Wow, That Got Out of Hand Quickly - Audio

Brad Sullivan
Proper 23, Year A
October 15, 2017
Emmanuel, Houston
Isaiah 25:1-9
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Wow, That Got Out of Hand Quickly

So this is everyone’s favorite parable. In a few sentences, Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast went from a king throwing a wedding feast for his son to the guests not wanting to come, killing the king’s servants, and the king utterly destroying their city and killing all of them. From “Hey guys, let’s have a party,” to total bloodbath in 4.3 seconds, the hearer of this story is left rather breathless, thinking, “Wow, that really got out of hand quickly.” We’re left stunned, and a bit scared as we hear this parable, and so we often try to clearly define what groups of people Jesus is talking about.

Christians have long tried to define themselves as the riff raff collected from the streets who accepted the king’s invitation, and Christians have then tried to define the Jews as the initial guests who killed the kings servants and were then killed by the king themselves. Not so fast crazy Christian. At the time Jesus told this parable, there weren’t any Christians yet. Jesus was an itinerant Jewish Rabbi telling a parable to his disciples in the context of the priests and the Pharisees trying to discredit him and his ministry while at the same time exalting themselves.

So, Jesus tells a parable about God’s judgment and God’s grace, and there is tension there which the Pharisees and the priests wanted to ignore. Pharisees and priests followed the law of Moses, so much so that they became certain of their own righteousness before God not because of God’s grace, but because of how well they followed the rules. They felt justified in God’s eyes as if they had earned his good graces. That’s now how grace works.

In Jesus’ parable, no one earned anything. People were invited to a party. The king invited his people to the party, and they didn’t want to come. In fact, they were so dead set against going to a party, that they would literally rather kill people than go to the party. How crazy is that? “I invited you to a party, and you chose to murder people instead?” The king says. So, at that point, yeah, the king kills those people and kills ‘em good, burns their town and leaves nothing but ashes.

Then he invites whoever is left, the riff raff, and all is well. They come to the party, and being riff raff, being the good and the bad, the whomever the king happened to find out among the streets, these people didn’t have fancy clothes to wear to the wedding. In fact, it wouldn’t have mattered if they did, because at a wedding like this one, the king would have provided even the initial guests with wedding garments. They were the kings guests, and they would wear what he provided, rather than showing off their own splendor and mocking those with less.

So the riff raff is having a great time at the party. Crazy uncle Earl is making a bit of a spectacle of himself, but that’s ok. Music is going, the wine is flowing, and then the king sees this one dude without his wedding garment. Did the kings servants mess up and not give him one? Did he refuse to take it? Did he sneak in through an open window and crash the party? We don’t know, and that’s what the king wants to know, and rather than fess up, the man just stands there not saying anything. From his initial entry without accepting the wedding garment to his refusal to speak to the king, the man is making one thing very clear. “Sure, I’ll be here at your stupid party, but I’m going to be here on my terms.”

That’s now how the party works. That’s not how grace works. Grace is freely offered, and you just say “yes” and “thanks.” If the guy in the story had just spoken up, he’d have been ok. When asked “Why you don’t have a wedding garment?”, just admit that you’re a self righteous prat. Just admit that you’re still broken and messed up and trying to earn your way or trying to place yourself above others. If the guy without the wedding garment had just spoken up, the king would have said, “Oh, you misunderstood. The party is a free gift, you don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to be better than anybody else. Here, take this wedding garment, and let me get you a beer.”

The story isn’t about being better than anybody else or being prepared, it’s about saying, “Gee whiz, thanks,” to God’s grace. Often when we hear this parable, however, we make it about something else, and we try to define who has accepted the wedding garment and who hasn’t? Do we, as the church, worry about our family and friends who reject becoming Christian, reject being a part of the church? Possibly we do, but whoever said “the Church” are the ones who have accepted the invitation and put on the wedding garment? Sometimes, in the church, we take our faith in Jesus and turn it into our own clothes, trusting in our faith in Jesus as a rule, rather than simply trusting in Jesus. We take our faith in Jesus and turn it into our own terms. We take Jesus and turn him into an institution.

Sometimes folks reject the church as the institution and reject the faith of the church as the faith of that institution. They’re searching for truth, searching for a way, searching for life. They are searching for God’s grace, for what we understand Jesus to be, but they aren’t finding what they are searching for in what we proclaim about Jesus nor in how we live out Jesus’ way. Perhaps those who reject the church are being called to the wedding banquet from the streets, and we have unknowingly rejected the invitation, or accepted the invitation but done so on our own terms?

There is always that tension, that we take Jesus’ invitation and turn it around and accept it, but accept it on our own terms. “The invitation is free, but I’m accepting it as a good and righteous person,” some may think, or “Now that I’ve been invited, I’ll earn my invitation by being such a good person from now on.”

There is always the tension between following Jesus and his way, the importance of living as Jesus taught, and the free gift of grace, the invitation that continues to be offered regardless of our actions, regardless of how good we are or how bad we are. There is tension between the free gift of grace and the command to love one another as Jesus loves us, and the man in the parable who tries to go to the wedding feast on his own terms reminds us that we don’t get to resolve the tension.

“I thought God wanted me to be a kind and decent person, loving others?” Yes, he does.
“But doesn’t he want me to show that off at his party?” Nope. You didn’t get to the party by being so awesome. God invited you out of grace.

See God wants to have a party, all the time, and at the end of all time. In this life, God wants us to love each other. God wants us to accept his grace and to give his grace. God looks at us and thinks, “Man, y’all are messed up. Just admit it, and quit with this silliness of thinking you have to be better than each other. That ain’t how I work. Y’all are all messed up, and I want to have a party with all of you.” That’s how grace works. The judgment is that we don’t buy it, or rather than we think we have to buy it. When we think we have to buy it, that’s when things get out of hand really quickly. The truth is, we don’t have to buy God’s grace or earn God’s grace. We don’t have to fight with each other to try to get enough of it. We don’t have to claim ourselves as having it and others as not. That’s keeping our own clothes on. God’s grace is God’s grace. It’s a free gift, and there is plenty to go around.