Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Matthew, the 22th chapter:
And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave 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. 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. “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.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Jesus gets in this last dig at the Pharisees and chief priests. I told you last week that Jesus can’t help Himself. It’s not like Jesus has no self-control, but that He needs to accuse these men of leading the people into the danger of hell. Last week, we talked about these men as the wicked tenants who kept killing the servants of the master and then finally the son. This week, they are wicked, not by their action, but by their inaction.
You see, the parable today is a picture of the end of all things. It’s just a picture; it’s not the full thing. Yet, we have a wedding feast. In Biblical visuals, the wedding feast is when the bride and the groom consummate their marital relationship. So, when the son is having the feast thrown for him, this is a picture of the Son of God, Jesus, and His bride, the Church. The consummation is where they are finally joined together for eternity, where there is no separation from each other, by sin, by death, by presence, by anything.
This wedding feast is the promise of God for the Church, the feast that we have a foretaste of even today as we share in the Supper of the Lamb. The joy we receive in the Supper even this day is only a fraction of what we shall have in the feast to come. Wedding feasts, especially as we see them in the Scriptures, are always a joyful time for all those who are in attendance. So it will be for us on the day of Christ’s return, where we will find joy that never ends.
That’s why it is such a surprise in the parable that the guests to the feast will not come. You don’t turn down an invitation; you especially don’t turn down a king’s invitation. To do so means death as it is the greatest dishonor to show to your king. It would be like telling him that he doesn’t exist.
Now, the impression is, as well, that the king knows who he is inviting. Just as we would not be invited to the White House for a special dinner with the president, or just as we would never be invited to the Oscars to present an award, so it is that the king would not invite commoners to the feast, but his friends, the people who serve him closely, who contribute their good to the kingdom. You don’t invite the peasants when you’re the king, you invite the knights, the lords, the bishops.
These are men and women who were expected to attend. They were expected because common decency would say so, but moreover, because when the king says something you don’t say no. Imagine this: you’re invited to the king’s court one day, and as you walk in you see his son or daughter over in the corner. You walk up to the king, and in pretty vulgar terms, comment on how much you’d like to sin with them. The insult to the king and his family would be so great, the only punishment appropriate would be some kind of torturous death.
It is, in many ways, similar to these people who turn down the invitation. This is huge. Not only are they disrespecting their king, but they are also disrespecting his son, the current prince and future king. You would expect that the king would go gangbusters on everyone, but instead, like last week, the king is patient. He sends more servants to invite the people, his friends. He tells them of the wonderful feast that has been prepared, but they turn him down again. More than that, they kill the servants.
Now, as Jesus is telling this parable, He uses certain animals to describe the feast, oxen and fattened calves, animals that were used in the sacrifices of the Temple in Jerusalem, and this should tell those listening that Jesus is tying these things together. Animals were sacrificed all the time, and have been since Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. They would be slaughtered, burned, and then eaten by the sacrificers. This is what the Lord demanded and through it He delivered to the people the forgiveness of sins. Ultimately, each sacrifice was pointing to the ultimate sacrifice in Christ, and, because of that, it actually did forgive their sins.
So, when the Lord, the King, has prepared the feast, using the meat of the sacrifice for all to eat, you best eat. If you didn’t eat the meat of the sacrifice, what’s that saying? You don’t want forgiveness? You don’t need it? You don’t need to be reconciled with God? You know better than God?
You see what the issue here is today? The people in the parable are telling the king that they just don’t care about him. Jesus is making sure that the Pharisees know that He is referring to them; they don’t care about God, His forgiveness, His care, His love.
So, what does the king do? He seized all the men who turned down his invitation, not just for that gross disrespect, but for the murder, the unrighteousness they committed, and killed them. And then he invites the commoner. This is tantamount to elevating each and every person he invites to their new roles as lord and knights and bishops. They are the new royal court. They are the new rulers of the world.
Except for one person. You see, when the king elevates all these people into their new realms, he provides all things for them. And, as their first act is to attend this wedding feast, the first thing, the most important thing he gives them, is their wedding garment. Now, actually this was fairly common in Jesus’ time. The father of the groom would often provide clothing for the attenders of the wedding. Clothing was super expensive. You might have one or two shirts and you took care of them with amazing regularity. But these would not be appropriate for a wedding. So, the father would provide. Everyone would be dressed impeccably.
Except for the sore thumb. As the king invited all the others to come, he would give them their clothes. And as they all gathered together, one man stood out. He wasn’t wearing the wedding garments. He had snuck in somehow, trying to pass for one of the invited. You almost get the impression that if he had come through the front door, it would have been fine, but he came his own way, and so missed out on the wedding garments. The king has had enough of insults, so he threw the man out, presumably to be cast where the others who insulted the king were.
Now, let’s talk about us, shall we? The imagery is fairly clear. The wedding feast? The end of time with the foretaste being in the Lord’s Supper. The wedding garments? Baptism, which clothes you in the blood of Christ and His righteousness. The original invitees are the Pharisees and leaders of Israel. The new invitees are all who would believe in Christ. The servants are the prophets of God. The King is the Father, the Son is Jesus. The place of darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth is hell.
Because the Pharisees and the priests rejected the prophets, rejected the forgiveness of sins that was found in the fulfilling of the sacrificial laws, rejected the heart of the faith and instead trusting in their outward obedience of the Law rather than the mercy of God, they would be taken away from the wedding feast, never to share in its awesomeness. For their crimes, they would be judged severely, sentenced to everlasting death. Yet, the King brings in others whom He will love as dearly as the first, giving to them every good thing and ultimately making it so that they are forgiven their sins through the sacrifice of the Son. Yet, for those who continue to believe they can make it on their own, for those who reject Baptism for their own works, who reject mercy for obedience, they will be cast out to where the Pharisees would go.
For us, we are welcomed into this great feast of God. We are the Church, the Bride of Christ. We are His and He is ours. Through His death, He has won for you the forgiveness of your sins. And like the Old Testaments sacrifices, where the people would eat the meat of the sacrifice that was pleasing to God, so, too, are we invited to eat of the meat of the sacrifice of the Son. We are invited to eat His flesh and drink His blood, proclaiming His kingdom until He comes. It’s a foretaste, a small bite, pointing us to that which is even greater, the feast which will have no end.
And through the King’s invitation, we find ourselves counted worthy, not by our own actions, but because He has brought us to this place. We can eat and drink and not fear the King, for He has provided us every good thing. He clothes us, gives us shelter, elevates us to a high position, welcomes us into His presence. We are His and He is ours.
We cannot bring ourselves into this kingdom, as the man with no wedding garments tried to do. We must be covered with Christ. We must receive the gifts from Him, the gifts of His Word and His Sacraments. We cannot do this on our own, nor would we want to. When everyone else is dressed in tuxedos, you don’t want to show up in a tuxedo t-shirt. When the Church is clothed with the blood Christ, you don’t want to wear clothes of used up, bloody old Band-Aids all over your body.
Christ welcomes us to His feast and brings us into His kingdom by His won mercy. It’s not because you’ve earned it, it’s not because you tried real hard. It’s because He wants you here. Others have disregarded His invitation, but you, today, are wearing the robes of Christ’s righteousness. And because you have all of His gifts, you have received His salvation, where, through His death and resurrection, He has swallowed up death forever for you. You are in the King’s castle, you are at the feast, and it will never end. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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