Scripture: Matthew
22:1 - 14
Once more Jesus spoke
to them in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be
compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent
his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they
would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those
who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat
calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding
banquet.’ 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his
farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves,
mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent
his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then
he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not
worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone
you find to the wedding banquet.’ 10 Those slaves went out into the
streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding
hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the
king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a
wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in
here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the
king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the
outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For
many are called, but few are chosen.”
Year A
October 9-15
October 12, 2014
Cross~Wind
Title: Christianity: Is it as Simple as Responding to a Wedding
Invitation
Introduction
The most expensive wedding in
Britain's history cost nearly $8 million to stage. Multimillionaire Peter
Shalson, 44, spent $2 million just to secure the musical services of Sir Elton
John, who serenaded his bride Pauline with four songs.
The biggest challenge for today's
bride usually comes down to a single word: money. According to Bride's
Magazine, it takes close to $19,000 to turn a dream day into reality. It is not
as bad as it looks though, because this figure includes just about everything.
The largest single expense is often the reception, followed by the rings,
pictures, and flowers. Expenses for the clergy and the church are way down the
list.
The American public is fascinated
with weddings, especially the wedding rites of the rich and famous. George
Clooney and Amal Alamuddin wedding cost $1.8 Million.
We tuned in a few years ago to see
who, if anyone, would want to marry a millionaire. We were curious about the
sketchy details of Madonna 's marriage to Guy Ritchie Elizabeth
Taylor
A beautiful, romantic wedding is
the dream of most American girls, and if you are the parents of a daughter or
daughters, you are already sinking beaucoup bucks into mutual funds, stocks,
bonds and CDs. You know that the day of reckoning is coming. Take Holly , for example.
Holly wanted a wedding at the
seaside resort of Spruce Point Inn on the coast of Maine. The beauty is
phenomenal. The wedding, she thought, would feature rock-bound seaside, white
chop, August nights, cooling breeze, lobster boats steaming by, warm days, blue
sky, bluer waters, navy blazers, linen pants, silk-draped bridesmaids'
shoulders, beauty and elegance - all collectively creating an understated and
highly cultured splendor.
"He sent his servants to those
who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to
come" (Matthew 22:3, NIV).
So, her dad rented the entire
resort for a three-day weekend of magical, memorable, matrimonial moments for a
mere $45,000. This cost is, surprisingly, only slightly more than twice the
price of an average American wedding. In the newly renovated and century-old
inn, there were rooms provided for her 200 guests. Her guests strolled along
the breathtaking shore in the evenings seeing stunning sunsets behind Burnt
Island Lighthouse. They watched sailing yachts, with colorful spinnakers
flying, racing home before the breezes. In the bright days, guests lolled about
in the seaside warm-water saltwater pool, or fished off their exclusive dock.
At each meal, dressed casually smart, naturally, they dined on award-winning
fare while sipping exceptional wines. There was, of course, the traditional
outdoor lobster bake, the boat rides around the bay and the islands, tennis on
the private courts, 18 holes at the country club for the groomsmen, all in a
quaint, quiet Maine town.
"Then he sent some more
servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my
dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is
ready. Come to the wedding banquet'" (Matthew
22:4, NIV).
This wedding was the stuff brides
dream of when they are little girls. There went heavenly Holly ,
strolling to the stings of a quartet as she swept stylishly barefoot down the
long, green lawn in her windblown gown toward the shimmering afternoon sea. Her
guests were dazzled. Her handsome groom and good-looking groomsmen were nattily
dressed in linen suits and silk ties. Her bridesmaids, beauties each and all,
all tanned and toned, smiled sweetly. It was an affair to remember. Like
something out of The Great Gatsby.
Holly's nuptials - not counting
clothes, limos, photographer, clergy (usually the cheapest fee of all),
invitations, thank-you notes, the honeymoon and the band - cost her daddy $225
per guest.
But what if - what if after making
all these arrangements, no one had shown up?
This world loves its weddings. One website estimates that in the United
States alone some 70 billion dollars are spent on weddings annually, with the
average wedding costing roughly $25,000 to $30,000.
Weddings are not just private, family affairs that suck up Saturday
afternoons anymore. They are now the hottest setting for entertainment on
television. Getting some aspect of your big day featured on the small screen --
be it the buying of the dress, the making of the cake, or even the moment you
chew out your Maid of Honor for forgetting that it is "your day" --
is arguably the ultimate accessory to the 21st-century wedding experience.
Do not buy it? Just take one trip around your 100 or so basic cable
channels and you are guaranteed to stumble upon any of a number of
wedding-related reality shows.
There is I Propose, which follows nervous boyfriends as they plan the
perfect way to pop the question. You have got Say Yes to the Dress, which
features brides-to-be trying on expensive gowns and Cake Boss on The Learning
Channel lets you admire the antics of an eccentric Italian family as they crank
out extravagant wedding cakes. You can peek in on the nuptials of the
super-wealthy on WE's Platinum Weddings and then flip over to CMT for something
slightly less formal with My Big Redneck Wedding. Oh, and there's even
something for the kids. Engaged and Underage on MTV follows teens who take the
plunge before they can legally vote.
Yes, American culture seems obsessed with all things
"wedding" and basic cable is cashing in. Why so much buzz around
brides and grooms? It is hard to say. Perhaps it is because everybody likes to
watch a good love story.
Jesus was apparently fond of weddings.
Going deeper
Matthew consistently and uniquely
uses the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" (or, technically, "the
heavens," but the grammatical plural has yielded to the traditional
translation in the singular), where the other evangelists frequently employ
"the kingdom of God" (which occurs some 52 times in the gospels) or
some other expression. Mark, Luke, and John do not use the expression "the
kingdom of heaven" even once. Although grounds exist for disagreement and
refinement, in general the distinction the evangelist seems to be making between
the "kingdom of heaven" and the "kingdom of God" is that
the former refers to the messianic community founded by and centered around
Jesus (i.e., approximately, the church). The latter refers to God's
eschatological realm inaugurated at the end of time (heaven).
Matthew 22:1-14 is a parable of the
wedding feast. The source is material Matthew has in common with Luke. Most
scholars think the wording in Luke is the closest to what Jesus actually said.
Jesus spoke to them in parables (a
phrase found only here and in Mark 3:23). Was the purpose of parables to
clarify or disguise? That debate is difficult to resolve.
In this case, he says that one may
compare the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet,
but they would not come. He sent other slaves to tell those who have been
invited that he has prepared his dinner, with ox and calves slaughtered, and
everything is ready. Jesus suggests that the evangelical address as part of the
ministry of the community is like an invitation to the feast.[1]
Barth places the invitation in the context of a discussion of Jesus as victor,
that the future has begun in the fulfillment of the covenant, that God has
loved the world and reconciled the world to God, and thus has prepared the
feast.[2]
He finds here the meaning of biblical universalism, for on the side of God, all
things are ready.[3]
Jesus says they are to come to the wedding banquet. However, they made light of
the invitation and went away. One went to his farm and another to his business.
Any denial of invitation is superficial in comparison to the kingdom. Another
seized the slaves, mistreated them, and killed then. The tradition of martyrdom
of the prophets of Israel and the earliest apostles appears in Matthew
10:16-23, 21:35-36, and 23:29-39. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD may
have inspired the wording of the graphic punishment here. The king was angry.
He sent his troops, destroyed the murderers and burned their city. Then he told
the slaves that the wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. They
are to go into the main streets and invite everyone they find to the wedding
banquet. The slaves gathered all whom they found, good and bad, so the wedding
hall became full of guests. The point here is that the kingdom of heaven is a
mixture of good and bad that necessitates a final judgment and final separation
into the elect and the damned. It suggests the mixed character of the messianic
community.
The parable exhibits outrageous
situations typical of the parables of Jesus. All parties refuse the invitation
of the host. Invitations have to be issued to people of the street in order to
fill the house. The parable also manifests some features of oral transmission,
such as the tripling of the invitation.
According to Schweizer, the parable would mean an invitation to joy, an
incomprehensible, glorious offer of grace in images as concrete as possible. At the same time, however, it stated that
those first invited do not find their way to the feast, while those out in the
streets quite unexpectedly come to the feast.
Those invited intend to come later.
Yet, the moment of decision is now.
Pannenberg refers to this parable
as the use of the marriage feast by Jesus to depict his own mission. By Jesus,
God issues the invitation to the feast of the divine kingdom. However, those
originally invited will reject the invitation so that in their place the poor,
halt, blind, and lame will be invited from the city streets, and vagrants from
the highways and hedges, and they will share in the meal. He speculates that
originally it might have an allusion to the disputed table fellowship with tax
collectors and sinners. In any case, this parable shows that the meals that Jesus
intended the meals that he himself celebrated as anticipatory signs and
depictions of the eschatological fellowship of the kingdom of God. In his view,
we have in such meals the central symbolic action of Jesus in which his message
of the nearness of the reign of God and its salvation finds expression.[4]
Verses
11-13 may be an independent parable. It does reveal an abrupt shift in emphasis
from the gracious gift of entry into the banquet to selective and uncertain
qualifications for entry into the banquet. This suggests that the parable has a
concern for ecclesiology and eschatology. Jesus says that when the king arrived
to see the guests, he noticed a man who was not wearing a wedding robe, which
some think means one needs good works as well as a response to the invitation.
He asked the person, addressing him as friend, how he got in the hall without a
wedding robe. The man was speechless. The king told the attendants to bind him
hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. The discovery of the man is the representation
of the final judgment by Matthew. Matthew has turned the parable into an
allegory. Matthew also added a warning addressed to those who enter the banquet
hall but are to properly dressed. This
is a reference to Christians who join the community but turn out not to be fit
and so are expelled. Barth stresses the nature of the invitation to a marriage
feast. The epilogue he says exegetes wrongly interpret. It tells us about the
individual who came, but without the wedding garment. It shows that the
invitation is to a feast. One who does not obey and come accordingly and
festively declines the invitation no less than those who unwillingly appear.
Reluctant obedience to the command of God is not obedience.[5]
For most
scholars, verse 14, God calls many but chooses few, is a warning against
overconfidence upon the collective election of the people.[6]
For
Matthew, the parable illustrates the rejection of Jesus by Israel, and at the
same time warns the community against the same mistake. Matthew’s point is that the invitation should
take precedence over everything else.
Further, at the very moment when the feast was ready, the Jews rejected
it. It is an allegory of the history of
salvation: a king (God) prepares a feast for his son (Jesus) and invites his
subjects (Israel) to the banquet. They
treat the invitations lightly or kill the king’s servants (the prophets,
although may think of the disciples).
The king destroys them and their city (Jerusalem) and invites others
(foreigners) to the feast.
Two
concerns lie at the heart of this combination of concern for present
ecclesiology and future eschatology. The first is the practical matter of
church discipline, or membership in the messianic community. Matthew
confronted, as did the other evangelists, the problem of the expansion of the
Jesus movement from primarily within Judaism to an increasingly wide Gentile
mission, with people of differing backgrounds, customs, morals and beliefs
beginning to mix vigorously in sometimes small communities. Matthew recognized
that the standards demanded by the radical nature of the gospel would be
unlikely in so heterogeneous a movement, and so purity of membership would be
impossible in an earthly context (e.g., 18:23ff).
The second
reason for the concern with a final judgment was to prevent precisely the same
sort of religious complacency from infecting the early Christian communities
that had so corrupted the Jewish communities from which they had arisen. Jesus
warned his disciples repeatedly in Matthew's gospel to avoid the spiritual trap
of thinking that election denoted immunity from judgment (e.g., 20:1-16;
21:33-41). The present passage is concerned especially with this threat. Among
the evangelists, Matthew's emphasis on the judgment that awaits Christians and
non-Christians alike ("weeping and gnashing of teeth" occurs almost
entirely in Matthew; only once does it occur in Luke, at 13:28) has often posed
a challenge to the widespread and early Christian understanding of God's
salvation as a free gift (found especially in the writings of Paul).
Application
Lessons to be learned:
First, all people have been invited to the table.
God invites us - the good and the
bad and the in between - to be part of the people of God. God calls and invites
us all. God has prepared the feast for all.
A second way in which we make the most of this kingdom invitation is by
inviting others to join us at the
feast.
You want your friends at the wedding. You are excited when they can be
present. In many ways, Christians have lost that sense of joy. Jesus' parable
could not have been clearer. No matter who you are or where he can find you,
God's desire is to see the guest hall packed to the gills on the last day with
people enjoying the party that's been arranged for the Son. Jesus says that the
king's servants "went out into the
roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall
was filled with guests" (Matt. 22:10).
Third, there is a dress code, and we better not forget it.
The ticket is free, but we better
know what to wear. Yes, people will officially reject the invitation and
consider themselves outside the people of God. However, you can be just as
rebellious, but show up anyway. You do not intend to share in the joy of being
part of the people of God. God's invitation, as extravagant and as open as it
is, carries responsibility. Woody Allen
Fourth, the church is not a club with closed membership.
Too often, we take our model of
what a church is from the culture around us. We think of the church as we would
the YMCA. We join, pay our dues, and in return we expect a fresh towel, clean
bathrooms, a hair dryer and scented soaps to be at our disposal. Such
inwardness, such a view of the church leads to a closed church, not at all the
kingdom model Jesus talks about.
The kingdom model is outward,
inclusive, welcoming, beckoning, inviting and open. The kingdom model is about
bringing people from outside to guest, from guest to connected to Christ and
the Body of Christ, from connected to a disciple, and from a disciple to a
missionary. It is also about service, not about being served.
Fifth, we make the most out of our invite to the wedding of all
weddings by letting God be the bouncer
at the door.
We tend to spend too much time in the church worrying about who is in
and who is out. There is a lot of buzz about this now. Rob Bell is wondering
whether hell exists. Others are saying that as a God of love, no one will be
excluded. Still others say there are conditions before one gets into the
ballroom. Christians have been jabbering about the wedding feast that is
a-coming someday for 2,000 years. We even make the whole debate more personal.
We bicker over who worships the right way, who dresses appropriately, whose
theology is tightest and whose life is cleanest. The end result is that such
discussions end up either robbing us of the simple joy of being invited --
weighing us down with largely unimportant concerns -- or stopping us in our
tracks from asking anyone else to join us.
Who is invited and who is not is a God thing. You will recall at the
end of the parable the king enters the party and boots one attendee for not
having the proper attire. This guest's disdain for the king's dress code
displayed a lack of appreciation for the party and love for the king. The
larger point is that only the king himself did the bouncing. He determined who
was in and out. He will determine who is wearing the righteousness of Christ.
Our task is mostly to enjoy and invite. Others have put it like this: Found
people find people. Invited people invite people. God sorts out the rest.
Conclusion
God is calling us to be his guest.
We'd be wise to show up.
No comments:
Post a Comment