Summary: God invites everyone to share in celebrating the marriage of his Son Jesus to his bride, the Church. We must accept the invitation, come as God's guests to the rich banquet prepared for us, clothed not in our own self-righteousness but in the grace he extends freely and in the good works he prepared for us to do. As God's servants, we also share God's invitation to everyone we find.
Years ago, Joel Chernoff and Rick Coghill released a song entitled "Engraved Invitation,"1 in which they asked, "Do you need an engraved invitation to lead you to the promised land?"
In today's text, Jesus tells a parable about a king who sent invitations to a wedding banquet he was giving for his only son.
The day before, Jesus had flipped tables in the temple, throwing out the money changers and those who sold doves to the poor at prices they could ill afford. The authorities were steaming mad, demanding to know just who did he think he was? So Jesus told three parables that revealed the condition of their hearts.
In the first parable, a man asked his two sons to go work in his vineyard.2 One refused, but later changed his mind and went. The other answered, "Sure, pop!" but he didn't go. Jesus asked them which of the two sons did the father's will. They answered that it was the one who changed his mind and obeyed him.
In the second parable, a landowner planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants,3 but at the harvest, they refused to give him his share of the crop, mistreated and even killed some of his agents. Finally, he sent his son, thinking, "Surely they will respect him." But the tenants killed the son, in order to steal the land. Jesus asked, "What will the landowner do to the tenants?" They answered, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
By their answers, the temple elite condemned themselves, because they wouldn't accept God's message. Jesus taught that because they rejected the cornerstone of God's plan of salvation, the kingdom of God would be taken away from them and given to people who would give God what God was due.
The first parable featured two sons who respond differently to their father. The second parable, two sets of tenants who had radically different attitudes toward the vintner. And in today's text, the third parable, are two groups of people who respond very differently to the king's invitation to his son's wedding banquet.
Notice in this parable that the king sent invitations to the wedding feast more than once. That's something like sending an email announcing an engagement first, with a "save the date" message, and delivering an official invitation to the wedding later.
We need to understand the context of this passage. Jesus' critics saw themselves as God's favorites, as the chosen people to whom the kingdom belonged, whether because of their ethnicity, religious pedigree or piety. God sent the law and the prophets to their ancestors, after all. But some Israelites repeatedly broke God's law and rejected the prophets.
Even then, God kept calling the people to return to his ways, finally sending his own Son into their midst. Jesus knew many of his own people would not accept him, and prophesied that God would invite others into his kingdom who would welcome it gladly.
Other passages in the Bible reinforce this theme: John writes that though the world was created through Jesus, and "he came to what was his own, ... his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, ... he gave power to become children of God."4
Many of the religious elite who heard Jesus resented the idea that God might allow corrupt tax collectors and flagrant sinners to enjoy his company. We hear this theme in the parable of the Prodigal Son, when the father welcomes his profligate younger son back into the family after he had sinned so egregiously; the elder brother, who had remained working on the farm, became angry and refused to join the celebration, though his father pleaded with him. The elder brother couldn't abide the idea of extending mercy to someone so undeserving.
Is it possible that some church people today really don't want to come to God's banquet because certain unacceptable people might be there?
In today's parable, those who declined the king's invitation wouldn't admit to small-mindedness, bigotry, unforgiveness or lack of mercy. Instead, "they made light of it and went away ...." Others mistreated and even killed the servants bearing the invitations. The invitees are not just indifferent to the king's gracious invitation. Their mistreatment of the king's slaves showed their contempt for the king himself. They treated his messengers the way they felt about the king.
The Bible is clear that when we reject a sibling God has welcomed into the family, we are rejecting God and God's ways as well. John writes, "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen."5
Jesus told Saul, who was en route to Damascus to imprison and murder Jesus' disciples, that he was not just persecuting them, he was persecuting Jesus himself as well. And elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus implied that whatever we do to "the least of these," we do to him.6
Sadly, when we reject God's offer of a new way of life built on the foundation of grace, and choose to put our own agenda first, we risk losing our seat at the Lord's table. Just as the king in the parable kept inviting people to the wedding banquet, God keeps imploring us to return to following him. But just as the first invited guests showed they had no intention of accepting the king's invitation, we can resist God's mercy, until God finally lets us have our way. God will not force us to love him.
But God keeps loving us -- it's God's very nature! In the parable, the king sends his servants out into the streets to invite everyone they could find, "both good and bad." That could mean that people were invited, no matter what mistakes they had made or crimes they had committed in the past; it can also mean that the poor, disabled, foreigner and outcast who never expected to be invited to anything, were welcome in the king's castle!
Have you ever felt unwanted? One woman tells that as a child, she hated the start of kickball or Red Rover, when team captains picked their players. "I was always one of the last children to be chosen, because I was small and weak; no one thought I would add any value to their team," she said.
Jesus teaches us that God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends his rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."7 We don't get invited to God's banquet because of our goodness, and we aren't excluded because of our flaws or failures. We are invited because God wants to share his joy with all his children.
In the parable, the king spots a man who isn't wearing a wedding garment, and asks him why he's dressed like that. When he has no answer, the king throws him out.
In some cultures, a monarch who throws a party provides poor people with appropriate garments they wouldn't be able to afford. Suppose you received a gift certificate for formal wear, but didn't bother to use it, arriving instead in your dirty overalls. It would be like showing up for an important court appearance dressed in a bikini and flipflops, even though your attorney or the municipality or a nonprofit provided appropriate attire. It shouldn't surprise you that you'd get thrown out of court or lose the case.
God generously invites us all to his gracious banquet. We are invited to "come as you are" but also to come and be changed. "Grace is not only a gift; it is a grave responsibility," wrote commentator William Barclay. "The door is open, but the door is not open for the sinner to come and remain a sinner, but for the sinner to come and become a saint."8
What are the wedding clothes we are expected to put on? Paul says we are to be "clothed with Christ."9 What does that mean? It doesn't mean just wearing a gold cross or to put a scripture verse on a T-shirt, bumper sticker or cover photo on social media.
In the description of the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation, we read that the bride "has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure" and "the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."10
Paul explains to the Colossians that "God's chosen ones" are evident because of their changed life. Using the metaphor of changing one's clothes, he describes throwing away the filthy garments of "sexual immorality, ... greed ...idolatry ... anger, ... malice, slander, ... abusive language ... [and lying]," so that we can be clothed with "the new self ... with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience ... [forgiveness and] love ...."11
Tucked into that passage is the statement that in Christ there are no distinctions or hierarchical structures to make us think some of us are better than others. We demonstrate that we are not only called to God's banquet, but that we are chosen guests, by accepting God's gracious invitation, and by clothing ourselves in the character of Christ.