"Put On Your Sunday Best" – Matthew 22:1-14

Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘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.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he 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.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

-----------A lot gets lost when sermons are read rather than heard, which is why I will make it explicit that the first half of this sermon is scarcasm!-----------

I'd like to begin today’s message by telling you that every Sunday I get a good long look at each one of you and I judge you based on your appearance.

To be honest, I’ve always thought it was kind of a personality flaw on my part; but when I read today’s Gospel message I realized that Jesus wants me to notice how you are dressed and treat you accordingly.

Right?!?!

In today’s parable Jesus tells us about a king who throws a wedding banquet for his son. All the guests decline the invitation and resent that they were invited in the first place. So the king kills off all the original guests and opens up the party for everyone who wouldn’t otherwise be invited – the outcasts of society. And all of society’s outcasts are invited and welcome to the party. There’s only one tiny catch…those outcasts had better wear the right clothes to the party!  

This parable says that we have been invited to the party, but if we’re not dressed for the part, we will be humiliated in front of the other guests and thrown out on the street where we’ll cry our little eyes out and be left all alone; which means that the moral of the story is that God’s unconditional love and acceptance actually does have one condition – the quality of our outward appearance.

Perhaps you hear this as good news. After all, just about all of us already use factors such as appearance to determine how we treat other people: clothing style, haircut, hair color, glasses, wrinkles, tattoos, piercings, what kind of car they drive, what kind of house they live in, who they live with, etc. And here we are with Biblical assurance that we are right to judge people, especially based on such superficial things.

So, at this point we have a decision to make. Either we all start showing up on Sunday dressed in our finest clothes and continue feeling justified in judging other people based on how they look…or we decide to take another look at this parable and find its underlying truth.

Which would you prefer? Trusting in your clothes get you to heaven…or discovering the deeper truth of Jesus’ message?

I hoped you would choose that one. Let’s try this again.

-----------------(end of scarcasm)--------------------

I want to begin today’s message by assuring you that despite how this parable sounds, it is not about clothes! Jesus does not give a lick about what you wear and Jesus certainly does not permit us to judge and mistreat others based on their appearance. How can I say this when the scripture seems to argue the opposite point? Well, there's the verse from Matthew chapter 6 where Jesus says,
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

 And there’s my favorite verse of scripture, Micah 6:8,
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (no mention of wearing nice clothes!)

So if this parable is not about clothes, what is it about?

This parable is about the acceptance or rejection of Jesus and how God’s grace affects our hearts and minds.

This parable was originally directed to the high priests and religious leaders. And, similar to the parable we examined last week’s, Jesus was reminding the religious leaders that they are subject to God’s judgment and punishment based on whether they accept or reject Jesus.

Now the phrases “accepting Jesus” and “rejecting Jesus” need to be clearly understood. We not talking about merely saying “I believe” and then carrying on with our lives as if God’s call upon us has no discernible effect. Accepting Jesus is not an one-and-done event; it’s not the day we were baptized, it’s not a single prayer. Accepting Jesus means that we radically re-orient our lives around those things which were important to Jesus – forgiveness, justice, loving the unlovable, speaking hope in the midst of despair. It’s a daily dying to our selfish selves and rising to the new life promised to us as we daily remember our baptism.

And I assure you what we wear is not important to Jesus.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, the writers use the phrase “putting on new garments” as a way to talk about the new life we have in Christ – a new life characterized by repentance and forgiveness. People don’t get tossed out of Jesus’ party for not wearing the right clothes; rather, they get tossed out when they simply show up but fail to be authentic disciples of Christ.

Simply accepting the invitation to the party – simply showing up – is not enough.

Living as a disciple of Christ demands more from us than intellectual belief or emotional trust; and certainly more than simply showing up to share God’s love with others only when it is convenient to do so. Instead, living as a disciple of Christ invites us to merge our behavior and actions with the teachings and life of Jesus every day of the week.

As a Christian, it is not enough for us just to show up. Rather, we must take our gifts, talents and abilities and use them for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

God’s grace is boundless and inclusive, but it is also demanding; it demands our whole life.

This is a difficult passage with a simultaneously uplifting and somewhat dismal message. Martin Luther once said about difficult passages that we must squeeze them until the good news drips out.

Well, the good news is that we are outcasts, but Jesus saw it fit to invite us into his kingdom. We took Jesus up on the invitation and each day we are presented with dozens of opportunities to overcome our selfish obstacles and share God’s life-changing love with others.

Even when we fail to live into the new, gracious and glorious reality of life with Jesus; even when we find ourselves back on the streets, looking in on the wedding banquet festivities, the invitation is re-extended.

So come, feast on forgiveness and freedom, and party on.

Amen

"God's Pale Blue Dot" – Matthew 21:33-46

Matthew 21:33-46

[Jesus said,] “Listen to another parable: A landowner planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to some tenants and went away to another country. When the time of the harvest came, he sent some of his slaves to collect his produce. But the tenants seized the slaves, they beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, the landowner sent other slaves, this time more than the first, but they treated them the same way. Finally, he sent his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son coming, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him and collect his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now, what do you think the owner of the vineyard will do when he returns?” They said, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death. And he will lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him his produce at the harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you not read where it is written, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing and it is amazing in our eyes.’ Truly I tell you, the kingdom of heaven will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the fruits of the kingdom. Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush whoever it falls upon.”

The chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables and they realized that Jesus was talking to them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

This parable is always about perspective for me. Jesus is letting the Pharisees and chief priests – the cream of the religious crop of his day – have it, really. He’s calling them to task for their unfaithful ways.

What the chief priests and Pharisees realize is that, in the parable, Jesus is the Son, sent to see and to celebrate what the tenants of his Father’s vineyard have been up to; how they’ve been managing things; how they’ve been caring for what has been entrusted to them; how they’ve been using the blessings they’ve been given. And, of course how welcoming and respectful they would be upon meeting the Son, in the first place – the heir to the throne, as it were.

What Jesus knows, of course, and what the chief priests and Pharisees have to admit when they look in the mirror that this parable represents for them: is that they aren’t living up to the landowner’s expectations.  If the fruits of this proverbial vineyard are more than grapes – and we know the fruits of God’s kingdom aren’t really fruits; …if the fruits of God’s kingdom are things like grace and mercy, forgiveness and welcome, love and hope and compassion and humility, then the finger pointers and the gate-keepers, the close-minded and the powerful – the chief priests and Pharisees – were like the tenants in Jesus’ parable who were not only keeping all of the goods for themselves, they were also the ones who would run the Son out of town, kill him and hang him on a cross. And all of this was hard news to hear.

And it’s supposed to be hard news for us still. And, like I said, this is all about perspective for me. So I came across this little ditty recently that is all about perspective, too.

I was told that Joseph Sittler, a well-regarded theologian who wrote and taught a lot about the care of creation and environmental theology was asked once what he thought would happen if/when humanity ever destroyed the planet earth, and his response was something like, “I think God would begin again somewhere else.”

So all of this reminds me of something Jesus is trying to get across to those chief priests and Pharisees – the leaders of the religious in his day. That if they weren’t going to play along with this new thing God was up to in the world, through Jesus…if they weren’t going to start extending grace and offering forgiveness and welcoming the outsider, and loving the “other,” that didn’t mean God’s kingdom wasn’t going to keep on coming.  It just meant that it was going to come to and for the sake of somebody who would get it, and live it, and share it the way God intends.

I’d say the Church, in our day and age, needs to hear this message just as loudly and clearly and with as much conviction as the Pharisees and chief priests heard it from the lips of Jesus. There is a generation of people – in our world, in our culture, in our neighborhoods – who don’t know or care about what we’re up to here, on Sunday mornings or on any other day of the week. None of this is relevant to their lives. None of this meets them where they live. None of this addresses their questions or meets their needs or fills the emptiness in their lives, if they even know or care that there’s an emptiness waiting to be filled.

In fact, this growing list of people – of every age and lifestyle and demographic we might imagine – identify themselves as “NONES” when they fill out surveys asking about their religious or spiritual affiliation. (“NONE” = N.O.N.E.) I’d call them “NONES,” because none of this is their fault, in my opinion. This is my fault. This is our fault. As the ones minding the store – as the workers in the vineyard – as the tenants entrusted with the produce of God’s harvest, the Church in the world has spent so much time – too much time – inside our own walls and behind our own fences, that we’ve stopped returning the fruits of God’s harvest to the world around us, unless they come asking for it.

I think the Church is like another, holy sort of “pale blue dot.” It’s a gift we’ve been given in the grand scheme of God’s plan for creation. It’s a small, but mighty, holy place we have been called to enjoy and to share; to tend to and to preserve; to use faithfully, to serve generously and with deep gratitude and wide grace, so that God’s promises and purpose aren’t lost in the midst of so much that would steal the Church’s thunder.

The Church is full of chief priests and Pharisees still, who, though we aren’t inclined to see ourselves that way for all sorts of reasons, are being invited to step up and out of ourselves in ways that extend the grace we share and celebrate in as many ways and places as we can – because that’s how we pay back the landowner for letting us live in the vineyard of God’s grace the way that we do.

And please know, this isn’t just judgment and fear and “shame on you” kind of stuff from Jesus – for those Chief Priests, those Pharisees, or for you and me, either. This is Jesus reminding us that we aren’t fully alive… we aren’t everything God created us to be… we aren’t as joyful or as complete or as fulfilled… our lives don’t have as much meaning as they could have until we’re loving like Jesus loved; until we’re forgiving like Jesus forgave; until we’re working for the justice and peace Jesus embodied; until we’re loving our enemies or sharing space with outcasts or sitting with sinners, or giving away more of what we’re tempted to keep for ourselves.

Jesus is pointing out that, just like the pale blue dot of the world won’t stop spinning, no matter how much we do to neglect or destroy it, the pale blue dot of God’s Church won’t be able to stop the Kingdom from coming to pass. God’s love will win.  God’s grace will rule the day. God’s vineyard will bear fruit that lasts. Our invitation and our joy – our calling as baptized workers in the vineyard – is to get on board, or stay on board, and invite others to join us for the harvest, because we and the pale blue dot of God’s world will be blessed and better for it, when we do.

Amen