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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers, sisters in Christ, the text is the parable that Jesus spoke. You may be seated. I don’t think, although I could be wrong, I don’t think any of you have a story of your wedding reception that wasn’t without a little snafu that didn’t go quite according to plan. Amen. And that seems to be a theme even in this morning’s gospel reading.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you listened and heard at the great wedding reception feast, there are two kinds of people that are at that feast to begin with. The text said both good and bad, meaning both believer and unbeliever. Well, how did we get there? That’s what this text is about.
So at the very beginning of the text, you heard the king send out his servants to invite those who have an invitation to tell him, “Come.” That’s all the text says, the first few verses. So the servants go out. They go and speak to these people. You have the invitation, come. But they do not come.
Now, if you were the father or mother of the bride and you were paying for the reception and you gave an invitation, because you have to be selective, you remember that process, who do you invite and who don’t you invite, and you have to go within your budget. When you do, and someone spurns your invitation, in fact, most of the people spurn your invitation, you would be hurt because of all the money you paid for that person to be at your place. Yes. There’s the price of everyone who has been invited to the wedding feast of the bridegroom Jesus. Himself the payment. And they refuse to come. They’ve been given an invitation. The text says they’ve been given an invitation and they refuse to come.
Well, you and I are bent toward logic because we’re reasonable, rational people. And it is our downfall. God uses our logic, but we have to always keep it in check because our flesh does not obey mysteries of Scripture. So it seems as if the king is going to send out the next group of servants with a little bit more definition of this feast. Notice the text. He’s much more detailed. He talks about the slaughter being done, that the lambs have been butchered, it’s all ready to go.
And if we tie in what they already knew from the Old Testament reading of Isaiah, they knew that this wedding feast of the king had the best of meats and the finest of wines. And they also knew what Isaiah said about this feast, that on this mountain, the shroud that overcomes all people has been destroyed. Death is destroyed at this feast. It is a victory feast. Shame is covered at this feast. It is the proverbial animal skins that cover our unrighteousness. And comfort is rendered to those who are sorrow-filled, as it says, the tears shall be wiped away from all.
So not only is there the feast being explained, but also that the victory over death. That was proclaimed by all the faithful prophets during the history of Israel. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Micah, Obadiah, all of those faithful prophets proclaimed that from Abraham and Moses on. And do you know what? Explaining all the detail, as was said in the second part of this text, which people think, well, that’s what we need to do in the church today to make it more relevant, is explain it more clearly. Then we’ll get results.
You read the results of what happened. It was explained in more clarity. The prophets explained it and proclaimed it. And what happened to the prophets? What was the result of the people who had this shared with them in more detail? The text said two responses. One, “I’ve got to go take care of my farm or my business.” In other words, the things of this world have far more importance in my life than the things of God.
The second response is what the prophets endured. They were ridiculed, they were scorned, and at worst they were killed. That was fulfilled in the lives of the prophets that we read in the Old Testament. Maybe not so much Moses, but those who followed him most clearly. And they had the invitation explained to them through all of these prophets.
So what did the king do? Unlike, and this is interesting, unlike the king of the parable of the vineyard, the vineyard owner, this king does send his troops and they come in and destroy the murderers, and it says they burn their city. Do you want to know when that was actually fulfilled in this world? It was fulfilled in the year 70 A.D. when the city of Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans, and not one stone upon the other, and the great edifice of the Jewish temple was torn down, never to be rebuilt. That was when this text was fulfilled.
And in fact, on that place in Jerusalem, the remains of the temple, on top of them are built one of the three holy sites of a pagan religion known as Islam, called the Dome of the Rock. Because the temple will never be rebuilt. Because the temple is the one who was crucified and risen for us. The temple is the one upon whom we feed and feast. The temple is the one who destroyed death and rose again and rebuilt the temple in three days. Remember?
So that was the first two sendings of servants and the king’s response and now the third sending of servants. This is the era of the Christian church since the New Testament, since Christ ascended into heaven, since 70 A.D. when the people of Jerusalem witnessed in the world, for that matter, the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the temple.
And this is when the servants are told, “‘Go, therefore, to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you can find.'” The job of the servant, which has always been the believer in Christ, is to proclaim and invite and invite and invite and invite. Having invited, the job of the servant is to teach and to be taught, to grow in this faith that we’ve been given. “Baptize and teach” is what our Lord Jesus said before he ascended into heaven. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” And we do.
But what is the response? Is it any different than the first response of the servants? What they encountered? Or the second? You can validate for me. You get those two responses. You either get people who say, “Oh, this is too much to go to church weekly or even monthly, maybe even quarterly, because, you know, it’s important to me, but not as important as this world, my business, my dealings in this world.” That would be like the response to the prophets and the servants in the second example in the text.
The other side of that is sometimes what you also get: vitriol from people. “Don’t be pushing that religion and Jesus stuff on me.” And vitriol from the world. “Don’t be talking about that. How do you know your truth is true?” So we get the same response. But what is the role of the servant? To go, “Hey king… I don’t want this role of being a proclaimer and an inviter. I want to be something different.” And that’s not what the servants do. They continue to faithfully invite.
And that leads us to the last part of this text. In inviting people, there will be in the wedding feast, both, as Jesus said Himself, good things, and bad. There will be within the invitation received both believer and non-believer. On any given Sunday in this church, not everyone who sits in a pew is a believer in Jesus Christ. On any given week, the roster of who is a baptized member of St. Paul does not guarantee that they are a true believer in Jesus Christ because you and I cannot look in their hearts. Yes.
No different than simply because they may not be a member of this specific church, are they going to go to heaven? There will be other people in heaven than necessarily people of St. Paul. That brings us to the last part of this text, the one that causes many people to scratch their heads and even get mad at God and shake their fist. Many are called, few are chosen.
The many are called. Are those who have heard the invitation, but obviously the world and its allurements keep them from true faith. It’s the few that are chosen that stymies you and me. And it stymies us in this way. We almost want to say, “Well, God, it’s not fair that these people haven’t heard of Jesus. How could you punish them and banish them to hell if they’ve never heard?” Is that what the text says?
The text says, servants are inviting. You and I can’t see what God’s servants are doing around the world in His inviting. Simply because from our perspective, we may not see groups of people having been invited, they may very well have been invited. And at the end of the day, the only person who knows whether you are a believer or not in this world is you. I don’t know whether you are, and you don’t know whether I am. The only person who knows whether you are a believer is you yourself. Because we cannot look into the hearts of others.
That’s why the servant’s job isn’t to figure out who is and who isn’t. The servant’s job is to invite, invite, invite. Baptize and teach, baptize and teach, baptize and teach. Because the comforting thing is in this text, when it comes to the revelation of who is not wearing the white garment of the wedding, is not the servant’s role. Look at the text. Whose role is it to say, “Excuse me, sir, why are you here? You do not have a garment on?” It’s not the servant’s role. It’s the king. The father.
So take the role away from yourself that Satan is trying to thrust upon you, or your and my own pride is trying to thrust upon us, as if you have the ability, and as if we are the problem. Sometimes many things are not revealed to you and me, and the most profound thing that’s not revealed to you, why are you a believer? Because you have coursing within your veins the same DNA as Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler and any other heinous person.
The same DNA inherited from our great-grandfather, Adam and Eve. It is not because your parents were Christian that you’re in the church. It’s by God’s grace that you’re in the church. It’s not because you made wise decisions when you were growing up that you’re in the church as a believer. It’s because God called you and you, by God’s grace, believe. And it’s not because of anything within your family, lineage, or heritage that makes you one of God’s people.
Many are called. Few are chosen. We need to revel in that mystery. And that’s what it is, a mystery. It’s funny, the church, orthodox-wise, meaning true teaching, the church has no trouble saying that Jesus was born of a virgin. A virgin can conceive. And yet, if your daughter came home and said, “Mom and Dad, I’m pregnant, but I’ve never been with a boy,” I don’t think you’re going to receive that information and think, “Oh, well, of course, that could happen to my girl.”
As much as a virgin conceiving and giving birth is a mystery, so is your ability to believe in this one crucified and risen for you is a mystery. Mysteries are not understood or explained by reason. Mysteries are only believed in. Because if they are not believed in and if it does make sense to reason, it no longer is a mystery.
This is a mystery what Jesus was proclaiming. That his method, that is of the king’s method, to extend his church is to use, and this makes no logical sense unless you think more highly of yourself than we ought, the method that Jesus chooses is to use us. He used sinful mother in your life or sinful father in your life to bring the faith to you. Not perfect, sinful.
He used sinful Sunday school teachers and sinful parochial school teachers and sinful pastors to bring the faith to you. Not perfect, but sinful. How in God’s name can he do such a thing? Because it is a mystery. It is a mystery that you are a believer and call upon him in the day of trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks to him whose name you bear as his child. That in and of itself is a mystery.
So the only thing we can say at the end of the day as we look at this text is, thanks be to God that I believe. Well, what about everybody else? All the servant is to do is to invite. That’s it. You’re not to figure it out. You’re not to explain it. You’re not to make sense out of it. You’re just to follow through with the commission you’ve been given.
Be faithful in inviting, in baptizing, and in teaching. And let the king sort it out. Like the parable of the weed and the wheat. Remember? Wait till harvest. The angels will come and separate it. And remember the other parable which we will encounter as we go through the Gospel of Matthew. The parable of the sheep and the goats. Are the goats fully aware of all that they’ve done for Jesus? They’re completely dumbfounded when they’re told what they did for Jesus.
And in fact, the only thing the sheep are aware of is their own sin and the great forgiveness that was given to them by Jesus. Who knows everything that they’ve done and argues with the king? Not the sheep. The many who are called and refused. The goats. Thanks be to God. He has chosen us as his children. Now come. The wedding feast has been prepared and is fulfilled for you to partake of. Be joined to your bridegroom Jesus here in the name of Jesus. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.