Trinity 20
Mt
22:1-14
10/14/18
The television series “St.
Elsewhere” ran for six seasons from 1982 to 1988. It told the story of doctors, nurses and
staff at the urban Boston teaching hospital St. Eligius. The show had a strong ensemble cast that
included actors such as Denzel Washington.
It had critical success, earning thirteen Emmy awards for its writing,
acting and directing.
I remember it as an interesting show
that I enjoyed watching … until the very end of the very last episode. Like all
television series St. Elsewhere eventually came to an end. Viewers tuned in to the last episode to see
how the show would bring all of the stories lines to a conclusion. What they
saw was surprising and disappointing. In
the very last scene they learned that St. Eligius was actually a miniature
building in a snow globe that an autistic boy looked at, and that the entire
series had apparently been nothing more than the working of his own
imagination. Nothing the viewer had
watched for the last six years had actually happened.
The ending to Jesus’ parable this
morning is also surprising, and doesn’t seem like a particularly satisfying
one. Just when things seem to have
turned out well, we learn about a very bad outcome, and then it ends. Yet in fact, the parable is an encouraging
word about God’s grace that we have received through Jesus Christ. And it is also a reminder that God’s grace
produces a life of faith in believers.
The parable in the Gospel lesson
this morning is actually the third in a series of three parables that Jesus
told during Holy Week, and by the time we arrive at our parable it is quite
clear what is happening.
First Jesus told about a man who had
two sons. He told them both to go and
work in his vineyard. The first said he wouldn’t, but then later changed his
mind and did. The second said he would, but didn’t actually do it. Our Lord
asked the Jewish religious leaders, “Which
of the two did the will of his father?” They responded that the first did. And
Jesus then said to them, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the
prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the
way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and
the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward
change your minds and believe him.” Jesus told the leaders that believing tax
collectors and prostitutes would be saved rather than the supposedly reputable
who rejected.
Next Jesus
told a parable about a vineyard. The owner leased it to tenants and went to
live in another country. When it was
time to harvest the fruit he sent servants to get his share. However the tenants beat and killed them. So the owner sent his own son, and they
killed him too. Our Lord asked, “When
therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They
said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the
vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
Jesus responded,
“Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in
our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people producing its fruits.”
Now in our
text, Jesus tells a third parable. He
said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for
his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to
tell them to come, but they refused to come.”
This was not just any wedding banquet.
It was for the king’s son. And we need to recognize that these people
had not just been invited. They had indicated that they were coming. All was
now ready, and that is why the king was sending servants to tell them to
come. However, the people had the
audacity to refuse.
Yet
surprisingly, the king still wanted them
to come. In fact he sent some more
servants and said, “Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my
dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready.
Come to the wedding banquet.” The king
sent more servants urging them to come to the sumptuous meal he had prepared.
However
they paid no attention as they went off to their field and business. The rest even
seized the king’s servants, mistreated them and killed them. Finally, enough was enough. The king was
enraged, and sent his army which destroyed those people and burned their city.
Next, the
king said to his servants, “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited
did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet
anyone you find.” Jesus added that, “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all the
people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was
filled with guests.”
After the previous two parables, our
Lord’s point is clear. He is teaching
about the kingdom of heaven – that is, the kingdom of God – the reign of God
that had arrived in Jesus. God’s saving work was at its critical moment during
Holy Week. And yet, the religious leaders were rejecting it. They were rejecting
Jesus. We learn in the verse just before our text that they were looking for a
way to arrest Jesus. Very soon they
would set in motion a plan to kill him.
They were
rejecting God’s saving work. Their
rejection would bring Jesus to Pontius Pilate, and then to a cross. They would mock
him saying, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of
Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He
trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the
Son of God.’”
Jesus
showed that he was the faithful Son of God by remaining on the cross. He
carried out the Father’s will by dying for your sin. And then on the third day, the Holy Spirit
raised him from the dead.
Many in
Israel may have rejected Jesus. But that could not stop God’s grace. It could not stop God’s undeserved love. That’s what this morning’s parable teaches
us. It has now been extended to others.
It has been shared with you – with Gentiles who were not part of God’s covenant
people. It has been shared with you who are sometimes good, but quite often are
among the bad – with you who are sinners.
You have not loved God with all that you are. You have not loved your neighbor as yourself. Yet because of Jesus Christ you now have a
seat at the feast of salvation – at the marriage feast of the Lamb that has no
end.
However,
this morning’s parable does not stop there.
Instead, the ending holds in store a disconcerting surprise. The king came in to see the guests, and he
noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, “Friend, how
did you get in here without wedding clothes?” The man was speechless. He was in
the wrong and there was no defense that could be made. Then the king told the
attendants, “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The king’s
gracious and unexpected invitation had brought the man to the banquet. Yet now the king ordered him to be bound and
thrown out. It’s not what we
expect. It doesn’t make for a pleasant
ending to the parable. So what is
happening here?
To answer
this we must consider the wedding clothes that the man was not wearing. In the
Scriptures clothes can be used as a metaphor for good and righteous behavior. The man was at the banquet, but he wasn’t
adorned with the wedding clothes that he
knew he should be. In other words,
he was receiving the gift of God’s kingdom, yet his life did not in any way
reflect this fact.
Martin
Luther put it this way when he preached on this text: “From this we easily
understand what it means that this man was without wedding clothes, namely,
that he was without the new finery with which we please God, which is faith in
Christ, and thus also without true good works.
He remains in the old rags and tatters of his own fleshly opinion,
unbelief and security, without repentance and knowledge of his misery. His
heart does not take comfort from the grace of Christ, nor does he improve his
life; he seeks nothing more in the Gospel than what the flesh desires.”
The
invitation to the banquet was based solely on the king’s good will. He sent out his servants to the main roads to
invite all they could find – both good and bad.
And so it is that by God’s grace you have received his saving
reign. God has given you forgiveness and
salvation by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, and not by works.
But God has
not called you to faith so that you can remain the same. He has called you to live in ways that are
produced by faith – ways that are righteous and good. This is actually no different than when Jesus
responded in his second parable, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will
be taken away from you and given to a
people producing its fruits.”
You are not
saved by these things, but where saving faith it present it will do these
things. Jesus Christ put your needs
first, and so now put the needs of others before ourselves. Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for you, and
so now make sacrifices for the sake of your husband or wife; your son or
daughter; your father or mother. In these
ways faith adorns us with the wedding clothes of those whom God has invited to
the banquet.
In order to
make this possible – in order to sustain you in this new way of life – Christ
again now invites you to the banquet he hosts here. He invites you to the foretaste of the feast
to come. He gives you his true body and
blood to nourish the new man within in you.
In this way you have the assurance of your place at the feast that will
have no end. And by this God enables you to wear wedding clothes here and now.
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