Bible Text: Matthew 22:1-14 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 20 | Come to the feast, the Lord says. He sends his servants out to invite the whole world. So it’s not men and women and boys and girls who invite him into their hearts and their lives, it’s He who invites them into His. We need to reverse the vocabulary of our current American Christian scene, this talk of us inviting Jesus into our hearts. You won’t find the Bible talking that way. Instead, Jesus is consistently the inviter and we are the invitee. Come to me, He says. Come to the feast, He says.
The tragedy is that so many reject His invitation. It is a tragedy, but it’s not exactly a mystery. Why would you accept an invitation to a wedding feast for someone you don’t even know or like? That would be very awkward. Is that how you want to spend your Friday night, when you could be at home with your own friends and your own food and your own drink? So this is what happens. The King holds a feast and he sends out his servants to call those invited, and they ignore the servants, some make excuses, they got to work or go shopping, or they just don’t feel like it, and some are offended at the very thought of being invited, and they mistreat the messengers and kill them. Now this seems like quite the overreaction. A guy invites you to a wedding feast and you get so angry at the invitation that you assault and murder the messenger? Who would do something like this? But we have to realize two things here. One is that Jesus is giving us the history of what actually happened among the ancient Jews. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jesus weeps, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wished to gather you around me as a hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing.
The Lord did send his prophets, and Israel did reject them and kill them. Isaiah, who wrote those beautiful words of invitation, Come, and buy food without money, come buy wine and milk without price, they sawed him in half for speaking these words. Jeremiah they stoned. Zechariah they killed in the temple itself. And when Jesus sends out his apostles, the same thing happens. Paul is beheaded, Peter crucified upside down, Stephen stoned, James put to death at the hands of Herod. And the King who for centuries invited, the King who came Himself to bear their sins, who personally stooped down to invite them to His feast, He finally grew angry and He destroyed Jerusalem. That happened. It’s history. The Roman general Titus leveled Jerusalem to the ground in AD 70. It is a frightful thing to see God’s justice take its toll. And it’s happened not just with Jerusalem but with every kingdom, every nation. Where are the ancient kingdoms? They’re all gone. All nations topple and fall, and ours will be no exception; God grant us good rulers who will protect Christ’s Church and promote Christian virtue and stop killing babies – but in the end we trust not in princes; the world abideth not, lo, like a flash ‘twill vanish; with all its gorgeous pomp, pale death it cannot banish; its riches pass away, and all its joys must flee; But Jesus doth abide – What is the world to me?
But this still doesn’t answer the question, “Why?” Why stone and kill the messengers who invite you to the feast? Why get so angry? Because the invitation is insulting. It presumes that you don’t have better things to do. It presumes that you need free bread and free wine, a new robe, that you need the charity of God. We can’t underestimate the significance of the wedding garment that everyone at the feast has to wear. The invitation means this. Come, take off your filthy clothes, because you can’t come to the feast wearing that, and you’ll need to be sprayed down and washed because you’re dirty and you stink, and then put on my robe and eat my food, because your robe and your food are no good at all. Who would want to accept this invitation? A beggar, that’s who, someone who is filthy and stinky, and knows it, who needs new clothes and a thorough bath, who has no money to buy food and needs wine without price. This is what Jesus says to the Church in Laodicea, “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”
And this is what the Christian religion is, what Christ’s invitation will always be. It’s an invitation to beggars, who know that nothing they’ve done, nothing they’ve built or bought for themselves, nothing they are is enough – it will come crumbling down like everything else in this world, like all kingdoms and nations and riches and dreams, who know they’re sins are filthy and no matter how they dress up their lives, they have failed to love and to be as God commands, and they need charity, they need God to give what only He can give, they need to be stripped of their own righteousness and washed of their pride and clothed again with the righteousness of Christ.
This why there is no dressing up the Christian invitation. It doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles you put on it. It doesn’t matter the evangelism programs, the seeker friendly frills, the invitation remains an invitation that only a beggar will take. And this should give us comfort. God knows His own. He knows the many He calls and the few He has chosen. It isn’t up to you to fill heaven by your efforts. The invitation is simple. Speak it as you are able, speak it to your friends and your coworkers and especially to your children and your family. Speak it because you love it. But never think that because someone rejects the invitation somehow you didn’t say it in the right way or you could have done more. Don’t torture yourself. There have been thousands of years of the invitation going out, and nothing ever has changed the fact that so very many reject it. Don’t think that you, in the twenty first century, will somehow stop the trend by your own skill and progressive tactics. The message remains the same. And the world remains evil. There are a million things that tug at the heartstrings of every man and woman and child, a million things vying for competition for our heart’s love. But know this, that the same world and the same devil who keep unbelievers from answering Christ’s invitation want to draw you out of the wedding feast to find your joy and your fulfillment in this sinful world and not in Christ who has overcome the world. So let him who stands take heed lest he fall.
This is why Jesus speaks of the man who got into the banquet without a wedding garment on. Notice Jesus doesn’t care if they were good or bad, he says gather them all up, I want them all in, doesn’t matter the name, the accomplishments, anything. All that matters is that they strip of their own filthy clothes and wear the wedding garment. There are those who come to church, hold membership in the church, who are only outwardly Christians. They go through the motions, but they don’t think they’re beggars, they don’t care that Christ offers them His riches, it doesn’t affect their lives or their hearts, they live and think still as if this world is all there is and it would be nice to have heaven if that’s real. They refuse to wear the wedding garment.
And Jesus shows us here that he is no universalist. Not everyone goes to heaven. He casts that man out. How did you get in here without a wedding garment, he asks? What, did you think this was a joke? Did you think we were playing church? Did you think you could hold on to the way you think, hold on to your pride, hold on to your own righteousness and way of life, and I wouldn’t smell the stench? No, you can deceive others, you might even be able to deceive yourself, but there is no deceiving the Lord Jesus. He reads the heart. The man was speechless. He had nothing to say. What is there to say if you’ve trusted in your own goodness and refused the goodness of Jesus that covers all sin? And again Jesus makes it clear. Outside there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” Because where He is not, there is no peace and no rest, not in this world or in the world to come. The Christian life is the good life, here on earth and forever in eternity. Because it’s life with Jesus who makes all things new and beautiful and blesses even our crosses.
What if I don’t believe enough, then? How do I know I am wearing the wedding garment? How do I know my faith is strong enough? I have chased after this world too. I have put food and drink above others and above my God. I have envied, I have still this pride in what my hands have done. I have doubted God’s Word, I have faltered in my prayers. I have cared more about what others think of me than what my Lord Jesus thinks. I have been more excited about an election than about coming to church. The list goes on and on, and the more you look in at yourself the more it seems you can’t possibly be wearing the wedding garment. Stop looking in yourself for assurance. You will never find it there.
Remember who did the inviting, dear Christian. You didn’t invite the Lord into your life. He invited you into His life, into His Church. So don’t you go looking at the strength of your own faith or the pain of your failures. It was precisely because He saw that you were a beggar and a sinner that He sought you out and invited you to lay your burden on Him. He is the One who came for you, He is the One who bore your sins. If you can’t find certainty in the strength of your own faith, good, find certainty in the strength of your Savior – the eternal Son of the Father took on your flesh and blood. He lived your life. He died your death. He knew your shame, he knew what it was to be stripped of his clothes and suffer the shame of giving up his glory. He doesn’t let you go through this alone. He who bore the cross for you helps you bear your cross. He lives. He conquered death. And He lives to call you His friend, He is not ashamed to call you His brother, His sister, a child of His own Father. There’s the strength of faith. There’s certainty, no matter how weak faith is, no matter if it is small as a mustard seed, its strength is Christ. He has invited you. He has washed you clean in your Baptism. He has taken off the filthy clothes of your flesh and robed you with His righteousness. You have died with Him in Baptism and risen again to new life. The Father has put His name on you and pledged Himself and His Spirit to you. The Son feeds you with His own body and blood, joins you to Himself, promises to be with you always to the end of the age. There is your assurance.
God so loves us. And from this love flows everything beautiful. It’s no coincidence that Jesus compares His Church to a wedding feast. This is pure joy, it’s God’s friends and family coming together in love for each other, in happiness for the life Jesus gives to us all. For this reason the Son of Man came into the world, that you may have life and have it more abundantly.
Amen.