable is such a wonderful passage that teaches us many things about the Christian faith.

First of all, it shows us in a particularly wonderful way the Holy Trinity. In the Christian faith, we believe in one God in three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As it says in the Athanasian creed: The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but there are not three gods but one God.

In our reading today, we have a king who is throwing a wedding banquet for his son. This king in our parable today is God the Father. In fact, there many passages throughout the bible where God is called our king. Psalm 10, for example, says: The Lord is king forever and ever. And we call God our king, because he rules over the whole world. And this is a very important thing for us to confess and remind ourselves of in times such as ours which are becoming very difficult for many people. The Lord is king. God is our king. He rules the world. Psalm 24 also says: The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.

But then also, we see that this king is giving a wedding feast for his son. This son in our reading is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity. And just as this son in the parable is a royal son and shares his royalty with his father, who is the king, so also we believe in the Christian faith that Jesus is also true God, and shares his divinity with the Father. Both the Father and the Son are true God together.

But then, also we see in our reading, the Holy Spirit. This king sends out his servants to call those who were invited to the feast. We would often think of these servants as the prophets and apostles, and all kinds of people who call the lost people of the world to the wedding banquet. And these prophets and apostles, and pastors, and teachers, they go out, speaking the Word of God, and as being sent by God, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Remember how on Easter Day, Jesus said to his disciples: Receive the Holy Spirit. As the Father has sent me, so also I am sending you. So as these servants go out, and are sent by Jesus to invite people to the wedding banquet, they go out having received the Holy Spirit.

So we can see in our reading today a wonderful picture of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We see the Father as the king preparing the banquet, the Son as the one who is having the wedding banquet, and also the Holy Spirit working through all these messengers who are going everywhere to call people to this banquet.

Also, Jesus says: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who have a wedding feast for his son. We notice here that Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, and he is also talking about a king. Now, we are not used to having a king, quite in the same way that people in early times had kings and queens. Of course, even today, we have the Queen of England, and although she is the head of state in the United Kingdom, and also Australia, and Canada, and some other countries, she acts in a much more restricted and limited way. She gives her royal assent, or we might say, her approval, or signature, to various laws that the government want to approve. In England, she does this herself, but in Australia, it is done through the Governor General and the state Governors.

But in the kingdom of heaven, there is no need for all these restrictions, because the king is the wonderful king of heaven and earth, God himself. Everything that we can imagine as being good, comes from him, because he is goodness itself. Everything that we can imagine as being fair and just, beautiful and lovely, honest and true, everything comes from this king, from God himself. So God does not simply sign off on laws that we make. No, he is the one who has established the world, built it, set it up, established its laws and the way it works. And for us, this means that we should be happy to have his kingdom at work among us and in us, because he is such a wonderful king. Even Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer: Your kingdom come.

And so, our reading today, shows us a bit more of what this kingdom looks like, what it’s character is, and what it looks like. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.

So, first of all, we’ve spoken about how the different characters of this parable reveal the Holy Trinity, and we’ve spoken about the royal, kingly character of this parable. But let’s also consider for a moment the fact that this parable is about a wedding feast.

A number of passages in the New Testament speak about Jesus as a groom and his church as the bride. For example, Jesus tells the wonderful parable of the Ten Virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom to arrive at midnight. Also, there is a passage where people ask Jesus why John the Baptist’s disciples practised a lot of fasting, but Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast. On this occasion, Jesus spoke about himself as the bridegroom. He says: Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Also, John the Baptist also spoke about Jesus as the bridegroom. He says: The who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Actually, this picture of Christ as the groom and the church as his bride is the basis of everything to do with the Christian teaching of marriage. We read in Ephesians: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Just as Adam and Eve, right at the beginning of time, enjoyed the Garden of Eden as a kind of continual wedding feast for themselves, so also in the church, our whole life as Christians, and even the next life too, when we see Christ face to face in heaven, is a kind of wedding feast. Even in the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus visited a wedding at Cana, where he turned water into wine. We read that this was the first of his signs, his first miracle. And this miracle he performed first, because he wanted to show to everyone that his own kingdom was a kind of marriage feast, a wedding banquet.

On a side note: today in our world, where there is an incredible increase of darkness and evil, and opposition to Christianity and the church, both from outside the church and within the church, this opposition to Jesus and his people often comes together with an opposition to marriage. There ends up being fewer weddings, and a redefining marriage, and attacking and destroying marriages, and also marriage in general as an institution. Jesus holds the marriage between a man and woman up to us as a wonderful, beautiful thing, to be treasured and respected, and honoured.

So, all of these things—the Holy Trinity, the fact that God is our King, the fact that he holds a wedding banquet for his son, with his bride the church—all these things form the backdrop and the setting for this parable in our reading today.

But there’s one other part of this parable that we should also consider. When the king sends out his servants, they say: 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.”

The word here for “slaughtered” can also be translated as “sacrificed”. Sometimes, this word is used to just mean the animals were killed, but sometimes it refers to the way that animals might have been sacrificed, for example, in the temple, in religious ceremonies. Here it seems as though they’re just talking about the animals being killed. But in many ancient cultures, and still today, in some traditional cultures in Africa and other places around the world, many people most of the time lived as vegetarians, and didn’t eat much meat. Actually, even in the life of Jesus, he eats fish mostly on various occasions. The time to eat meat, and kill an ox or a calf, was for a special occasion. In the parable of the prodigal son, when the boy comes home after his long disappearance, then his father kills the fattened calf for him. It’s a special occasion. And because it was such a special occasion, people probably said prayers and dedicated the animal to God, offering it to him, before they killed it. Even today in many parts of Africa, they do the same. If they someone has been away for a long time, and they return home, and they have a special banquet, they would dedicate the animal to God out of thanksgiving, and then kill it, cook it up, and enjoy the feast.

So, in the same way, in our reading, there is a kind of animal sacrifice that is part of this wedding banquet. And what does this remind you of? Well, at God’s wedding banquet, the wedding banquet held in honour of Jesus Christ and his bride the church, Jesus himself, is slaughtered, sacrificed, and offered on the cross. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He offers his life for us, and gives his life as sacrifice, as an atonement, as a offering, a payment, for sin, for all sin, for each and every single sin.

It seems strange to us that the person who is the bridegroom, the son of the King who is getting married, is also the food of the banquet, which is offered and sacrificed. This is an incredible mystery, where all of the ways in which we imagine things, and all of the pictures in the Scriptures all seem to be muddled up somewhat. But this is precisely how the book of Revelation speaks about it. On one hand in Revelation, it says: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. On the other hand, it says: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.

And so, in our reading, we also have this picture: the Lamb who is the bridegroom, and the Lamb who is the offering, who is slain. And this whole picture of things gives us a wonderful and tremendous insight into the whole character and nature of Christianity. We have a wonderful king, we have a wonderful banquet, we have a wonderful sacrifice.

Also, in the church, the Lord’s Supper also brings together all these things. We sing before we come to the Lord’s Supper: O Christ, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us. Here, in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is the bridegroom and you are his bride, and God is preparing for you this wonderful banquet, as it says in Isaiah: A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine. And so Jesus gives his body and blood for you to eat and drink. He is the Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed—this sacrifice happened back then on Good Friday—and now he places his sacrifice on our altar, as our food. One of communion hymns, says about Jesus: Himself the victim and Himself the priest. In our reading today, we say that Christ is himself the banquet and the bridegroom.

The rest of this parable has to do mostly with the fact that the king was inviting people to attend this wedding feast. Jesus says that he send servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘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.”’ 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. 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.

First, we read that there were a group who simply would not come. Second, there were other servants sent, but we read, they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business.

It has always been the task of the prophets throughout history and then later the apostles to call people to return back to God. As it says in Joel: Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This is not just the word of the servants, the words of the prophet, or the words of an apostle, or a preacher, or pastor, or whoever, but it is the voice of the living God himself. It is the voice of the king, and invitation of the king to come to his palace and eat his banquet in his dining room. But people’s hearts are so numb, so sinful, so calloused, so bored, that they can’t be bothered listening. They don’t come, they just go about their business.

But we also read, that the invitation of God sometimes makes people angry. It says: The rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. We have an example of this in the book of Acts, where Stephen was preaching to the Jewish high priest and the council of the elders and scribes, and says: You stiff-necked people… you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Here is a prime example of what is mentioned in our parable, where people resist the Holy Spirit, they refuse to listen to God’s servants. And sometimes, they realise exactly what is being said, that they have to repent, and turn their hearts back to God. And if they don’t like what they hear, then they seize the servants, treat them shamefully and kill them. This is exactly what happened to Stephen—they stoned him to death.

We then read in the parable, that it says: The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. We need to realise that the lives of God’s servants who speak his word is not nothing in God’s eyes. We can’t treat God’s servants badly, or kill them, without dire consequences. We are living in a time when people don’t listen to the Gospel, don’t want to hear it, don’t want to come to his banquet. It doesn’t come without consequences. God doesn’t carry on as if nothing matters.

We read in the reading that then the servants were asked to invite as many as they could find, both bad and good. This has always been the way things have been all throughout church history with various people. For example, at first the Gospel was brought to the Jewish people in those times, but when they didn’t listen they moved on to the Gentiles. Later in history, other countries and cultures took on the Christian faith, but as they starts to reject the Gospel, the servants of God move on to other places, and invite other people.

But then at the end of the reading, it says: But when the king came into 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.

Here, we see the final judgment. And we see there that there is a man who does not have a wedding garment. There is something that this man must have which determines whether he stays in the wedding hall or is thrown out.

When we attend this wedding, we must come with the clothing of Christ’s righteousness. And this righteousness becomes ours by faith. There is nothing that we can do to earn this righteousness and purity before God. But at the same time, this righteousness must be ours, and must be received by us.

You see, sometimes, people come into the church and into the wedding hall and into the outward fellowship of the church, and they are baptised and hear the word of God and receive the Lord’s Supper, and all that kind of thing. But they don’t believe it, they don’t take it all that seriously, it doesn’t mean anything to them. No—these things are here, because they are for you, for your benefit, so that you would take the wedding garment and put it on.

Sometimes, people have said that this wedding garment is good works. And sure, Christians should do good works, which flow from faith. But we are not saved by these good works. St Peter says: Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. The wedding garment that makes us acceptable before God is the gift of faith, which trusts that the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and Christ’s righteousness is ours. It’s one thing to be called and invited, and to enter the wedding hall, but this calling and invitation is not there in such a way so that you would not wear it yourself.

So we have this wonderful parable today in our reading. Let’s listen to this invitation of God to come to the wedding banquet, and be clothed with Christ’s righteousness. Let’s come and meet the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the wedding hall, and enter into his royal kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Let’s celebrate the wedding between Christ and his church, and partake of the wonderful banquet. Let’s enjoy the foretaste of this supper which he gives to us in the Lord’s Supper week after week. We meet here the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Lamb of God who was slain, at the marriage banquet of the Lamb. Let’s thank God for all these wonderful gifts! Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.