Grace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 22nd Chapter
of the Gospel according to St Matthew: Verses 1 - 14:
And
again Jesus spoke to
them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they
would not come. 4 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.” ’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to
his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as
many as you find.’ 10 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.
11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And
he was speechless. 13 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.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
In order
to understand the parable in today’s Gospel, it is very helpful to understand
the context of the culture of the day … especially the context of royal wedding
customs. I Jesus’ parable, the wedding feast in the
parable is the king’s feast given in honor of the wedding of the prince. The king has all the resources of the kingdom
at his disposal … the best food … the best entertainment. The king might even have his best architects
and builders build a whole new building just for the feast. The feast lasted many days and so the
servants of the king prepared the best lodging for the wedding guests. Money is no object.
One of
the things a king would do for wedding guests is provide a fashion spa for the
guests when they arrived. The king
understood that travel was hard work in those days. People would arrive exhausted and dirty. The difficulty of travel might even make them
a little grumpy. The king provided
facilities for refreshment … manicures … pedicures … fashion designers and
expert tailors … everything a guest needed to look and feel their best when
they entered the banquet hall. The king
wanted everyone and everything to be perfect in order to honour the wedding of
his son, the prince. This is one aspect
of the culture of the parable that will help us understand it.
The other
thing about the culture of that day has more to do with the simple fact that
they did not have the same attitude about time that we do. We have digital wrist watches that can tell
us the exact time. We have mobile phones
and all other kinds of instant communication.
At the time of the parable, even writing was expensive. Most communication was done orally,
face-to-face. If you were important,
like a king, you had servants do the communicating, but the communication was
still a personal, oral communication.
This
meant that there were always two invitations to a party. The first invitation was to inform everyone
that plans were under way. This is the
invitation that had the RSVP. Those who
could attend would reply that they were coming.
The second invitation informed the guests that everything was ready for
them to come to the party. The people
who received this second invitation had already promised to come. It was an incredible insult to excuse
yourself after you had already promised to attend. Turning down the second invitation of the king was treason. Mistreating the servants who brought the
second invitation was an act of war.
Jesus
used these customs to illustrate His teaching about who enters the Kingdom of
Heaven and who does not. This parable
demonstrates the overwhelming generosity of God the Father and His
justice. It also demonstrates the cruel
insanity of those who reject the gift of salvation. The king is God the Father. The wedding feast is eternal life. The servants are God’s prophets, apostles,
and pastors. Those who were invited and
refused are the rank unbelievers. The
travellers on the highways who were both bad and good are those ordinary people
with no claim to entitlement, but who are at the wedding solely by the grace
and mercy of God. The guest who was not
dressed properly is a hypocrite. His
name is on the church membership roll but he rejects the gifts of God.
So, what
does this parable say to us today? Why
is it important for us to hear this parable?
It is very easy for us to look through the pages of the Old Testament
and see the many ways that people rejected the prophets. We hear how the people put the prophets in
prison, drove them out of their homes, and put them to death, and we rightly
condemn such activity. We hear that of
the original twelve apostles, only John died of old age. All the others died martyrs’ deaths. We wonder at such cruelty and once again,
condemn it. It is very easy to point a
finger of condemnation at people who lived long ago and far away, but what
about you and me. What does Jesus say to
us today?
Jesus
used the man who refused the wedding clothes to warn you and me today. Regularly each week we gather in the wedding
hall of the king. How are we dressed?
Imagine
what this man had to do to get into the wedding hall without the right
clothes. When he arrived, the servants
of the king came to him and offered to clean him up and heal his wounds. They offered him clothing that was just the
right style for the feast. They wanted
to give him everything he needed to fully enjoy the wedding banquet of the
king. The servants offered it all and he
refused. He insisted on doing things his
way instead of the king’s way. He
insisted on wearing his clothes instead of the king’s clothes. He entered the wedding hall, but rejected the
gifts of the king.
Trained
and Ordained Priests and Pastors in the mainstream denominational Christian
Church on earth are the servants of God.
When they open up God’s Word, they offer the best of heavenly
style. It is called the righteousness of
Christ. It is a very expensive
style. Jesus had to buy this style with
His holy, precious blood, and His innocent suffering and death. The heavenly style is the righteousness that
Jesus earned for us with His suffering and death on the cross. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is the only
style that is elegant enough for eternal life.
It is the only style that the true servants of God can offer to you.
As a
servant of Christ, the priest’s / pastor’s role is to remove the filthy fashion
of sin and clothe us in the heavenly style … the robes of Christ’s
righteousness. To put that in modern
context; within the Worship service we humble ourselves before God and confess
that we are sinners in what we have done and in what we have failed to do. In
response to this, the Priests / Pastor by virtue of their office of the servant
of God’s Word, cleanses us of our sin with Christ’s forgiveness and clothes us
with the robe of righteousness in the pronouncement of the Holy Absolution.
On receiving
absolution, we can rejoice together at this great gift from our king by using
the words of Isaiah the prophet. [Isaiah
61:10] “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my
God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me
with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest
with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
Sadly,
Jesus teaches that there are those who reject the style of heaven. Jesus says that there will always be some in
the banquet hall of heaven who insist on wearing their own clothes … their
clothes of arrogance, narcissism, self-righteousness, adultery, hatred, and so
forth. The old sinful nature insists
that he is good enough. He has no sin. He does not need the heavenly style of the
righteousness of Christ. His style is
just fine. “Besides,” the old sinful
nature will say, “A loving god doesn’t really send people to hell.”
Jesus
tells it differently. The party crasher
may have been able to fool the servants, but the servants are not the ultimate
judge. We must all stand before almighty
God. There is but one verdict for those
who trust themselves and refuse the clothing of the righteousness of
Christ. 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.”
Those who
reject Christ, reject salvation. Those
who in any way depend on their own efforts for even the smallest fraction of
their salvation will meet the king and He will order them out of the wedding
hall.
It is a
different story for those found in the road.
The Holy Spirit works through His servants to bring them to the wedding
hall and wash away all their sins.
Through His servants He covers them with the righteousness of Christ …
the righteousness earned on the cross. The
day will come when they, like Christ, will rise from the dead and enter into
the wedding feast of the Lamb. There
they will receive the fulfilment of Isaiah 25: 7-8 :On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make
for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food
full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over
all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow
up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the
reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has
spoken. They will rejoice at the
eternal wedding feast of the Lamb. Amen
The love
and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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