As most of you know I was in
One thing I learned is that I may not be cut out for air travel. Before my flight even boarded I made a quick stop at the ladies’ room, which I learned is now called the family room. The most important thing I learned there was never to put my purse in the sink because that activated the automatic faucet…flooding the entire contents. From there I headed to security and fished out my soggy boarding pass and driver’s license. I felt like I should explain to the agent why they were wet, but she didn’t even bat an eye. In fact, I began to feel a little better about myself as I prepared to go through the screening process because the young man in front of me was defending his right to carry Chef Boyardee ravioli in his carry-on bag because he had emptied it into a clear zip lock bag. I might add he was wearing flannel pajamas and flip flops.
I was reared in a time when people dressed up for air travel and we certainly dressed up for church. It was supposed to signify reverence, but if truth be told, I think a lot of it had to do with showing off. At least it did in my case. I liked wearing my best clothes and my new shoes. I sort of miss those days, but I don’t think the majority of you are interested in having a dress code, and I must say that I agree.
But Jesus' parable today suggests the church does have a dress code so to speak, and that there are limits to who gets to stay at the party. It's a strange parable isn’t it? Actually, it seems to be a combination of two other biblical stories: the grace story of the banquet in Luke 14 where the invited guests refuse the invitation so the door is thrown wide open to the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame … and the judgment story of the vineyard in Mark 12 where the tenants treat the owner's servants and then his son with violence, and reap violence upon themselves as a harvest.
Matthew's combination is more of an allegory than a parable, because the story has an army burning down a city while dinner is getting cold and an errant guest who isn't thrown back into the street, but straight into hell. This is a story with lots of hairpin turns that are bound to give us whiplash.
We begin with a King holding a
wedding feast for his son, a beautiful image of God's grace. The dominion
of God is imaged in various ways in the Bible. It's a shade tree that grows
from a tiny seed. It's a
It’s sure not what we would
expect, but Matthew is interpreting Jesus’ story for his day in the
way he tells it. Everybody knew what
But wait, wait, wait…not so fast. Matthew also adds this curious twist about the wedding guest who flunks the dress code. The guests are all here, the steam is rising from the table, the band is playing, the King parades in. But there’s this one guy standing in the middle of the crowd with a checkered coat and a polka dot tie. Oblivious! Clueless! “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” asks the King. “Huh?” “Bind him hand and foot,” the King commands, “and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” I hate gnashing teeth! This is one tough King!
There’s a dress code for God’s party? Who knew? It’s not the suit and tie or hat and gloves that we used to wear. It’s not a robe and stole or some other official uniform of the day. We can’t be so literal when we read the Bible or we’ll miss the point entirely. In the early days of the church, when people professed their faith and became a Christian, it was a big deal. It was a serious commitment because it changed everything. It meant a new way of living … a new set of friends … a new place in the world. It meant leaving your old way of life … your old habits and practices. For some it meant finding a new job, even a new place to live. For many it meant being rejected by their old community, even their own family … for God’s sake. But it was worth it. It was wonderful! They gained a new community … a new family … a new hope … a whole new life. It was like being born again.
So when people were baptized, to
symbolize this radical change, this new creation, they would take off their
clothes and enter the water naked, with nothing in their possession and nothing
on, just as they were born. As they came out of the water, they were
given a new white robe, like a baby wrapped in a new blanket. Putting on
this new robe symbolized the new way of life which they had embraced. As
Paul puts it in Colossians:
”As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together
in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:12-15)
“As God’s chosen ones….Paul says.” For Matthew, it’s all about being the “chosen” people of God. He ends Jesus’ story with this enigmatic motto: “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt22:14). I think that means everybody is invited, but few end up belonging … staying with the chosen people of God because they don’t really want to follow the dress code and claim all that the identity means.
For Matthew, Jesus’ story is historical. The original “chosen” people chose not to obey God or live by his call or respond to his invitation to celebrate life. They chose the human ways of death instead. They ignored God and insulted God and rejected God and abused God’s servants in the name of God. So God rejected them and chose a new group of people, the church. And God included everybody in the invitation to be the new people of God. But for Matthew, the story is also cautionary. Matthew is saying to the church, don’t be smug. Don’t be self-righteous. Don’t thumb your nose at the people who rejected God’s first invitation and got too caught up in the ways of the world. Now that you are the chosen, you have to act like it … you have to respond to God’s invitation … you have to choose the ways of life to which God has invited you. Otherwise, God might give up on you, too.
Grace is free, but it’s not
cheap. We shouldn’t take it lightly. We shouldn’t take God for
granted. God is no more interested in our lame excuses for not doing the
right things than God was in theirs. And grace does not mean that
anything goes …that we can throw away all the rules. We do not live
by “if it feels good, do it.” We do not believe in “me
first; mine, mine, mine.” We do not follow the laws of “every
one for him - or her self … the survival of the fittest.”
Those are the ways of the world. Remember what Jesus says about
God’s ways in Matthew?
”Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have
come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and
earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the
law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least
of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least
in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called
great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness
exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.” (Matt 5:17-20).
We are God’s chosen now.
And we do have a dress code. Writes Don Miller:
The tough thing about Christian spirituality is that you have to mean things. You can’t just go through the motions or act religious for the wrong reasons…. After all, if we are just going through the religious motions to get people to think of us as religious, praise us, and all that, we are receiving our false redemption from a bunch of people who are going to be dead in fifty years. This is a shabby replacement for an eternal God.
It’s much harder to take God’s invitation seriously ourselves and live as Christians in the world … to be the church in the way we order our lives … to pursue our goals and arrange our relationships … to live out Christ’s love by including the people we want to exclude from our circle of care. That really takes something.
So there it is. Jesus’ story is an invitation dropped in our laps by his messenger Matthew. “You are cordially invited to a party at the house of the Lord.” It’s up to each and every one of us to “R.S.V.P.”
May we pray?
O God, we don’t deserve to be here, but you have invited us from the
highways and byways to be your holy, chosen people. Fill us with your
Spirit, clothe us with your love so that every person we encounter, all the
people with whom we work and play and live might know you love them and want to
join the party, too. Amen
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa