Dinner Guests

June 9, 1991

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Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14

Here’s something interesting.... I’d never thought of it before until somebody pointed it out to me---SO MANY OF THE SIGNIFICANT EVENTS OF THE BIBLE, AND STORIES OF THE BIBLE ARE ASSOCIATED IN SOME WAY WITH EATING. Our reputation as an eating denomination is solidly grounded.

In a way, FOOD is a thread that runs through Scripture from one end to the other....IN THE GARDEN, way back there, at the very start, the fall of humanity is associated with the eating of an apple....

Actually, it doesn’t say apple, it’s an unspecified piece of fruit. Somebody has observed that the real problem wasn’t with the apple on the branch, it was with the pair on the ground....BUT FOOD WAS INVOLVED. That’s how the trouble started. And from then on, it was a big part of the picture.

The Hebrews came down into Egypt because of a DROUGHT, the absence of food....

Later, when they escaped, under Moses and were wandering in the wilderness, they were sustained by the giving of MANNA, a special, provided substance, which they believed God miraculously bestowed for their survival.

The Psalmist, in the best known poem in the Bible, speaks of God’s care and providence like this: “Thou preparest a table before me....my cup runneth over....”

And Jesus in the New Testament, for heaven’s sake.... (how about that, for heaven’s sake!), Jesus makes so many references to food, it’s no wonder they called Him a glutton—

“I am the Bread of Life”, He said....“I am the Living Water” ....“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for fish, would give him a snake?” HE WAS FOREVER TALKING ABOUT FOOD.

The only parable common to all 4 Gospels is about food. It’s the parable of the loaves and fishes, where the little boy gives up his lunch so that 5,000 people could be fed.

And of course the institution of the Sacrament, that unforgettable rite which has become a part of the worship life of the Church, is derived from the act of eating----bread, wine; my body, my blood.... Who could ever forget it?

THE ROLE OF FOOD IN THE BIBLE IS RATHER REMARKABLY PROMINENT.

Now I say all this not to justify our Church picnic this afternoon, or to put in a plug for Fellowship Dinners...they don’t need theological undergirding----but simply to point out that when Jesus wants to make vivid to people some of the deepest truths about life in the Kingdom, maybe it’s not surprising that He should portray them in terms of a BANQUET.

Isn’t it fun to go to a sumptuous banquet, where somebody else takes care of the details? Who doesn’t enjoy that? It’s not just Methodist preachers who like to get invited out to eat.

Our story today is the parable of the Great Feast....another of these incomparable stories Jesus was so famous for telling. Listen to how Matthew says Jesus begins it----“The Kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a marriage feast for his son...and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the...feast.”

Boy, wouldn’t it have been exciting to get one of those invitations? HERE IT COMES, with my name on the envelope: “Dear Tom, The King of the realm requests the honor of your presence (MY presence, can you imagine? The King himself wants me to come....) The King requests your presence on the occasion of the wedding of the prince...RSVP, by Saturday.

Do you know what I think it means, this first part of the story? The parable sort of falls into 3 sections, by the way, which one confirms the validity of Jesus’ teaching technique. It’s astounding at times how orthodox He can be.

There are 3 scenes here, and I’d like to spend a little time on each one, with your gracious permission. That’s the outline, so you’ll know there is an outline, and hopefully it will give you some sense of coherence amid the accompanying chaos.

1) It’s the first scene, I think, which gives us the key to the meaning of the parable. Isn’t Jesus saying to us here something we probably haven’t made clear enough in our preaching and teaching? In fact, I’m sure we haven’t.

CHRISTIANITY DOESN’T START WITH NEGATIVE DISCIPLINE. IT STARTS WITH POSITIVE INVITATION.

It doesn’t begin with a challenge...it begins with a GIFT. It doesn’t begin with duty, and responsibility, and order...that’s secondary, that comes later, as we’ll see later, but that’s not where it starts. LIFE IN THE KINGDOM, LIFE IN CHRIST, BEGINS NOT WITH GIVING UP SOMETHING, BUT WITH RECEIVING SOMETHING.

It’s an invitation to a party, to a banquet, to a fiesta...it’s something wonderful and exciting.

God is the Host, and He wants you to celebrate with Him. God wants you to share in His generosity and largesse. Jesus likens it to an unending buffet table. HE WANTS YOU TO BE WITH HIM AND TO KNOW HIM. Come, get something to eat.

It’s not all there is to Gospel, but it’s where it begins, where it always begins. How often we come at it the wrong way. I think sometimes it might be easier...and I’ve heard missionaries say this...it’s easier to preach to primitive people usually than to debonair, sophisticated people.

Why? Because the wonder hasn’t worn off yet.

The miracle hasn’t been dulled by endless repetition. The freshness of the good news still has a tingle to it. We’ve been programmed or tranquilized by 20 centuries of defensiveness.

We’ve heard it so often we don’t hear it any more...As Peter Marshall used to say, we’ve been inoculated with just enough Christianity to keep us from catching the real thing.

And we still think, many of us, that when you get down to it, somehow we must qualify, SOMEHOW WE MUST EARN GOD’S FAVOR BEFORE WE CAN BE ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH GOD.

Remember the story of the Baptist preacher (he might have been Methodist!) who went to visit an old, reprobate mountain man on his deathbed. He said to the old fellow, “Brother Jones... (not Ed, this is another branch of the family), Brother Jones, do you renounce the world, the flesh and the devil?”

The old man just groaned, and said, “Preacher, you should have come earlier. I’m too old and sick a man to be taking on any new animosities.”

Well, you ask most people what is required for a person to start the Christian journey, and that’s the kind of response you’re likely to get. You’ll usually hear answers that focus on things that need to be pared away...give up this, give up that, change your ways.... THEN, maybe, after a while, you can come in.

THAT ISN’T THE GOSPEL APPROACH AT ALL. That’s not the way Jesus portrayed it. It was exactly the opposite. HE DIDN’T BEGIN WITH A DEMAND. HE BEGAN WITH AN INVITATION.

Come to the banquet. Come to the feast....Come to the party. My Son is going to be there. I want you to meet Him.

Come see what He’s like. When you know Him, and have accepted His love, THEN some things will happen. You’ll begin to see some things about yourself that need to be altered.

You’ll begin to sense some things within yourself that need to be pruned. In the light of the illuminated banquet hall you’ll become aware of the blackness from which you’ve come...THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS THAT NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF, BUT BEFORE ANY OF THAT, JUST COME.

Let Him feed you; let Him bless you; let Him grasp you in His forgiving arms, just as you are. Repentance and remorse come soon enough, God knows, but JOY, the true joy of the Lord, can never come too soon. That’s the Gospel, that’s the sequence.

It isn’t repentance that leads to joy, it’s joy that leads to repentance. It isn’t remorse that brings acceptance...the truth is, it’s the recognition of unqualified acceptance that stimulates remorse.

It isn’t changing on our own that qualifies us to receive His love; it’s simply receiving His love that makes us want to change.

That’s why we call it good news. It doesn’t begin with us. It begins with HIM. Here’s

where the Christian life starts, in this wonderful, crazy, off-the-wall, gracious reversal of what we would expect to be the case.

It’s like a banquet, Jesus says, which God throws for no other reason that that God wants to. “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a marriage feast for his son, and sent servants to call those who were invited to the...feast.”

2) But now...we move to Scene Two. Look what happens next. In spite of this unbelievable offer, in spite of this deal too good to be true, SOME OF THE INVITEES TURN HIM DOWN....FLAT. They reject the invitation to the party.

Astounding! You can understand saying no to an excessive demand. You can understand bucking an order. But this is NOT an order, NOT a demand...it’s an INVITATION, an invitation to receive something infinitely precious. THEY TURN IT DOWN, BRUSQUELY, EVEN RUDELY. Matthew says some of those invited “made light” of the invitation, actually ridiculed it...and some even went so far, he says, as to treat shamelessly and put to death the servants who had brought the king’s note.

WHY? How do you explain that? Orneriness? Pure ol’ cussedness? Stupidity? Why did they refuse to come?

Luke tells a variant of the story, and his version may make it clearer. He doesn’t say they made light of it, he says they began to make excuses. That may be closer to the truth.

“I’ve bought a field, Lord. I can’t come now....I have to take care of the corn. The play off game is that night...no, it doesn’t quite say that. I’ve just gotten married.... IT DOES say that. EXCUSES!

Are those bad things? Are any of those evil activities? OF COURSE NOT! They’re all perfectly good, legitimate, even honorable undertakings...AND MAYBE THAT’S JUST THE POINT.

Most people who turn down God’s invitation turn it down not because of the lure of something downright evil, but because they’ve come to place ultimate value in a lesser good. Sometimes good things can be a greater barrier to fellowship with God than blatantly evil things.

Henri Nouwen, writing to preachers, in a quote I just read this week, says, that when pastors lose sight of the utterly essential, they will merely do that which is very important. HOW EASY FOR US ALL.

I’ve known people, haven’t you, who very nearly worshipped family, or career, or country, or popularity, or prestige, or money, or security...you could go on...and because of their allegiance to that GOOD thing, they never quite got to the place of worshipping God.

I think Jesus is saying here, “Listen, brother, sister...GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT. Don’t let anything, even worthwhile things, keep you from enjoying the best thing. Nothing can satisfy or bring the true peace and fulfillment of simply being a guest at the banquet.”

The tragedy of the rejectees is not that they were evil...we’re not talking Al Capone[1][i] here...They were not bad, they were not wicked...they simply lost an unrepeatable opportunity.

And notice...Jesus wasn’t angry with them. He just felt sorry for them. They could have had a V-8, as the commercial puts it. THEY COULD HAVE BEEN AT THE PARTY, but swapped that for a half-baked reward that wasn’t worth a hoot.

Do you know what our job as Christian evangelists is? I’m talking now to those who have been to the party, to those who have been through the buffet line. Our job precisely as Christian evangelists is to show the world how much fun it is.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, was not a Christian, but he was right on target when he said once to a group of pastors, “If you want me to believe in your Redeemer, you’re going to have to look more redeemed.”

You see, the most basic Christian word of all, in a sense, the foundational word, is the word JOY. You can’t begin to understand Christianity from the inside out until you understand this. THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS...it’s like...going to a banquet.

A joyless Christian is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It doesn’t mean a Christian is always happy...joy and happiness may be worlds apart. It doesn’t mean walking around with a fake smile pasted on...Joy is neither Pollyanna nor Tammy Faye.

BUT IT MEANS A DEEPLY IMBEDDED SENSE OF COSMIC WELL BEING. For the Christian has a ticket to the banquet...God has invited him, has included him...and nothing, finally, can snatch him away from that riotous fellowship, that superblast, if I may put it that way.... NOTHING CAN DEPRIVE HIM OF IT BUT HIS OWN WILLFUL APOSTASY.

Don’t tell me others have more fun than real Christians, Don’t try to tell me the brittle, forced levity of a cocktail party can compare with the resounding hilarity of a good Annual Conference session.

I heard a young candidate for the ordained ministry testify a while back that he was attracted to the ministry first by his preacher father, who, he said, “just looked like he was always having a good time.”

Isn’t that wonderful? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a finer testimony. The banquet is where it starts. The joy of the banquet is what it’s all about, and the tragedy of those who opt for a lesser kind of satisfaction is that they don’t know what they’re missing.

Now, here’s an incredible thing about God. There are lots of incredible things about God, but this has got to be one of them. He’ll never force the issue, not even for the invitee’s own good. You can stay away and suck what little nourishment there is out of your tawdry rewards for as long as you want to...and He won’t bother you.

But He won’t let your shortsidedness spoil the party. If you won’t come, He’ll invite someone else. AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS HERE. It’s happened all through Christian history. With a terrible upsetting, almost revolutionary kind of democracy, when the “good” people refuse Him, He turns to the riff-raff.

One of my professors at seminary used to say, “Thank goodness Jesus never lost His taste for bad company.”

Unless you’re an absolutely intolerable snob, that’s not bad news. It may, indeed, be one of the most endearing things about Him.

When the better people turn Him down, He turns to the nobodies, the outcasts, the misfits, the broken people, who at least recognize a legitimate invitation when they get one.

And there in the castle, the King’s house, the party goes on....See it as the light fades, a real blast, with a nice gang of people, totally unselfconscious, and totally uninhibited.

There’s admittedly not a lot of decorum, not much order...and there’s a wide variety of individual differences, but because of a common hunger and a common sense of gratitude for the King’s generosity, a whale of a good time is had by all.

3) Well, almost all. Here is Scene Three. Look! A ringer has slipped in....An imposter has crashed the party. A guest without a proper wedding garment is discovered, licking his fingers over by the crab dip.

The alarm goes off, the servants rush over, grab the imposter by the scruff of the neck, and before you can say “Bub’s your Uncle”, they throw him out on his ear.

What is the meaning of this dramatic interruption, just at the peak of the evening? ARE WE RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED, AFTER ALL? Is there a hook in God’s love at that? Is there a “catch” in this grace business?

DO WE COME NOW TO THE BOTTOM LINE, FOLLOWING ALL OUR WONDERFUL TALK ABOUT UNMERITED FAVOR STILL WITH A DEMAND TO EARN SOMETHING?

Is that what the wrong kind of wedding garment means? Well, we need to be honest enough to deal with this. Jesus never pulled punches.... He never glossed over reality, and I think the meaning of the wedding garment is a sober reminder of another truth about God’s love, namely OUR part in the process.

HUMAN EFFORT IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS NOT ELIMINATED...not at all. It’s put in proper sequence. There IS something we must do...but it’s after dessert, not in order to get it. It IS true that we can accept God’s call to the banquet without being worthy...GOSPEL! It IS true that we don’t have to be ashamed of the highways and byways, the mud puddles, the dirty streets, the sordid past from which we’ve come....

It IS true, thank God, that we can come to God, JUST AS WE ARE.

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT WE CAN STAY JUST AS WE ARE.... And that, I think, is the meaning of the wedding garment.

We are improperly clothed at the banquet when we allow our sins to be forgiven, but still want to hang on to them. Remember Augustine’s prayers during the early days of his conversion? “Make me pure, O Lord, but not tonight.”

IMPROPER WEDDING GARMENTS.

We are improperly clothed at the banquet when we try to play fast and loose with God’s grace, and try to claim God’s fellowship while continuing in the old way of selfishness. We are improperly clothed at the banquet when we allow God’s unmerited love to make us arrogant instead of humble.

The wedding garment is not a pre-requisite, it’s a CONSEQUENCE. It’s not necessary for entrance, it’s the RESULT of entrance. It’s not what you have to have to get in, it’s what you become BECAUSE you’ve gotten in.

It’s a willingness, out of gratitude, to submit to discipline. It’s a willingness to let God dress you the way GOD wants to dress you. It’s a willingness, indeed, a readiness, to let yourself be changed...even if it’s painful, into what GOD wants you to be.

You can’t have it both ways, Jesus is saying. At this banquet you can’t have your cake

and eat it, too. EITHER YOU’RE FOR GOD, ALL THE WAY, WITH ALL YOUR BEING...or you’re NOT, and only GOD, and YOU, know which it is.

In the Kingdom banquet it’s feast or famine, light or darkness, freedom or bondage, joy or incompleteness.... The invitation is free, the food is free, the experience is free, the acceptance is free...THEN, the garment, as you respond to His gift.

And yet, even here, I submit, even here, in this aspect of the story, the soberest part of all, the note of joy continues to sound.

For the garment, after all, is a wedding garment. These are not prison suits...these are party threads we’re climbing into.

What we’re asked to give up, what we’re asked to renounce, what we’re asked to change FROM, is NOTHING compared with the stylishness and joy of just being the King’s guest.

Ask anyone who has ever been there. See it in the face of Mother Teresa...in the inner beauty that somehow radiates through those physically homely features. She’ll tell you. There is no way in the world you can call her pretty. And yet as Malcom Muggeridge says it so eloquently in his book about her, SHE’S BEAUTIFUL.

It’s something that comes from within. Repentance is not a repudiation of things that mean a lot to me....It’s a joyful, ecstatic homecoming to a place where those things no longer matter to me.

It’s my privilege to tell you about that place, and about the great King who has prepared it for you. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the...feast.”

The banquet is ready. You’re on the invitation list. Let’s party!

--

[1] Al Capone was an American gangster (1899-1947)