April 9, 2006 Sermon

Did You Get Your Invitation?
Matthew 22:1-14

Groucho Marx once said, “I would never join a club that would have me as a member.” But what about the Jesus club? Are you good enough for it? Is it good enough for you? And why should you care, anyway?

We just read a parable Jesus told about getting invited to attend a wedding feast. It is a strange and disturbing parable—especially when you know he told it days, perhaps hours, before his execution on the cross. It opens with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus tells this story to help us better understand God’s kingdom. He uses the image of a wedding feast. It is a celebration, a coming-together of family and friends.

A king holds a wedding feast for his son. God plans a celebration for Jesus, his son. The king/God invites people. They do not attend. He sends more servants to invite the people. These servants stand for the prophets, the men who had for centuries predicted the coming of the son/Jesus. Still, people still did not come, choosing to focus on their businesses and families. They were busy. They did not have time to celebrate with the king/God and the son/Jesus. In the parable and real life, the people invited actually killed some of these servant/prophets.

So the king/God uses his troops to kill the people who refused the invitation to come to the feast. This odd, frightening detail refers to the foreign armies that overran Israel centuries before Christ. Then he tells his servant/prophets to invite the human trash that stands around on street corners and lives in trailer parks and has the wrong skin color. They come.

Jesus concludes with another threatening note. The king/God has his servants throw a man dressed inappropriately for a wedding feast into hell. He ends with the words, “Many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Did you get your invitation? Did you get chosen? How do we know?

First the easy answer. Did we get our invitations? Do we know that God wants us to come into the kingdom of heaven? Yes. You have come to church today, Palm Sunday. You have heard about Jesus. You probably know he entered Jerusalem in triumph on the first Palm Sunday, mere hours before telling this strange parable of the wedding feast. You probably know that Jesus died on the cross a couple of days later. You probably know he rose from the grave the third day after that. And you probably know he did it in order to save you from yourself.

But have you been chosen? And what does that mean? The parable clearly indicates we want to be chosen. Bad things happen to the un-chosen. Foreign armies kill them. They get thrown into hell. Should we take this literally? Do armies and hell threaten us? They do. We pay our government to protect us from armies. But we can pay nobody to protect us from hell. Only God can do that. And God has saved us in the person of Jesus, the very man who told this hard parable. Jesus has already paid the price for our protection from death.

But have we been chosen? Are we wearing the right clothes for this wedding feast or do we run the risk of getting thrown out? Does Jesus’ work apply to us? Look again at the parable. You will see the answer. Who got chosen? Was it the rich? The super-religious? The popular? No, the chosen ones were those who responded to the invitation.

The bottom line in this parable is this: respond to the invitation. Answer Jesus’ death and resurrection with a, “Yes, I will come to your party!” Whether you belong to the “right clubs” means nothing. Only answering the invitation matters. Wearing the right clothes means nothing. (And when I look around our congregation I see this is a very good thing!) Only answering the invitation matters. How do we answer the invitation?

In a few moments I will speak words that evangelists, pastors and priests have spoken for nearly 2,000 years. I will speak the words of invitation to the sacrament of communion. And you will respond by receiving the sacrament. You will take the bread and the cup. You will accept the invitation to participate in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. You will join in the feast.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of Pete Nelson. We came together to remember and to honor him. We joined in comforting his beloved wife Donna and their families. In so doing we witnessed to our faith in God and in the redemption offered us in Christ. We celebrated Jesus. We received his invitation. It was a high and holy moment.

In sacrament, in the celebration of life, in many ways we accept the invitation to rejoice in the salvation Jesus offers us. Praise God: we have been invited to the feast! Accept that invitation. Come together as the church and celebrate our common faith—and the life it brings.