Matthew 22: 1-14
Offered to the First Presbyterian Church of Succasunna, NJ, 2012
Mel Prestamo, Elder, PCUSA
“The kingdom of God is like this..” This is the second time I have gotten an opportunity to speak about this passage from Matthew. The first time must have been four years ago, the last time that it came up in the lectionary. It is one of what are called Kingdom Parables. And when we hear Jesus say, “The kingdom of heaven is like this”, we should really perk up and listen closely because Jesus is alerting us that this is really important.
The problem is that this text really gets ugly. The actions of the king when he reacts to what the invited guests have done are difficult to imagine being compared to or giving us insight to how our loving God would treat us. He sends an army to destroy their villages and then again at the end when he casts out the one guest that he dragged in from the highway to the wedding for not dressing appropriately. He had him bound and thrown into the dark where people will cry and grit their teeth in pain. This describes a rather mean spirited and not so benevolent or loving God. It is not quite what we expect Jesus to be teaching us about our God.
This is not an easy teaching for us to accept about the kingdom of heaven and our God.
The problem is that this recorded in Matthew’s Gospel probably was not one whole teaching of Jesus as it is presented by Matthew. In fact there are two parables here that were typical teaching stores of the rabbis of Jesus’ time.
The first is the story of the king, the wedding, the invitation, and the refusal. The second at the end is the story of the guest who arrives ill-clad for the wedding. And then sandwiched in between is the story of the vengeful and punishing actions of the king when he send the army to destroy the people’s cities and kill the murderers themselves. This is a part of the gospel story that scholars suggest might be added material by Matthew. But we come back to that.
Let’s look at the first part of the parable. The portion when the king sends out his save-the-date announcement. So what is Jesus telling us the kingdom of heaven is like?
Well first, we are told that there is a king that gave a wedding banquet for his son. The king sent some of his servants to tell the “invited guests” to come to the banquet. But they refused. Later the king sent the servants to tell the “invited guests” that the banquet was prepared and that they should come NOW. “My prized cattle and calves have all been prepared. Everything is ready. Come to the banquet.”
But they did not come. Some left for their farms or businesses. Others grabbed the servants and treated them badly, beat them, and killed them. This seems to have been a well know rabbinical teaching of the time. It was not unusual for rabbis and prophets to be telling Israel that God has invited them to a great feast and that they are refusing to partake. Jesus wasn’t the first prophet to tell Israel they were missing out on the banquet. But he does put his own twist at the end.
What do the people do when they receive the announcement? They go to work their farms. They go to their businesses. We think that 21st century people and their crazy work and recreation schedules are a new thing. But look here. 2000 years ago they were doing the same thing. They were working their farms or going to their business. Why? Probably, just to survive. People are working multiple jobs today just to survive and it is really no different than it was in Jesus’ time. We all look at our responsibilities and the needs of the people who rely on us for sustenance and we make what appear to be very reasonable decisions about our relationship with God. It begins with just the one time; then it becomes a couple of missed worship services. Then after a time, we miss more than we participate in. And it may not be because we are sluggards. But it is because we have arranged our priorities to place our relationship with God second.
Now people will argue to justify their actions that they have to survive and make a living. And they do. They have made a decision not to rely on God’s choices for their lives. They are making choices that in effect say “I will handle this on my own. I will work harder. I will rely on myself.” The sad, sad truth of people who ignore the invitation and refuse to go the banquet is that they will miss such a wonderful, joyous celebration with God. You see, the king has prepared all the best for us and invited us to the banquet. How sad it would be if we refused to go and missed all of the King’s wonderful gifts.
The next portion of the text is about the king’s reactions to how his invitation is refused and how his servants are treated. Indeed they are beaten and killed. Beaten and killed as was the Christ on Calvary. In this text, the king sends an army to destroy the cities and kill the murderers. If this was part of Jesus’ teaching, it would place us all in a very precarious circumstance. How many times have we refused the invitation? Do we think that our God would send an army after us to destroy our homes and kill us? This would be a very difficult teaching to reconcile with the God of love that Jesus tells us the Father is all about.
I suggested to you that this may be some added text by writer of Matthew. Scholars point out that Matthew was writing his gospel about 80 CE. There was a very significant event in the history of Israel that occurred about 70 CE. That was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans. The Romans had grown weary of the pesky Jewish uprisings and their murdering of Roman soldiers so in 70 CE they sent an army and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and executed the people responsible for the uprisings. So maybe, about 10 years later, Matthew writes his gospel and with a tinge of vengeance, he sticks it a little bit to the Jewish authorities who had murdered the servant and messenger from God whom he had loved and dedicated his life to. Matthew might be forgiven if he had succumbed to the temptation to embellish the story with a little zing. He was only human.
So if we can take this portion of the text and pull it away from the other two parables, we now will have a positive teaching about the kingdom of heaven and one foreboding warning. So now let’s look at the second parable.
In this parable, the king sends his servants out to drag anyone that they can find on the highways and bring them to the wedding. Now to be clear, people that are out on the street are not your wholesome citizens. The servants drag in the good and the bad alike. They filled the banquet room. Now let’s consider this. These are people who by no stretch of their imagining would ever dream that they would be invited to the king’s wedding celebration. They are not the “Invited Guests”. They are not the chosen ones. They are outsiders. They are not considered clean by Jewish law. They have no business being at the king’s banquet. Yet, there they are.
This parable teaches us that the “Invited Guests” who had refused the king’s invitation will miss out on the joyous celebration and that the invitation will now pass to those who had previously been considered as unworthy. That’s you and me.
So what happens when the king comes down to meet the guests? He encountered one who is ill-clad. In other words, he was given proper wedding clothes to wear but he has refused. He has come to the banquet but his motives are impure. He shows up wearing the clothes of a sinner. He has been given a great gift but he has shown up with a closed heart. He remains resolute in his sin, unrepentant. In other words, you can’t fool God. God can see through you if you come with dishonest intent with a heart not open to God but closed and unwilling to truly participate in God’s joyous celebration. What does the King do? He throws the bum out. That is Jesus’ warning to us. God will go out and find you and bring you in. But if you heart is not reconciled to God; if you hold back; you will be found out and thrown out into the darkness. What is the darkness? It is the absence of the Light. It is being without God.
So the question becomes, which of the three examples of people are we, are you? Well, since you are here, I think that we can rule out the first group that refuses to come to the wedding. But let me admonish you not to allow yourself to fall into the trap of thinking some outside activity is more important than your relationship to your God. We would like to think that we are in the group of outsiders who are dragged to the wedding when we had no expectation of being invited. We can be. But there is a caveat.
Years ago, I did a children’s sermon. I invited the children up to the front of the chancel area and had them sit in the front pew. Then I went out into the hallway to get my props. I have five or so empty suitcases. I picked them all up and carried them in at one time. I came back into the sanctuary carrying all of the bags and staggered around for a while. I stumbled on the stairs and then dropped the cases all over the floor. Then I turned to the children and the congregation and said, “Sometimes, Christians carry a lot of baggage.” It got a laugh. But it also made the point that sometimes, we come to God with a lot of old baggage that we don’t want to let go of. That’s what this third guy is doing. He is dressed in his old clothes. He comes to God, but not on God’s terms. He comes on his own terms. He knows that God is where the salvation is. But he doesn’t want to listen to God’s voice and come to God in a way to that leaves behind all his old stuff, his old baggage. He comes to God on his own terms and God sees it immediately and dismisses him. He casts him out.
This is the group that we can be perilously close to being a part of. You see God invites us in and we have responded. God welcomes us. But have we come to God on God’s terms, dressed in new clothes for the wedding of the Son.
