The Wedding Feast of The King's Son - A Sermon.

Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14

This morning’s gospel reading was one of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus uses these stories to draw a picture of how things are, and to show us how things should be. I’m sure many of us are familiar with these stories that he told, perhaps having grown up hearing them in Sunday school, and in children’s Bibles. The parables are so profound because they are stories about earthly things, yet they contain a profound, and challenging spiritual message.

I want to look at three surprises that jumped out at me from this passage of scripture, and I hope to make a little sense of the story.

This particular parable concerns a wedding feast; but not just any wedding feast, the wedding feast of the King’s son. I find it difficult to grasp the size, and splendour of such an event. The sort of thing that can draw a nation together, across age, and class boundaries. I wasn't born when Charles, the Prince of Wales, wed Lady Dianna Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1981, in fact, I wouldn't be born for another 6 years – Yes, I really am that young – but I am led to believe that 3,500 people filled the church, with two million spectators lining the route, waving flags, and cheering the young couple. 30 years later, we saw the wedding of Prince William, and Catherine Middleton – an even that has been viewed by 72 million people on YouTube. Huge public fascination was evident, regardless of our politics.

We would expect the picture of the Wedding Feast of the Kings Son,  that Jesus draws for us, to conjure up similar images. The wedding feast of the King’s son should have been a joyous event, and people should have been eager to come, but that isn't what we see in the parable.

We come to the first of three surprises in this short passage. We see the guests, turn down their invites, and refuse to come to the party. Verses four to six say:

⁴ Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, Behold, I have made ready my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ ⁵ But they made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business,⁶ while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 

This is madness! 

Could we imagine people turning down invites to Kate & William’s wedding? No, of course not. And yet, it is the world Jesus saw around him. A world where the people had rejected God’s call to the banquet table; they had taken the meal that God had given them, the Passover, and changed it from a meal of release, into a meal of burden. And it is what we continue to do, even today. When God calls us, we all too often find something else, some other job of work, or pressing matter, crops up, and draws us away from the feast.

The next part of the story; the King’s vengeance, is striking – but surely it cannot strike us as a surprise? The anger is instinctive; and a very human way of explaining how, and why things keep going wrong, and falling apart, when we insist on doing things our own way. We need to be careful here – it is easy to find in this passage a vengeful god, far removed from the God of love and compassion who we find in Christ Jesus. We need to bear in mind that this is a story, to make a point. The historical reality of decline of the Jewish kingdom, the fall of the temple system, and the eventual exile from the holy land at the hands of the Romans is given voice here. But Jesus comes to offer a different way.

The second of my three surprises comes in the following verses:

 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.9 Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.’10 And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

What strikes me about this part of the passage is not that the King decided to invite some new guests. People from the highways and byeways – that makes sense – Of course the King would want to replace the guests, and make up numbers. What is incredible is that the servants gathered “all whom they found”(verse 10 ) “both good and bad”.

Surely not!

Surely God cannot be interested in the bad people?! This seems awkward. God’s servants show no distinction between good and bad people when handing out invites to the Great Wedding feast. And, the teaching is, that we are to go and do likewise. As we invite people into God’s kingdom, we are to do just that – invite People. We need a realisation, that when we deal with people, we deal with “people”. We each have good and bad mixed up within us, throughout our lives. We all have the same “image of God” buried within ourselves, and we are all called by God, to his wedding feast.

The final surprise I want to look at comes at the end of the passage

11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment; 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’

Considering the welcome that was given to all and sundry it seems rather odd that something so bad should befall someone, simply as a result of a poor dress sense. But actually, there is something else going on here. Verse 10 tells us that people were gathered, and the hall was filled. There is no mention of people nipping home, or to Moss Bros to pick up something more suitable to wear. Again, the parable is using a physical sign to discuss a spiritual reality. No-one in this story has changed into “wedding gear”, Jesus is talking about what is going on beneath the surface.

We act this out, in a way, up here near the altar. These robes, symbolic of baptismal robes, become our wedding robes, ready for the great feast that we are to join with later as we celebrate communion together. These baptismal robes, white to symbolise purity, talk about the purity of Christ in which we clothe ourselves.

This is the culmination of the parable; that having welcomed all and sundry to the banquet, God clothes them in Christ. He clothes them in the innocence, and goodness of Christ. This man who lacks wedding clothes has infiltrated the party, he has become a member of the church, but has failed to put on the righteousness of Christ.

Scripture hammers this point home, again and again:

Romans 13:14 “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh”

Galatians 3:27 “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

Colossians 3:12 “Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

There are more! Look for yourself! Jesus is urging us to clothe ourselves in him, and in his nature.

And so, I say come! Come to the feast, we have bread, we have wine! Although we were strangers from God, he has given us fine robes to wear.

Amen.