This weekend is, of course, Thanksgiving weekend. This year Kelly and I are especially thankful that my parents were able to come up and join us, that we have a healthy little girl, that we have another little one on the way next spring, Lord willing. We have so much to be thankful for!
And one of the things most associated with Thanksgiving is food. You never see so many turkeys in the stores as you do at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Retailers put cranberries and stuffing and sweet potatoes on sale as people dig out their old family recipes and prepare for the spread. The invites are made to family and close friends to come join in the feast.
Come join in the feast. That’s the theme of our Old Testament and Gospel readings for today, as well. Isaiah, in a text which I have used in many funerals, describes the great heavenly feast on God’s holy mountain for us, and Jesus tells the story of a wedding feast, put on by a king.
And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 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.' But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.' 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.
"But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. 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.' For many are called, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:1-14 ESV)
In its original context, Jesus was talking about Himself as the son, the Father as the father, and the people of Israel as the invitees to the wedding feast. All the details line up quite nicely. The theme of the history of Israel was one of God calling His people through His prophets, calling them to repentance and a return to faith in the God who had made them His own through His covenant established with Abraham and renewed with Moses. Time and again the people of Israel denied and rejected their Lord, and turned away to instead seek after their farms, following the false fertility gods, or following the false god of mammon. Others even seized the servants of God, the prophets, and had them put to death. So God destroyed Jerusalem not once but twice; first, in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, then, in the year 70.
That part is the easy part to figure out. Jesus’ hearers would no doubt have picked up on that much, even without much explanation, save the destruction of Jerusalem the second time, which wouldn’t happen for another 40 years or so. As it is so straightforward, it could be easy for us to dismiss it as belonging only to that time and day.
But the call to come to the feast sounds in our own day as well. At the Church Workers’ Conference I attended this week, it was noted in some of the discussions that in many ways our church body as a whole is currently on a down-slide. The total membership of LCC is down from five years ago, we aren’t starting many new missions, smaller rural churches are closing down as the communities disappear around them. And in the wider net of Christendom, we see that the great experiments of the last 40 years— Vatican II, the Jesus Movement, liberation theology, prosperity theology, the Church Growth Movement, Willow Creek, and so forth, haven’t grown the church so much as they have created an environment in which those who claim to follow Christ, instead of being loyal to one congregation in good time and bad, instead of focussing on what a church teaches and believes, have come to follow a consumer model of church-shopping, picking out the products and services which they like best in one congregation or another. And yet with all the new options, church attendances and memberships are down, right across the board; especially membership. Who needs to belong to a church if you can get all the services without even committing? Meanwhile we hear of the surging growth of non-Christian religions and it is easy to get discouraged.
Yet Christ still calls us to come to the feast. We let so many things distract us from heeding this call. Money, business, work, family, friends, sex, power, politics. Jesus calls sinners to come to Him and receive their wedding clothes, but so many would rather shop around and find their own outfit.
For the wedding feast is ready. If those who are invited prove unworthy, God reserves the right to go out and find more wedding guests. In Jesus’ day this was the judgement on the children of Israel, that so many of them rejected Jesus. And God’s judgment came, in the form of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the people were scattered. The invite went out to the Gentiles, through preachers like Philip and Paul. As many as would hear the Word of God and rejoice in the salvation Jesus gives were added to the church, the New Israel.
And yet over time the people of the church grow lazy and complacent in their faith in Christ. Already by the end of the first century, when the Apostle John, in exile in Patmos, wrote the letter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the seven churches, there was a need to remind the church in Ephesus to return to her love for Christ—the church was in jeopardy of having its lampstand removed, of ignoring its invitation to the wedding feast. Similarly Sardis was also warned that it was in danger, for it was thought to be alive but was dead. Laodicea was lukewarm, and in danger of being spit out.
Every age needs to once again be reminded that the gifts of Christ are given in order that more be invited to the wedding feast. This inviting can happen within families, as parents teach their children and bring them up in the faith. This inviting can happen among friends, as people who care for one another bring the good news of Christ to one another. This inviting can happen in communities, as we reach out to those who are new to our area who perhaps do not know about Jesus, or, if they know, have not become connected to His body, the church.
And I love the image that Jesus uses. Being invited to His feast is not a matter of cleaning your act up first and becoming worthy to come to the feast. No, God’s invite is no respecter of persons. Good and bad, young and old, rich and poor, strong and weak, all have the invitation extended to them. Whoever will receive the invite is invited. God’s grace is for everyone, whether you or I should think they are worthy or not.
Having said that, once you get to the feast, you need to be dressed for the feast. The last part of the parable is the part which certainly is troubling. Here there is a man at the great feast and he gets turfed out, simply because he isn’t wearing the right clothing. What is that all about?
The wedding garment is faith. It is that robe of righteousness that is placed on you in Baptism and that you, as a redeemed child of God, are called to stay in. If you are baptised into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but spend your whole life ignoring that God who has made you His own, then you are of those invited but not wishing to come. If you live your whole life thinking you are a Christian but you are trusting in your faith or your good works or anything other than Christ, then you are of those not wearing the right clothing. For to look to anything other than Jesus’ own death for your sins as your way to enter into God’s presence is to be wearing the wrong clothes. It is so easy to do this, too. The natural inclination of humans is to try to make our own way in this world, to try to earn our own standing before God. But that is not how God’s kingdom operates. And to wear the wrong clothes on Judgment Day, to try to enter the feast of God with anything other than His robe of righteousness, to be apart from the eternal feast in any way or for any reason, is to be cast outside into the outer darkness of hell with its weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. For that’s what sin does, lead us on the path to hell.
God calls us to instead follow Him, to live in the faith and grace He has given us. Jesus saves us in order that we would be His own and live under Him in His kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. That kingdom-living starts here and now. It is not proper for a Christian to claim to follow Christ but instead to treat yourself and your own desires as higher than God and His calling for you. Each of you, when you were baptized into Christ Jesus, were buried with Him and raised to newness of life, as we hear in Romans 6, and as such, our new robe of righteousness is something to be jealously guarded and preserved by daily contrition, repentance, and returning to the promises of Baptism, something to be restored through confession and absolution. God gives us His grace in order that we would not stay mired in the filth of sin, but instead would be made new and live as His people.
Because the point of this life is to enter into the feast. This feast we foreshadow this day as we eat and drink the heavenly meal of Jesus’ own body and blood, given and shed for us, in, with and under the bread and wine. We gather at this table with the company of the saints, joining in the unending thanksgiving feast—the Eucharist— in which we give thanks for the salvation which Jesus has prepared for us by His innocent suffering and death for us, the new life which is ours through Jesus’ rising from the dead.
And oh what a feast it will be! “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. It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’”(Isaiah 25:6-9 ESV) Now that’s something to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving and always.
God grant that we would stay in His grace, receiving His forgiveness, and living as His people, as we await the day of the great eternal feast! In Jesus. Amen
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