Come to the Party!

 October 15, 2023

Matthew 22: 1-14

 

Banquet
Hyatt Moore

We love this parable! Yay.

And it makes us uncomfortable.

It’s great! There’s a banquet! Yay.

And there’s destroying cities.

 

It’s a party for everyone, good and bad,

everyone that usually isn’t invited to parties! Yay.

 

But then there’s that poor guy who didn’t

wear a wedding coat, thrown into the outer darkness.

Dark Jesus is back again with another parable.

But don’t despair.

Remember, he’s still talking to the religious leaders,

And remember, we don’t have to throw everything out

that we know and believe about grace.

We just have to remember that Jesus thinks this is really important.

 

Let me tell you, Luke’s version of this parable

is more palatable it’s very nice and there’s no

city-wide destruction and no outer darkness

or wailing and gnashing of teeth, you can read that one Luke 14.

 

But still, we’re not in Luke this year, we’re in Matthew

And Matthew’s Jesus has a flair for the dramatic,

he tries to grab us in with exciting descriptions and consequences.

And this is the parable we’ve been given today so we have to deal with it.

And maybe it’s not all bad news.

 

So Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is like this:

It’s like a King who has wedding banquet.

The kingdom of God is like a party!   Yay!

 

For so long, the church and God

and everything involved with it has been

depicted as a drag, a bunch of sad, serious, wet blankets.

I remember one member in my last congregation telling us that when

she was young she was told that she needed to stop smiling when

she was going up for communion.

People have confused spirituality with stoicism. And joy with disrespect.

But that’s not God’s way, that’s our way.

And that, I think that is part of the understanding of this

story that Jesus is telling to the religious leaders.

 

They were doing their own thing, and not God’s thing.

They forgot all the lessons their fore-fathers and mothers had

taught about God’s love, forgiveness, inclusion, abundance,

and all the rest of it, and they decided to take the easy way out.

The way of the world. The way of scarcity and fear,

threats and judgement,

in order to control people and get what they want.

 

But God’s way, God’s kingdom is like a celebration,

With great food, and drink, and decoration.   Enough for everyone.

 

So the Kingdom of God is like a celebration.

And he invites the usual suspects, other important people:

politicians, business execs, doctors, lawyers, art gallery curators, 

celebrities, and of course, religious leaders.

But they’re not interested in the king’s party.

They want to keep doing their own thing.

 

They dismiss him, forget about the invitation, they even get hostile.

Everyone is too busy doing their own thing, the religious leaders

are running things the way they want to run things,

and they don’t want to come and do God’s thing.

 

But the party’s there and the food is ready,

so the King asks his people to invite everyone else

everyone else who might actually do things God’s way.

Everyone that no one would have thought to invite before.

And they do, they don’t care who they ask: “Good and bad” it says.

Luke’s gospel describes the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame.

 

We know who they would be today.

We know who our own normally uninvited are in our day.

In God’s way, the table – real and metaphorically, is opened up to everyone.

 

And that’s the another great thing about this parable,

At God’s party everyone is invited. Yay!

 

The earliest church knew this, and it was known

for having rich and poor together, Jew and Greek, slave and free,

male and female, no one else did that at the time

and that was the earliest Christian calling card,

they were all one in Christ.

 

Rachel Held Evans, the popular millennial

theologian who sadly died in 2019 wrote:

“The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget—

that what makes the gospel offensive

isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.”

 

And that was Christ’s intent for the church.

And that is what got him killed in the end.

He opened up God’s party and therefore God’s power.

Satan hates that kind of stuff.

 

And frankly, the world – commerce, and business, government, 

and many of our institutions, systems, and religions hate that too.

Because it means sharing.

Because if we know it’s there for the taking, it’s free.

But if I can convince you that its scarce, and that I’m

the only one who can give it to you, then I can charge you for it.

I can get money, favors, actions, attention, and honor.

  

Still, today, the thought of inviting everyone

to the table and to the party is a scandal to many.

 

So the Kingdom of God is like a party,

and the party is happening whether we want to participate or not,

and everyone who normally isn’t invited to parties is invited,

(and those who ARE normally invited can come too.)

So Yay! For radical banquets that can’t be stopped!

 

But  that brings us to the most concerning part of this parable,

the King and that guest and his wedding garment, or lack of it.

 

To us it might look like the king is just mad because someone

was not wearing the right clothes or didn’t have the right look.

I know some of those joyless preachers in the past

have used this bit of the parable as an excuse to tell people

they had to dress right in church. But that’s kind of a ridiculous take.

 

So at the time, weddings at that time were kind of surprises,

the date wasn’t set a long time in advance.

When the time was right, the wedding started,

and someone would go out into the neighborhood,

and let them all know that the wedding was about to start,

and everyone was supposed to stop what they were in the middle of,

they would take their wedding robe out of the closet and go.

And if they didn’t have one,

the host would provide a wedding robe at the door.

 

The wedding robe was a garment that was simple

and non-descript, and everyone’s robe was similar,

meaning that everyone looked the same:

the king looked the same as the ditch-digger,

the farm hand looked the same as the business owner.

 

To wear the robe was a sign of solidarity, unity,

honor for the host and for the rest of the guests.

As I said, if they were too poor to have one on hand,

they would have been given one at the door.

 

So the man who came in wasn’t just flighty

and forgot, or too poor to afford one,

he would have had to reject it.

To not wear it, was a snub, it was arrogance even.

 

With Matthew’s own flair for the dramatic,

he’s saying that everyone is invited to the party. Yay.

But it’s not just a free-for-all, anarchy. Yay still, I guess.

 

God’s party is open to all people, it’s true.

And when we come to God’s party,

we’re asked to behave differently than before.

We’re not asked to change our identity, or our gifts,

or our uniqueness, we’re not asked to conform in those ways.

 

But we are asked to wear

The garments that cover our status and,

our superiority, our self-righteousness

and our judgmental nature that we left the house with,

and we are asked to put on Christ’s garments of

abundance, love, forgiveness, joy, inclusion,

service, self-sacrifice, and care for everyone around us.

Everyone at the table. Yay again.

 

Putting on that robe, and following Christ’s way

is how we keep this party going for everyone.

 

So don’t dwell in the outer darkness,

don’t worry about the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Don’t worry about those things.

Just know that Jesus is really serious about God’s party.

Believe in God’s abundance.

 

Just put on Christ’s garments,

and come to the banquet that God

has prepared for everyone.