God's Party
A sermon based on Matthew 22:1-14
by Rev. Karen A. Goltz

            I think the worst job in the world, or at least in the Bible, is to be a slave in Jesus' parables.  Last week they were in the service of a vineyard owner who sent them to collect the harvest from his tenants.  They were beaten and killed.  This week they seem to have an easier job: invite people to a wedding.  Again, they're beaten and killed.  I guess being a slave in one of Jesus' parables is just plain hazardous to your health.

            But that's OK.  I don't think we're supposed to relate to the slaves in either one of these parables.  So who are we supposed to relate to?

            That's a tricky question, and not one to be answered lightly.  Because these parables weren't written for us.  That doesn't mean they don't apply to us, or they don't tell us something we need to know, but, in their original form, these parables were not written directly to us.

            Matthew's gospel was written for the Jewish community around Jerusalem not long after the city and the Temple were destroyed.  Up to this point there were a number of Jewish sects, lots of different ways to 'be Jewish,' kind of like all the different Protestant denominations we have today.  Each denomination is different in some ways, but at our core, each and every one of us is Christian.  Back a little before Matthew's time, Judaism had been sort of the same way, with Temple worship at the core, but the destruction of the Temple changed all that.  The Temple had been central to Jewish identity since the days of Solomon, about a thousand years earlier.  Now the Temple was no more, and Judaism itself was in peril.  There was a big push to get everyone to agree on what it meant to be Jewish, to create a single, unified Judaism, and the Pharisees and chief priests seemed to be dominating.  They weren't evil, they weren't malicious, and they weren't trying to amass their own personal power for their own personal gain.  They understood themselves to be keepers of God's Law, and they understood the key to Jewish identity to be in the keeping of that Law.  In order to ensure that people would keep that Law properly, they had to set themselves up as authorities on God and God's will.  And there was no room in their understanding of God's will for recognizing some guy named Jesus as the Messiah.

            At the time Matthew's gospel was written, Jesus had been executed some forty years earlier.  In those forty years, a segment of Judaism had recognized him as the Messiah, and saw him as the fulfillment of the prophets.  They too were trying to save Judaism; but unlike the Pharisees, their understanding was centered on Jesus as fulfillment of God's Law.  They still considered themselves to be Jewish; it's just that their understanding of what Judaism was differed greatly from the Pharisees' understanding.

            So Matthew's gospel was written to that community of Jewish Christians.  The Pharisaic understanding seemed to be winning, and Matthew's community was wondering where that left them.  That's why for the past several weeks we've been seeing this power struggle between Jesus and the Pharisees, arguing over who truly has authority.  And in his parables, Jesus is not only claiming to have God's authority, he is claiming that the chief priests who refuse to recognize him have had their authority taken away from them.  In the parable we read today, God is the king, Jesus is the son, the chief priests and Pharisees are the originally invited guests-the ones who declined the invitation both times and beat and murdered the slaves (who themselves are understood to be the prophets)-and the guests brought in from the main streets are the Gentiles, the non-Jews who would now enjoy a covenant relationship with God.  That was Matthew's goal: to assure his community of their proper place in Jewish history, and to assure them that opening the mission to non-Jews was in accordance with God's will.

            So that's what this parable meant two thousand years ago.  But God's Word, even when spoken through a specific person in a specific context for a specific purpose, is not locked stagnant in time or place.  So what does it mean for us now?

            I go back to how Jesus begins this parable.  "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son..."  I see a God who has put together something great, something wonderful, and who wants to share it with those he loves.  He invites his loved ones to come and celebrate with him.  But they have other things to do.  This 'something great' that God has put together isn't high enough on their priority lists.  It's just not important enough for them.

This is something that really hits home with me.  I remember my own wedding, almost four and a half years ago.  The wedding was a lot of work, and it took a lot of planning.  But it was a very important day for me, a very joyful day, and I wanted to share it with my friends and family, and with my husband's friends and family.  Just my side of the guest list had sixty-one people on it.  There were sixty-one people I wanted to share in my happiness that day.  Thirty of them didn't come.  And some of those thirty never even acknowledged the invitation, never even sent back the little card saying if they were coming or not.  Nearly half of those thirty lived locally.  But my wedding day was a lower priority than whatever else they had going on.

            Now I understand that there are some things that just can't be helped, and that there are good and sufficient reasons to miss a wedding.  Two of my husband's out-of state siblings couldn't make it because both of them had babies about to be born (my niece was born about the time we were exchanging our vows, and my nephew four days later).  My husband's original choice for best man was an Army Reservist who got unexpectedly activated and had to report to duty the week before our wedding.  There were a number of people on both sides of our families who lived out of state and just couldn't afford to make the trip.  I understand that, and I don't have hard feelings about any of those situations.  But there were many others who could have come, but they chose not to.  That hurt.

            And that's just a bride's feelings about her wedding day.  The parable talks about a wedding banquet, but it's really referring to relationship with God, within God's good creation.  We don't often think about God being disappointed, or hurt, or feeling shunned or betrayed, but he can be.  Just last week we heard a reading from Isaiah in which God was upset because the people he'd nurtured and tended like a precious vine turned from him, and rejected him.  This week he's compared to a proud and powerful king who is happy about his son's marriage and throws a party, wanting everyone to celebrate, but nobody cares.  Of course that hurts.

            I look at this parable, and I see a God who wants to be in relationship with us.  Look what he does-he's already in relationship with some people, and he invites them to celebrate with him.  When they refuse, he invites them again.  Maybe they don't understand, he thinks.  So he sends 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."  Look at all that I have prepared-it's all good.  I've put thought and care into this, and I have provided plenty of good things.  Come, be my guest!

            But those he has invited don't just ignore him this time; they flat out reject him.  Now God is not some lonely, pathetic character desperate for friends; he is a generous and benevolent host, who has created something good with the express intention of sharing it with others.  So those who consciously reject him he lets go, and he reaches out to still others, because what he's got is too good to keep to himself.  He set up this banquet specifically to provide celebration and nourishment to others; all who will celebrate and be nourished are welcome.

            I'm guilty of sometimes overemphasizing how difficult discipleship can be.  I've stood at this very pulpit and talked about what it demands of us, and how different from the prevailing values of society it is.  But the truth is, we're called, through no worth or merit of our own, to participate in all the good things God has done.  There are responsibilities, yes, but ultimately, we're called to celebrate.  We're called to participate in the joy and the feasting and the glory of the kingdom.

            God knows the hurt of rejection.  However hurt I felt by some of the people I invited to my wedding, that was nothing compared to the hurt Jesus felt on the cross, with the crowds he'd been teaching and healing crying out for his blood, his disciples scattering in all directions and denying him to anyone who tried to connect them to him, and him feeling so distant and cut off from his own Father that he cried out in anguish, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!  Jesus, God incarnate, felt that, experienced that, made that event a part of his very being.

            But God also knows the glory of resurrection.  He knows life as life should be, life as life could be, and he provides it.  And through his grace and mercy, he has invited us to share in it.

            Come to the banquet, for all is now ready.  Amen.