If you’ve ever thrown any type of celebration you know how difficult it can be to construct an invitation list. Due to costs and space you have to have a cut off somewhere and it’s always going to cause concern. If you can only invite 50 people – the person who would have been 51st wonders why they weren’t invited. But if you decide to invite 51 – then 52 says – what about me. And you have a reserved list to replace those who can’t make it. I remember at our last wedding it was just after Covid so we have people ring on the day saying they have just tested positive and we scrambled to the phone and invited anyone who could replace them as they were paid for anyway.
In today’s Gospel reading we seem to have the opposite problem. There was no lack of money or space.
There was a lack of people to invite. And that was caused by those chosen first refusing to come along for a variety of reasons. The King begs them to come: Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet. So the King says: Go into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’
It’s hard to believe that anyone would refuse to attend – not just a wedding – a ROYAL wedding. The parable is supposed to teach us about God’s invitation to us and the sadness and confusion as to why people refuse God’s invitation to eternal life in Heaven. God’s invitation does not come with heavy demands but simply a willingness to allow God to love us. We see that that sadness in the voice of Jesus as he looks over God’s loved city Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. The sadness was not over how they treated the prophets sent by God but their refusal to accepts God’s love and acceptance of them despite what they did to the prophets sent to them by God. It’s like the workers in the vineyard a couple weeks ago. They were angry at the landowners generosity to others even though they were paid exactly what they had agreed to work for.
As we reflect on this parable it helps us to understand the church’s predicament. We struggle to understand why people reject Jesus Christ. What are we doing wrong that people find Jesus so objectionable Is it his unconditional love. Is it the free gift of eternal life in heaven? Is it the image that the Church and Christians have portrayed of Jesus in the world? It’s hard to understand why people clamber when they hear of miracle drugs that will help them to lose weight – surgery that will make them look younger – super foods that will make them feel healthier. But suggest eternal life in heaven if they believe in Jesus Christ and they will mock you and at times even respond in anger.
It’s like what happened to the King’s messengers who were begging the people to come and be feasted upon by the King. They seized his messengers, mistreated them, and killed them – all because of an invitation to a wedding feast. But, regardless of this terrible response, the gospel still prevails because God’s love still prevails, unconditionally: When the expected guests refuse, God throws the doors wide open. No one is beyond the reach of grace. No one is too broken. The banquet hall fills with people who never expected to be there. Grace is scandalously inclusive.
But what has confused people is that despite God’s open and free invitation there is one who does not belong.
The king noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ Why was this man ejected despite the open invitation? We hear about that in John’s revelation when he sees a vision of the great wedding feast and declares: On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Nothing impure will ever enter it!
What we have here is the inability of Satan to do what he did to Adam and Eve in the new Heaven and new Earth. God will not allow a repeat of when Satan entered into God’s Garden of Eden and corrupted God’s first creation. He turned what was ‘very good’ to now know good and evil. But not in God’s new kingdom.
Only those who are found to wear the wedding garment which is Jesus Christ. As Paul says in Galatians 3: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. The wedding garment is Christ Himself—His righteousness, His character, His way of life.
To receive the invitation is to receive the garment of Christ himself. What amazing Grace of God who not only invites all but provides the garment by which we are received. Which is why Paul says in our 2nd reading: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. And the reason for that rejoicing Paul makes abundantly clear: The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
The wedding feast is not only for the elite – not only for the A Listers – it is for family. And as John says in his Gospel, chapter one – to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. We are all children of God. And so Paul encourages us: Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
