The Invitation: Is It All
Meaningless?
Pastor Mathew Magera – 7/31/16 – Sermon 178
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
This parable goes down a
long and curvy path in order to get us to the main point that it is trying to
make. When God invites you to a party, not only should you show up but you
should have the right attitude about it. But, instead of saying just that, Jesus
has to include all of these extras in order that he might whip us into shape
and, in a way, chaining us to the questions of why on earth would people act this
way? I mean, these servants are delivering a wedding invitation, do these
people really have to kill the messengers? At the end of the story, the people
are in the party and the one guy who isn't dressed right is thrown out. I mean,
after all that work to fill the place you're going to be concerned about how
someone's dressed? We're basically handcuffed to these questions and they make
this parable so much more difficult to understand. Still, I want us to try to
look past the killing of the servants, past the king burning the city and
killing a bunch of people and past the king turning away that one unlucky chap
who thought this was just a casual backyard wedding. The point of the parable
is focused on the invitation. Just that. Even the last verse says it, "for
many are invited." The invitation. Now, there's two things we can do with
that invitation.
We can either accept the
invitation, or reject the invitation. Accept the invitation or reject the
invitation. But the emphasis is on the continued invitation. And you can see
what becomes of the continued invitation. It seems meaningless to continue to invite
because the result leads to some very gruesome events. If the king would have
just sent out the messengers once and took their answer and moved on, wouldn't
it be much better? How upset do people get when we continue to invite. How
upset do we get when others are persistent? Let me tell you this. This week, in
the mail, I received a save the date for a wedding at the end of August out in
Muskegon. However, my name was not on the card. In fact, I didn't recognize the
name at all, but it had my address on it and it was no one I could think of
that lived here at any point recently. So, I put it back in the mail to be sent
back. A few days later, there is was again. Another invitation to this wedding.
I sent it back again. Just this past Thursday, can you guess what was in my
mail box? I don't think the post office could put any more ink on these post
cards with the number of times they were processed. I say Go team for their
persistence and that they or the post office were determined that I was to receive
this information. But, it was actually a little bit frustrating. Did my
frustrations cause me to take out the mail carrier? No. But, I was actually
almost tempted to go to this wedding except for the fact that I have a wedding
here that I've already committed myself to. I wish Jeff and Jessica of Muskegon
well in their marital endeavors, but I won't be in attendance, even if I really
am intrigued by the beef wellington and the open bar. It all comes back to the
invitation. Have we ever been persistent in inviting others somewhere, perhaps
even to church? Does it help or does it hinder the invitation? Would you get
frustrated if you were on the receiving end of it?
The King in our parable is
persistent in saying I want you here with me. Now, this doesn't appear to be
the case when he orders the destruction of the very city in which he resides
and the murder of all the people he invited, nor does it appear to be the case
when he finds someone in his house, already at the banquet and tosses him out
for not being properly dressed. I mean, come on, where is the persistence in
invitation and welcome here?
It's true we may not see an
invitation filled with loving and welcoming gestures in the actions of the
king, but we must see the persistence of the king to have his wedding hall
filled with guests and that's what we need to see. God wants His house full. He
invites people. There's going to be a banquet in my house for my son's wedding
and I want you to be there. Everything is ready and he sends his servants out again.
It's time. The king is ready for you at the banquet, he wants you to be there.
After they reject him and then proceed to shoot the messenger, literally murder
the servants whose job it was only to hand out the directions to the castle and
give them the key code to the gate at the edge of the property. But, he doesn't
stop there and he continues to invite more people. Anyone. The king wants you
to be there. God wants his kingdom to be full. God wants each of us to be
represented at the wedding feast but we have to remember also that while there
is plenty of grace in God's persistent invitation, it does require us to take
action, to not just agree to the invitation but to go, but not only to go but
to also take up the wedding garment, the righteousness that is offered to us
when we have none to wear ourselves. The kingdom is ours to lose but it is also
ours to gain. The invitation is open and God is waiting for us to actually
come. We, who do not deserve to be there and likely are not even prepared or even
don't have the right clothing to wear are invited but we need to actually go.
Then, we see him standing
there with a robe of righteousness for each of us to wear, where we take off
our dirty street clothes and are made new. We can't be at the banquet without
the proper attire. The wedding guests cannot be at the wedding without proper
attire. We cannot be in God's presence at the ultimate banquet without being
first made righteous because of what Christ did for us on the cross. That
righteousness is being offered to us like the wedding garment was likely
offered to the guests of the banquet and unless we are ready to say that what
we are wearing is not appropriate to wear in God's house, then we have not
accepted his invitation and deserve to be thrown out. This is why the other
side of “for many are invited” is “but
few are chosen.”
If we are able to move past
that and to see that not only are we constantly being invited to the banquet
and that we are actually being offered the right attire specifically made for
us then we can see how gracious God really is. However, if we are focused on
the murdering of the servants, the murdering and torching of the town and the
rejection of the man who was already inside the banquet itself, God's grace is
masked for our sinful desire for tolerance where we take God's kingdom into our
own hands and in a sense say to God, I'll come to your party when I'm good and
ready and I'll wear whatever the H, E, double hockey stick I want. If we say
that to God, if we put the power in our hands, God will let us wear exactly
what we asked to wear, all the H, E, double hockey stick we want, and he'll
throw us out. And we'll stand here and say where is the grace in that? And God
will say, I invited you. I invited you multiple times, even when you didn't
deserve it. Even when I knew you didn't have anything good to wear in my house,
I invited you. And because I knew you didn't have anything good to wear in my
house, I made you a garment just for you and you rejected it. Can't you see the
grace now?
Is the invitation
meaningless? No, the invitation is grace. Come! Don't worry about who you are,
where you are, what you look like, who you talk to, what you are wearing, how
deep you are in sin, just come! Come! How many times does God have to offer us
the gracious invitation before we run out of opportunities to not just say yes,
but to turn from our sinful ways, go to the banquet and accept that robe of
righteousness? How many times? And so, we are sent as messengers to invite
others to the banquet but as we can see, it is quite a rough world out there.
We are sent as God's messengers into the places where there is quite a lot of
risk involved and it's very possible we might be met with less than joyful
responses. The invitation is not meaningless. In fact, the persistence in the
invitation may be someone's only hope.
The way Jesus tells this
parable actually maps out Christian history past, present and future. Jesus
tells this parable to say that the prophets before him went out and invited others
into God's love and they were rejected and sometimes killed for their
persistence. Jesus was in a way speaking of himself as a messenger and being
killed as a result of the persistent invitation into God's love. Jesus also
recognizes the truth of rejection in our day and age and the many martyrs in
the faith who have died sharing that invitation, even that priest in France
this week who was killed by ISIS soldiers in the middle of the service last
Sunday. Have you ever thought that inviting someone to church or into
relationship with God was a meaningless endeavor? Yes, this parable shows the
invitation may be met with less than joyful responses, but unless the servants,
unless we are sent out to bring that invitation, God's house will still need to
be filled. Receive the invitation and go, yourself, to that banquet, be clothed
with the righteousness of God and then go forth and carry that invitation with
you and share it with others so that they may come also. That's our mission.
That is our calling. Go team. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.