In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
From even just a quick tour of the gospel reading this morning, a few things sort of leap off the page: a king has issued an invitation to his son’s wedding feast, this invitation is really urgent, and those who were invited didn’t respond appropriately.
We are left wondering many things. First of all, why anyone would refuse an invitation to a king’s party? Think about it like this: would you have missed the Royal Wedding at Westminster Abbey and the after party at Buckingham Palace? We rightly wonder how work or family obligations — or really anything in the whole world for that matter – would get in the way of taking our places at the wedding party of the century.
And once there, for goodness sake, wouldn’t we stop complaining about lost luggage, put on the wedding robe they offered (even if the colour clashed with everything else) and just join in the joy?
But that’s not what happens in the parable recorded for us in the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Instead of taking their places at the party, St. Matthew claims, “many made light of the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business” and get this — one hard-headed man, who apparently finally agreed to go, ends up making it all the way into the banquet hall before having to be thrown out because he’s underdressed!
These are the sort of twists and turns we’d expect to see on Lifetime T.V. or in a Jackie Collins novel, not what you’d expect to find in the middle of St. Matthew’s Gospel in a parable that you must admit began with so much potential for making us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. After all, who doesn’t like being invited to a wedding party hosted by royalty?
But, nevertheless, we have what we have. And what we have is this: you and I are invited to stop everything we’re doing and to take our places at the wedding feast prepared for us, the eternal supper of the Lamb, which, on this side of the Blessed Vision of heaven, is actualized at each mass as we receive and adore the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and to grow in grace and love forever and ever, world without end. Amen.
And from this great feast of the Holy Eucharist – this amazing party where even angels and archangels are singing – we are compelled out of joy and gratitude to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” as the Prayer Book puts it, wearing our wedding garments of salvation that have been made white in the blood of the Lamb. This is what real life for real Christians looks like!
And doesn’t it always work just that way for you? I mean, didn’t you (and, if applicable, your spouse and family) joyfully arise this morning singing Psalms and praises to the Lord? And because all is going so well in your life didn’t you sort of just levitate over the ground and kind of glide into your pew as you came in here “rejoicing in the power of the Spirit”?
Or, perhaps, you didn’t.
What if “real life” for us would be “real Christians” is more like how apologist Scott Hahn describes it when he writes, “[The] Real life [offered in the Gospel], today, is what people flee, one by one, each retreating into his private distraction.”
You see, the trouble with this parable is that you and I have more in common with those who didn’t accept the invitation, those who were just too busy to care, and those who refused to squeeze into that old, faithful tux that’s been hanging in the closet for twenty years than we’re like those who are inclined to stop everything and rush over to the party.
And that’s exactly why our Saviour told this story in the first place! The gospel, you see, is only good news for those of us who don’t have our acts together, for those of us who need another invitation to the party because we threw away the first one, and for those of us who need new life and new love. Never forget what our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Those who are well are in no need of a physician.”
The good news is this: God doesn’t just prepare a few passed hors d oeuvres to give us the chance to drop by and be seen for a minute. And He doesn’t tell us this parable primarily to show us something about ourselves or to admonish us.
He’s telling us two eternal things: that His love is unending (and burning with persistence) and that — no matter what we’ve “done or left undone” — we are still invited to take our places as forgiven and beloved sons and daughters at the banquet of His Son, both now and forevermore.
There is no better news than this, my brothers and sisters. It gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and hope to the hopeless. It makes the lame leap with joy and gives life to the lifeless. And it’s ours for the taking.
Today when you arrived you were handed a book, a booklet more properly, called the “Take Your Place Ministry Directory,” which is the wonderful work of the Parish Strategic Planning Committee. I heartily commend it to you. Within it you will learn about more than eighty vibrant ministries in this growing parish.
And over the next month or so, you and I, by God’s grace, will both be celebrating these ministries – by exploring how we might take our places within them and by cultivating lives dedicated to Christian stewardship, prayerfully discerning how we might invest in and expand them.
This will be a great and exciting season of celebration and stewardship, and it begins today.
Make no mistakes about it: the feast is ready and we are all — every single one of us — invited.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
18th Sunday after Pentecost
12 October 2014