Sermon Date:
October 2, 2005
I’d like to say this is an easy passage but it just isn’t. In fact, it makes you stop and scratch your
head.
We have this parable from
Jesus, one that is hard to understand on several levels. Ultimately it is hard to understand how this
is like the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean,
in the Kingdom of Heaven, we don’t expect anyone to get kicked out.
Didn’t the king just tell the messengers to invite everyone they
saw. No restrictions. No rules about a dress code. What happened? If Jesus is talking about this being like the
Kingdom of Heaven, why does it feel like earth instead of heaven?
There are a lot of different beliefs about this passage and I agree
with several commentators on their understanding. This parable is about being ready inside your
heart for the Kingdom of God and ultimately Jesus wants us to go about helping
others get ready too.
I think that it is about getting ready for heaven while living on
earth.
While I believe that salvation is about spending eternity in heaven,
too many folks spend too much time on the heaven part and not on the earth
part. We have to live here too. And we have to live with each other. And once we begin to live a life with Jesus,
we have the responsibility to share the news AND live as Jesus wants us to.
To our 21st century ears, we hear that the guest at the
wedding is being tossed out because he doesn’t own a tux. But that isn’t what Jesus wanted the early
listeners to hear. He is being tossed
out because his heart isn’t in the right place, like the Grinch whose heart was
two sizes too small. Maybe he is racist
and spoke ill of a neighbor is of a different race. Maybe he listened to Jesus and refused to
hear. I don’t know what his problem is
but Jesus is saying he isn’t ready for the Kingdom of Heaven, at least not yet.
There are a lot of people
who are not ready -- our neighbors, our family, maybe even ourselves.
It has been said recently that the surveys that say over
40% of people are in church on Sunday are wrong. It is more like 25%, which means some of
these folks are telling lies about going to church.
I did an extremely unscientific survey of my hometown
Scottsburg on the phone with my parents, aunt and uncle. Scott County has around 22,000 people living
within the boundaries. The county is
made up of Scottsburg, Austin and little towns like Lexington. Scottsburg has the biggest churches – First
Baptist, First Christian, First United Methodist, First Presbyterian, First
Southern Baptist Church and a bunch of small churches and storefronts. Austin has a Christian Church, a Church of
God and small churches on every corner.
My uncle says that 40% say they are churched, but that doesn’t actually
mean they attend often. They believe
than less than 4,000 people are in church on a Sunday morning in Scott County,
Indiana. That brings us to under 19%, a
far cry from the 43% we hear about.
Which leads us to the question “what is it
about church that does not engage people?”
I suppose sometimes they just haven’t gotten in the habit of
attending. Sometimes they haven’t been
asked so they don’t know. Sometimes the
picture they have of Christianity isn’t positive. They say they know church people and want no
part of them. So I guess this means
sometimes we aren’t ready either.
One critical thing to
remember here is that Jesus used parables, not as storytelling, but as a way to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, which brings us to this
particular parable when he does it again.
His listeners know who are being called the invited guests that have
turned away from this God Jesus is talking about. They get that. They get that maybe even if some of them showed
up for the feast they would be turned away because while they had on tuxedos,
they weren’t of the right heart to embrace this God Jesus talked about. You see, the ones Jesus talked about thought
following God was about obeying rules, not how you live out your beliefs. Saying things like that got Jesus in big
trouble.
Jesus had big plans for
the people of God. Jesus wanted
them….and us to gather around the table to give thanks for this loving,
gracious and merciful God that desperately wants to be in relationship with
us. So much that we all get invited to
sit down at a table set by God, our Creator and Redeemer. He wants everyone to sit down at the table
and he wants us to do the inviting, not to send out messengers doing it for us.
Shawn
Zambrows at the Baptist Student Foundation told me a story of a bible study
group she led back at USC. This group
was meeting weekly with the same small group.
Sometimes they would complain about how few came and Shawn would push
them to invite people. But they said no,
they had a better idea. They wouldn’t go
out and invite people, instead they would pray that God would send people
instead.
So
they did. And God did. God sent them a Muslim. Not a Muslim seeking Jesus, just a
Muslim. He came every week and in the
discussions he would say things like, “well, Islam believes this or that.” While they learned about Islam, basically he
just got on their nerves.
Then
one day the bible study was about Jesus being God and he couldn’t get his head
wrapped around that one. Jesus as God
doesn’t fit very well in his understanding of God and Islam so he left and
never returned.
They
talked about this and Shawn pointed out that God has a sense of humor. They refused to invite anyone. They wanted God to do the inviting…so God
did. If they wanted to be more specific,
they need to do the inviting themselves.
If you ask God to do the inviting, God will do the inviting.
We have before us a table
set for you and me. It is set for
thieves and murderers, prostitutes and tax collectors, And even all those
people who lie about going to church.
Everyone. The table has been set
for everyone with the hope that our hearts will be open to hearing about this
loving God and the gift of Jesus.
We have news to
share. We have ears to hear. Thanks be to God.