Invitations

Matthew 22:1-14

July 7, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

There is something wonderful about getting an invitation. An invitation means you’re included, that someone thought of you, that you’re welcome into their lives. Now, granted, the whole online social media invitation thing has sort of turned that idea on its head because now with the click of a mouse you can invite everyone on your friend list, and sometimes I get invitations to things that the inviter knows (or should know) I have no interest in. But be that as it may, I do love getting invitations—whether it’s to a wedding, or a birthday party, or a cookout, or an open house…really any kind of get together. An invitation says, “You are cared about. You are loved. And we want you at this event.”

But I’ve never received an invitation from a king, like the people in this story do. I’ve never been invited to a party like the one Jesus is describing. If you have, I hope you responded better than the people in his story and that the party was a great one. Parties are on our mind this month, as we ramp up for our annual Vacation Bible School, which this year is called “Start the Party.” During this month, we are looking at various stories about parties in the Bible, and last week we watched as Jesus redefined social conventions and welcomed unlikely people to the table. That was at an actual party, but Jesus continues that theme in this parable about a king’s party. Only this time, the outcomes are very different.

In the timeline of the Gospel, we are in the last week of Jesus’ life, what we usually call “holy week.” It’s most likely Monday after Palm Sunday. Yesterday, Jesus made a big entrance into the city. Today, he is teaching in and around the Temple where the religious leaders usually hang out. Jesus is not a conflict avoider; in fact, he has already told two controversial parables this morning. Jesus was not known for holding back! Matthew says that the religious leaders know Jesus is aiming his parables at them (21:45). Some people might think after stirring people up with the first two parables, it might be a good time to back off, but not Jesus. Instead, he forges on with one more story which will be followed by three episodes of conflict with those same religious leaders. If anyone knew how to rile up a crowd, it was Jesus (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 193; Davis, Come Alive: Matthew, pg. 170).

And so he tells a story about a king who is preparing a wedding banquet for his son, the prince. A royal wedding banquet would undoubtedly catch the attention of the whole country, like it does today in England for example, even if not everyone was invited. And the custom then was a two-tiered invitation. The first invitation would go out, undoubtedly to the rich, powerful and important people, saying that there was going to be a wedding banquet, so plan on being there. Now, unlike our modern custom of sending “Save the Date” cards, there was no date announced at this point. It was more of a “You’re Invited and Should Be Ready at a Moment’s Notice” invitation. Later, when the banquet was ready, the food was prepared and the wedding was to take place, a second invitation went out, telling those who are invited that the time has come. It’s time for the banquet, so drop what you’re doing and come celebrate with us. It’s that second invitation that is happening in verse 3, but contrary to expectations, the people do not drop what they’re doing. Instead, we’re told, “they refused to come” (22:3). They didn’t just not show up and they didn’t kindly send regrets. They adamantly say they will not come to the banquet under any circumstances. The language there is that strong. It’s the sense of, “I will never, ever, not in a million years come to your banquet” (Davis 170). This is how they respond to an invitation to the king’s banquet. Try to imagine someone today turning down an invitation to the White House. Regardless of what you might think of the president, just to be invited to a formal dinner there is an honor and to say no would be an insult (Card 194). And yet, every single important person refuses to attend.

To his credit, the king makes another attempt with the same people. He sends servants out with what would have been a third invitation, this time even advertising the menu: “My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet” (22:4). This time, they not only continue to refuse, but they beat some of the servants and kill others. It’s a clear message to the king: don’t bother us again. We are not coming to your banquet. In retaliation, the king sends his army to take care of them. Yes, it’s a harsh response, and we might have questions about it, but in the ancient world a king could do whatever he wanted to his subjects. He was in control, and when you made the king angry, this just might be his response. It’s also very likely that this verse is a foreshadowing of the destruction of Jerusalem which will take place about forty years after Jesus tells this story. Jerusalem refuses to respond to their king (God) and they are destroyed. It’s ugly, but it’s a picture of what might happen when the king’s generosity is refused (cf. Card 194; Wright, Matthew for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 83).

So the band is waiting to play for a crowd, the food is prepared (in fact, there’s enough food ready for a week-long party), and everyone who has been invited is refusing to come. They reject the invitation. What is a king to do in that situation? I don’t know what other kings would do, but the one in Jesus’ story decides to invite some other people. In fact, since the wealthy, powerful and important have rejected his invitation, he decides to invite the opposite. He tells his servants (you know, the ones who weren’t killed by the invited guests) to go out to the street corners and invite “anyone you find” (22:9). So they do. I’m guessing they go reluctantly, based on what happened to the last group of servants. But they go and they invite the “bad as well as the good” (22:10). N. T. Wright says this second group probably included “the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the riff-raff, the nobodies, the blind and lame, the people who thought they’d been forgotten” (84). And those people show up! “The wedding hall was filled with guests,” we’re told (22:10). The prince gets his wedding banquet, and the nobodies get to take part in a first-class celebration.

Now, there are a couple of things to remember at this point in the story. Remember who Jesus is speaking to: the chief priests and the Pharisees (21:45). Those are two groups that normally did not get along; they were from vastly different theological perspectives—one considered “liberal” and the other considered “conservative”—polar opposites who normally didn’t talk to each other. (Too bad we don’t have any current examples like that so we could understand their arguments better.) They didn’t have much in common—except their dislike of Jesus and their deep desire to be rid of him. So here, during this last week, usual enemies become fast friends united against a common foe. And about the two previous stories Matthew says that these religious leaders “knew [Jesus] was talking about them” (21:45). Though he doesn’t repeat that statement here, I have no doubt they knew he was talking about them. If God is the king, they were the invited guests, those who had been responsible for maintaining and teaching the faith for generations. They were the important, powerful and, yes, wealthy. They were the invited guests, and in Jesus’ story, they are the ones who not only reject the king’s invitation, they also killed his servants the prophets (and, soon, Jesus). In the next chapter, Jesus will say it clearly: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you…your house is left to you desolate” (23:37-38). So if they are left out of the king’s (God’s) party, who gets in? The riff-raff. The unimportant. The scum of the earth. The people who have no business being in God’s presence. Even…the Gentiles? Yes, even the Gentiles. Because, as our bottom line says this morning: “Everyone is invited to the party” (cf. Davis 171). Yes, the religious leaders knew Jesus was talking about them, to them. And right after he tells this parable, they join forces even with political leaders, trying to trap Jesus in his words so that they can be done with him (23:15).

But before that happens, there is this final part of Jesus’ story that is…curious at best, or maybe just plain strange. The king, pleased with how things turned out (well, there was that city over there that he had destroyed and was still burning, but most everything else turned out well), is walking through the party and he notices one man at the punch bowl who is wearing shabby clothes. He is not wearing wedding clothes. What you need to know at this point is that the custom was that the banquet host, in this case the king, would provide wedding clothes for the guests to wear. That was simply part of the preparation for the party; and when you arrived, you knew you would change your clothes into whatever the host wanted you to wear (cf. Card 194). But this man, for whatever reason, had refused to change. He wore his shabby clothes all the way into the banquet and up to the food table. So the king approaches him and asks, “How did you get in here without wedding clothes?” And the man has no answer. He is “speechless” (22:12).

So the king calls to his servants (he sure has lots of servants, doesn't he?) and he issues what sounds to us like a rather harsh punishment: “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (22:13). All because he’s wearing the wrong clothes? Why such a harsh punishment? It’s not really about the clothes. It’s because he refused the king’s generosity. And that’s when we realize Jesus isn’t really talking about a king. Or a wedding banquet. Or a guest with shabby clothes. Oh, he is, but not in the earthly way we might think of it. It’s at the very end where this story becomes not just a nice, gentle bedtime story. The story is a warning, not only to the Pharisees and chief priests, but to everyone who (as Jesus often says) “has ears to hear.” It’s a story for you and me as well, because we also have been invited to a party called the kingdom of God. Every one of us because, as we said, “everyone is invited to the party.” It’s a generous invitation, one that extends to eternity. But it’s not an invitation without expectations or requirements. To accept the king’s generosity is to agree to his expectations. Here’s how one scholar describes it: “The truth [is] that God’s kingdom is a kingdom in which love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness reign unhindered. They are the clothes you need to wear for the wedding. And if you refuse to put them on, you are saying you don’t want to stay at the party. That is the reality” (Wright 85).

So many times we are just like the guest confronted by the king. We try to get into the party on our own strength, our own power, wearing our own clothes. You know, that truth and justice thing, that’s a lot of work that I really don’t want to do, so I’ll just focus on love. That makes me feel good. Let’s just love everyone and then we will get in to the banquet. Or we try to determine ourselves the standards God should use for those who are admitted to the party. We think we can determine the conditions of his generous invitation. We pick and choose what we like out of the Scriptures and determine that the rest is “not really for us modern people.” There’s a book I read some time ago that tried to do just that, to determine which parts of the Bible represent God’s “eternal will” and what parts are just “for the past.” But we don’t get to pick and choose. The Gospels say a couple of relevant things here. First, Jesus said that no part of God’s law would ever disappear, that he came not to replace the law but to fulfill it (cf. Matthew 5:17-20). That doesn’t mean that every detail of the Old Testament law is for us, but every single principle or the reason God gave that law is absolutely for us. In other words, Jesus says: you don’t get to pick and choose. The other thing was said about Jesus, that he came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Not grace or truth—grace and truth. He is all grace and love and mercy. And he is also all truth and justice and holiness. He’s all of it, and that’s his model for us. Love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness—those are the clothes the guests at his banquet are to wear. That’s what he wants to give us. “We’re not to trust our own goodness in securing our eternity but instead the goodness that belongs to Jesus. Why trust your goodness, which isn’t very good, when you can trust Jesus, who is perfect?” (Davis 172).

And the good news is this: just like the king in the parable, Jesus will provide what you need if you simply allow him to. The king is generous. Everyone is invited to the party and everyone is given the things they need to be a part of the party: love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness. If you ask, he will provide and he will make you and me into people fit for eternity. If you will let him, Jesus will make you more like himself, and that’s not something you can do on your own. But that’s always been true, even for the first disciples who heard this story. Yes, in addition to the chief priests and Pharisees, Jesus had disciples who were in the crowd, listening in on this parable as well, and just a few days after this, he would gather them in a private room for a Passover meal—a banquet of sorts. It wasn’t as lavish as a wedding feast put on by a king, but it was even more significant in their faith. It was the annual reminder of the time when God set them free from slavery in Egypt, when he rescued them and, essentially, made them his people. And so just a few days after this story, Jesus gathers with his friends, away from the crowds and away from the pressure being put on him by the religious leaders. The final confrontation will come soon enough, but for just one night, Jesus welcomes his followers into a banquet. Everything is provided, and he has one final lesson for them. In the middle of the meal, he takes the bread and passes it around but rather than saying what is in the normal script, he says, “This bread is my body, take and eat.” Then he leaves them wondering about that until, as Luke says, after the supper is over (cf. Luke 22:20). That’s when he takes the cup on the table and passes it among them, telling them, “This wine is my blood; take and drink and find forgiveness.” The bread, his body. The cup, his blood. And theologians and scholars have argued for centuries over what this act means and exactly what happens when we do it. I don’t know everything, but I do know this: when we share in the bread and in the cup, in some way Jesus draws near and fills us with himself and his goodness. Somehow, he uses these ordinary elements to clothe us for his wedding banquet. And confident that we have received what he has freely given, we can respond to his invitation positively. So, will you come to the king’s banquet? Will you receive his generous invitation and what he has provided for you? Then let’s pray as we prepare to receive holy communion, this gift, this morning.