the church geek

This sermon was preached on Oct 12, 2008. The sermon text was Matthew 22:1-14

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really been enjoying the comic strip Baby Blue this past week.

In a panel from early this week, Zoe and Hammie, asked their mom if she would come outside and play with them. The kids were so surprised when she said yes, that Hammie asked his sister, “Do you think she remembers how?”

Reflecting on Hammie’s question, the Mom said to herself, “Maybe I should cut back on the housework for a while.”

I think that’s a pretty good commentary on how many of us live our lives.

After all, deep down we know that one of the most important things is spending good quality time with our kids. We know we should take time out to play with them and work on building quality relationships. We want them to know we are always there for them and that we will be present to them when they need us.

We all know that. And yet, like Wanda in Baby Blues, we get caught up in the busy-ness of life. We let other things demand our time and attention. We allow our jobs, all those household tasks and chores, and the things we think we need to get done get in the way of what’s really important.

We know we our top priority should be one thing. Yet we go and do another. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and yet we still do it.

Now, it’s not my purpose to lay a guilt trip on busy and overworked parents. And I don’t mean to diminish the fact that there are things in life that we simply must do.

But this sort of thing happens to us all…we know we should be spending quality time with our spouse, working on our relationships with our kids, and making sure we spend time with our extended families.

And yet we get wrapped up in watching a full day of football games, or in getting that one last project done at the office before we leave for the night. We waste time on the computer and video games. We drown out the sound of others with our ipods.

Other times, we know the rules and boundaries that have been laid out for us, or how we really should treat others. And yet we go off and do exactly what we know we shouldn’t do. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we go ahead and do it anyway.

To some degree this sort of phenomenon is what today’s parable is about. It’s about knowing what’s right, what we should do, how we should live, and yet going off and doing other things. It’s about those things in life that we do that just don’t make a whole lot of sense.

The parable starts out….

Jesus says,”God’s kingdom, is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son. He sent out servants to call in all the invited guests. And they wouldn’t come!”

Now I want you to think about that for a moment…the king is throwing a party, probably the biggest and best party he will ever throw. It’s going to be a grand affair. It’s going to have some of the best food, music, wine, and dancing that anyone has ever seen…

And the invited guests won’t come?

Now, who in their right mind would refuse to come to a party thrown by the king? Anyone who missed it would just be a plain fool. There’s something totally wrong with that picture. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

The story continues:

Since they would not come, the king sent out another round of servants, instructing them to tell the guests, ‘Look, everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!’

Now that’s interesting…the king has to resort to begging his guests to come. He sends out more servants to go around and give a sales pitch. The servants, using their most persuasive skills, tell the invited guests if they don’t come they’ll miss the best party ever.

And just when you think it can’t get any weirder, the story plunges into the depths of bizarro world…

They only shrugged their shoulders and went off, one to weed his garden, another to work in his shop. The rest, with nothing better to do, beat up on the messengers and then killed them. The king was outraged and sent his soldiers to destroy those thugs and level their city.

This time the invited guests not only refuse to come, they intentionally go out and busy themselves with other things. Some of the things they did were good and important, like weeding gardens and working in their shops.

But others, apparently with idle hands actually beat up the servants. And in what can only be described as total nonsense, murder them.

This sounds like a headline from a recent newspaper, like maybe the story of the Bentley kid or the Sueppel family that just leaves you scratching your head and muttering to ourself, “What on earth is going on? It just doesn’t make any sense. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.”

Well, apparently the king thought the same thing too, sending out his troops to settle the matter and to deal with the, strange and shocking behavior of his invited but ungrateful and unwilling to attend guests.

The story continues….

Then he told his servants, ‘We have a wedding banquet all prepared but no guests. The ones I invited weren’t up to it. Go out into the busiest intersections in town and invite anyone you find to the banquet.’

The servants went out on the streets and rounded up everyone they laid eyes on, good and bad, regardless. And so the banquet was on—every place filled.

Now here is the cool part of the story!!! The king opens up the doors of his palace. He invites everyone in town, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn’t matter, everyone is invited to join the celebration.

And they come! And they party like its 1999!

When they get there they find that the table is full of all sorts of great food, the wine is flowing, the music is rocking…It’s a grand and wonderful celebration and everyone is having a great time! They are full of joy!

That is until another, final and troubling turn of events occurs…The story continues….

When the king entered and looked over the scene, he spotted a man who wasn’t properly dressed. He said to him, ‘Friend, how dare you come in here looking like that!’ The man was speechless.

Then the king told his servants, ‘Get him out of here—fast. Tie him up and ship him to hell. And make sure he doesn’t get back in.’ “That’s what I mean when I say, ‘Many get invited; only a few make it.’”

As readers of this story today, this part troubles us, because we had no clue that a wedding robe was even required to attend a party. What we have to do though is assume that when this story was told everyone who heard it would have know that you were required to wear a wedding robe if you were going to a party thrown by the king.

And if that was the case, if everyone knew a robe was required, the question then becomes why on earth didn’t the dude have one on?

Well…the funny thing is, he doesn’t even know why he doesn’t have one on. When he is asked, he has no answer to offer. He’s like that kid who knows he’s done something wrong and can’t figure any way to explain himself out of it.

I’m reminded of the time my sister got in trouble for something and when my mom asked why she did it, all she could say way, “I don’t know. The devil made me do it.” Needless to say, mom wasn’t very happy about that one.

But isn’t that the way it usually is?

We do something we know we shouldn’t do or something that just doesn’t make any sense. Others know it. We know it. But all we can do is just stand there and hem and haw or come up with some sort of lame excuse.

I think that’s what Jesus is saying here.

In this parable, Jesus tells us all about the joy, the peace, and fun to be had in God’s Kingdom. He tells us that God has extended great grace, peace, and mercy to each one of us. We have all been invited his wedding feast, the best party ever….

And yet some of us misplace the invitation. Others simply go off and do other things. They tend to their gardens or tinker with the mower in the garage. Some do even worse. They despise the fact they were even invited and they spit on the invitation.

My favorite seminary professor used to say that this was the real mystery of the faith.

He would say the mystery is why anyone who is offered the wondrous and wonderful grace of God would refuse to accept it, would choose to go another way. It makes no sense why anyone would simply refuse to join in the party.

But, that’s not really the situation most of us face here in this room. The mystery for us is why we make the effort to go to the party, but we don’t take the time to make sure we have on the right clothes.

Despite the great mercy and grace of God, sometimes we go off and we do things we shouldn’t do. Sometimes we act in ways contrary to what God expects of us and we fail to take seriously our service to God in how we live our lives. Othertimes we don’t try to make the best of our relationships with those that God has surrounded us with.

Friend’s, we’ve been invited to a great and marvelous wedding feast and our lives ought to reflect that reality:

* The way we live ought to be a response of joy, gratitude and service to the one who has so graciously opened the doors to the party. Our service to God ought to be a response of thankful hearts, not a duty or a drudgery.

* The way we live with one another ought to be in service and in love; listening to, caring for, and extending grace and peace to each other. After all no one loves to be at a party if they are sitting next to a party pooper!

* The way we reach out to the world around us ought to be with open arms. Doing all that we can to invite others to join in the party and bending over backwards to extend hospitality to any one who accepts the invitation.

The point, my friends is this, to do any less, to respond in any other way, just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Thanks be to God. Amen.