The Wedding Garment

Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 23, Matthew 22:1-14

Good morning!

How many people have attended a wedding? I’ve attended quite a few in my time and they’re all different. I was a guest at the first wedding I went to, played piano at the next wedding, was an usher at the next, best man at the fourth, and married Saundra at my fifth wedding. I once was at a “Redneck” wedding where everybody dressed in camouflage outfits and the pastor rewrote the entire service into Redneck dialect – “Do ya’ll take this fine gal, to take kere of ‘er fer the rest a yer lives?” etc.

One particular wedding we attended was at a reception hall for a couple of friends. The wedding was scheduled for noon, so we arrived at 11:45. About 12:15, with the start running late, Andy said to me…”You’re not doing this wedding, are you, Dad?” “No,” I said, “I’m just here because they’re friends. You’ll notice I don’t have my black book and I’m not wearing my clerical shirt and collar.”

Well, about 12:30, one of the bridesmaids and an usher came over to me. “Are you Brian?” I said I was. “We may need you.”

Finally, at 1:00, after hearing the city official scheduled to perform the wedding had left town and was unreachable, they asked me to perform the wedding. Thankfully, it was close to our home, so I talked to the couple while Saundra ran home and brought back my clerical shirt and collar, and my black book that has the wedding service in it. And at 1:30, I performed the wedding. Now, I always try to wear my clerical shirt and collar and bring my black book to weddings and funerals I attend. Just in case.

Our Gospel reading today is one of the last parables that Jesus told, and it is about a wedding. Jesus and His disciples have gone up to Jerusalem and Jesus is in the Temple each day teaching. This is the second day that Jesus has been in Jerusalem during his last visit to the city, just a couple of days before His arrest.

The day before, Jesus attacked the money changers and those who sold sacrificial animals in the Temple courts on the grounds that these people were preventing poorer people from approaching God. He has reminded the temple priests and the Pharisees that God would not be happy with tenants who kill His messengers with the parable of the workers in the vineyard. And now He tells another parable, a parable about a wedding banquet.

In the world of the first century in ancient Palestine, at the time that Jesus lived, there were few things which might be called entertainment. After all, for most people, life was a bare struggle to raise enough food to eat. Every day, from just after sunup to just before sundown, people worked. And when the sun went down, in an Israelite village, it was very dark. There were no streetlamps, for there was no electricity, there were no gas lamps. The only light there was came from the occasional cooking fire and the dim light of a beeswax candle or a wick burning in a bowl of fat or olive oil – expensive, edible fuel for people who were always one poor harvest away from starvation. No, people did not burn their lamps much after the sun went down, for they could not afford to.

It was only on Friday evenings and during the day on Saturday that people actually took time off from work.

The Sabbath day was mandated by the laws of Moses as a day to rest and to study about God. It was held in much higher regard than we hold Sundays today, for there were no restaurants open, no stores open, no ball games to be played. Saturday mornings were spent in the synagogue, hearing scripture read and debating about what the scripture meant.

Then, there were the Festival weeks. During these few times each year, the entire family went to Jerusalem for the Festival. There, it was a lot like our festivals today – special food cooking, people selling things, a chance to meet old friends. It was a fun time.

But there was no regularly scheduled entertainment – no football games, no World Series, no movies, no television or radio, very few traveling poets and musicians, and there was no money to pay for the entertainment. And so, the big entertainment each year was the round of parties given when young people were married.

When a marriage happened, it was a joyful celebration. The father of the groom would kill one or two prize cattle – valuable creatures, worth a year’s paycheck each! – and those cattle would provide steaks and briscut and roasts for everybody that evening. Roast beef for everyone – and some of those people might never taste beef except during these feasts! The entire village would bring their expensive-to-operate oil lamps and their very expensive beeswax candles to the center of the village, where equally rare and expensive wood was burned in a fire and there would be a celebration. All day long and all evening they would sit and drink and dance and drink and enjoy the wine provided by the groom and his family.

But outside the center of the village – the world was dark! I mean, really dark! It was dark and lonely and some months of the year it was cold, very cold. And so when someone was not invited to the wedding party, they had a cold, dark, miserable, lonely night. And outside the village at night prowled jackels, dog-like creatures much like coyotes or wolves.

Let’s take a look again at the parable that Jesus told that day in the Temple in Jerusalem. Things begin as in a normal wedding:

22 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

What? There are people who are not coming to the banquet? This simply wasn’t done – to refuse such an invitation is a deliberate insult!

Have you ever seen the movie, “The Godfather”? In the days when Jesus walked upon this earth, there were many men who acted like the Godfather – and the kings of the nations of the Mediterranean were the original Godfathers. When they sent you an invitation, they expected you to be there – and if you refused to come, you knew what the consequences might be. After all, you were telling the king that you didn’t care that he had gone to a lot of expense and a lot of trouble to prepare a feast for you. You were telling the king that you didn’t care about one of the most important events in his son’s life. You were telling the king that you really didn’t care what the king thought about you.

But this king was willing to go one more step. He sent out a second invitation:

4 “Then 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.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business.6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.

Now they’d done it.

7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

We’ll forget for a moment that all that good roast beef is getting cold while the king and his army destroy a particular city. After all, Jesus was trying to make a point – He was telling a parable, not a factually true story. So He points out that the king had had enough of the insults and was really, really angry.

Jesus goes on with His story about the king:

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So 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.

Notice that the king’s servants brought in good people AND bad people. We can learn from this…On the king’s orders, the servants went to find “anyone” they could find. And so they filled up the hall with guests who wanted to eat the king’s good roast beef and drink the king’s great wine.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes.

Have you ever been to a wedding or a funeral and find that you are terribly underdressed? Or just plain dressed wrong? There was one guy who showed up at the Redneck wedding in suit and tie – they made him take off the jacket and the tie – it didn’t fit.

Well, this guy wasn’t wearing wedding clothes.

Now, there are several reasons why you might show up at a wedding underdressed. Perhaps you don’t have the proper clothing. Perhaps you didn’t realize the type of clothes required. Perhaps you were running late. Or perhaps you just didn’t think it was important to get properly dressed, because, after all, you know the man and woman getting married and know that they’ll be happy you showed up. Or perhaps you wanted to insult the couple or the couple’s parents.

In ancient Palestine, a king’s wedding was like going to a formal reception at the White House. If the invitation says “white tie”, you’d know it meant to wear the most formal clothing available. And this was the standard for weddings in Jesus’ day. There were a couple of rules you did not break. First, if the king invited you, you went to show respect. Second, if you went, you wore special wedding robes to show respect.

Jesus continues the story with the King asking a question:

12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “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.’

What a harsh punishment? Can you imagine this happening to someone today? Apparently the king had finally lost his cool. He had had enough disrespect, he was tired of people ignoring his office, and he did not want any rebels. The man who showed up without proper attire was bound hand and foot and tossed out of the village, into the darkness where the jackals prowled every night.

Jesus ends this parable with a moral:

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

So what does it all mean?

Well, it’s pretty clear that the king represents God. It is also pretty clear in the context that the original guests that were invited to the wedding, the guests who did not show up, were the Temple priests and the Pharisees, the “good people” of Jerusalem. For centuries, God had ruled them, but increasingly they had ignored God, had stopped worshipping Him, and had pretended that God would ignore them.

The king’s servants are the prophets who told the people about God’s generosity – and were ignored or killed for their proclamations. Throughout the Old Testament, people were chased from the courts of power because of the uncomfortable messages from God that they delivered.

And so, as in the parable the king decides to wipe out the city that is in rebellion – God will wipe out the city and country that is in rebellion. Jesus was directly speaking of Jerusalem and Israel, but we may assume that God will do the same with any city and country that is in rebellion to Him. It is a message that works in our time as well.

How much time do we have left? I don’t know, but it could be running out. I don’t know how far God’s patience stretches – I know it stretches very far, but I can’t say “200 years” or “400 years” or “20 years”. He makes those decisions – I only know that there are many people in this country who ignore Him or are in rebellion to Him.

In the parable the king invites a different people to His banquet. Even today, we see all sorts of people coming to know God in many different countries – people in South America, people in Africa, people in India, people in China. The good news is that there are many people in America that are coming to know God. God invites to his banquet all types of people, both good people and bad people. Do we invite only good people? Or do we also bring the Gospel to “bad” people?

But there is a strong group of people who ignore God or even make fun of Him and His people. Who do you know that acts this way?

It is tempting to condemn these people to God’s wrath, but that is not what God or Jesus asked us to do. Jesus told us that God wants us to bring these people to know God. We are to tell them of God’s love for them – despite their mockery, despite their ignorance, despite their wicked ways – and we are to show them God’s love by reaching out to help them with their hurts, their loneliness, their angers. Especially when they try to hurt or mock us, that is when we need to show them the love of Christ. Who will you show the love of Christ to this week?

As people come into the wedding banquet, they all dress appropriately for a wedding. Mind you, this parable is NOT about how you are to dress for church. God does not care if you wear dirty blue jeans or a recently dry-cleaned and pressed suit to church. God doesn’t care about your physical clothing.

The parable of the man who is not wearing a wedding garment means this:

The wedding garment is your life. It can be a dirty, filthy rag that you wear as your life – Or it can be a clean robe, beautiful with decorations and embroidery of the great and wonderful things you have done in your life.

When you come to join in the celebrations and worship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, do you pay Him the respect due the Son of the King of the Universe? Do you truly listen to what Jesus has taught, do you try to follow His Way, do you attempt to imitate Jesus as best you can? That is what it means to wear the beautiful wedding garment.

Or do you simply come as you are into the presence of Jesus, assuming that you know just as much as Christ does, assuming that your ways are superior to the ways of Jesus, assuming that you have the right to judge God rather than bowing down before the One God who will one day judge you? That is what it means to wear the filthy rags.

You see, that’s what we often do, don’t we? Deep down, we often believe that we are equal or superior to God and Jesus, with the …ahem… “God-given right” to judge those commands and attitudes that Jesus showed us and decide what is right – and what is wrong. “I can’t agree with the position the Bible takes on issue X” and you know, what you just said is true. At this time you can’t agree with the Bible and Jesus – but you should defer to them until you can understand and agree and follow that command or attitude. For when Jesus and the Bible are on one side of an issue and society tells you the opposite, it would be wise to follow the commands and attitudes of Christ.

Why?

Don’t we mostly agree that we should not judge the actions of others, for by whatever standard we use, we will be judged accordingly by God? Then why do we presume to put God in front of us – not as judge, but as the defendant, with us judging Him? And we do that, don’t we?

You see, as Christianity Today editor Andy Couch has written, “If faith means anything, then it must have implications for everything.” (Christianity Today, Oct.2014, pg 73) If we accept that Jesus is the Son of God – God walking on this earth – then this has deep implications for everything we do and say and think in this life and the next. It cannot be something that affects only our behavior on Sunday mornings, but must affect who we are and what we do and say every minute of this life.

The man at the wedding banquet presumed that His choice to not respect the king’s dress code would be fine. But that decision told the king that the man did not respect the king.

It is not enough to come to church to follow Christ. It is not enough to listen to hundreds of sermons to follow Christ. It is not enough to say that you are a follower of Christ.

Instead, we must bow our head and say with intense feeling and sincerity: Thy will be done in all things. Thy way is superior in every way to my way. Thy wisdom I will accept and follow every hour, even when I do not understand it or agree with it.

The man who came to the wedding banquet improperly clothed with disrespect for the king was bound up and tossed into the outer darkness with the jackals. Those of us who come into the church, claiming to follow Christ, yet do not truly respect the Son as our total and complete Lord will likewise be tossed into the outer darkness, separated from the Son and His bride the church and His Father God at the end of time. “And there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Jesus closes with the warning: 14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Throughout Christian history, there has been a tension. On the one hand, we see in scripture the clear concept that Christ has died for all people – absolutely every person – and that all people are invited to come to share in the love and eternal life of Christ. On the other hand, we also know that those who walk upon the path need to work towards holy living.

Different Christian groups have erred to one side or the other. Some say that all Christ asks of us is one time in our life for us to say, “I believe in you, Jesus!” and then we go our merry way. Other groups have bound us up in fear by arguing that even a single unconfessed sin will keep us out of heaven – woe to the man or woman on whom the proverbial piano falls out of the window or whom the bus hits, who in reflex says a “bad word” just before death hits!

But there is a third way, a way of sense and reason which pulls together the great body of Scripture. That is to declare ourselves as followers of Jesus Christ, believing that He was God walking upon earth – and then really try our best to follow the daily and hourly commands – and the minute-by-minute example – of Jesus, giving the Son of God the respect He deserves and also trusting in His grace to cover our mistakes, our lapses, and our humanity.

Only God’s free gift gives us the opportunity to follow Christ. God forgives all of our sins, yes. We cannot work hard enough to reach Heaven – only God’s grace, His divine choice allows us to reach Heaven, for we can never be good enough.

But God also asks that those who claim to be followers of Christ actually show respect for His Son by listening to Him, by following His commands, by walking the path that He walked. This requires we change our life’s priorities, our friendships, our understanding of right and wrong. We must not only claim to be followers of Christ – we must become followers of Christ.

And many Christian people choose not to do this, treating their relationship with God’s Son as an airplane passenger might choose to treat a parachute lying beside you in the next seat – a comfort, something that we hope we’ll never need, something to look at in detail only if the plane begins to go down. We note the parachute lying there, feel secure, and ignore it for the rest of the voyage.

But the reality is that the plane is going down. We are over the ocean and our fuel gauge is not working, but we are sure of this: There is not enough fuel to reach land. And so we need to look at that parachute, read the instructions, listen to those who try to teach us how to use it, and strive to understand it – as if our life depended on it?

Today, the deep question which each of us must ask himself or herself is this: Have I been showing Jesus Christ the respect that the Son of God deserves and thus putting on the wedding garment? Or have I shown up for the wedding banquet without respect, assuming that anything goes, anything at all is ok, any old filthy rag of a life is fine.

Wear your life as your wedding garment. Do not show up for the wedding banquet in an old filthy, torn rag of a life to hear the Father of the Bridegroom say, “Be gone, I do not know you! – Bind him and throw him into the outer darkness!”

Instead, clean up your life with Christ’s help. Mend the tears in your garment by reading some scripture. Patch the holes in your life and wash the old fabric by practicing two-way prayer, talking to Christ and listening for the Holy Spirit’s responses. Ask Jesus for help with the larger rips and missing pieces by asking Him for new fabric and watch Him cut out the old fabric, sewing a seamless garment that glitters with abundant decorations and embroidery.

With Christ’s help walk into the wedding banquet dressed with the most beautiful life the world has ever seen since the Bridegroom Himself arrived, and let everyone know that you are the best friend of the Bridegroom. And then one day, He will introduce you to His Father and His Father will say, “I have seen you for years and your life’s garment has been greatly pleasing to Me.”

The choice is yours to make every day of your life.