Sermon
Reading 1: Isaiah 25: 1-9
Reading 2: Matthew 22: 1-14
I think we can all think of a feast we have been to. It may have been a wedding or Christmas or a birthday party. There was loads of food and people and laughter and joy. Someone I know was telling me how he had been to a restaurant and the smells of the food coming from the kitchens took him back to South Korea and the welcome feast he attended when he first started working there. If you have ever smelt Kimchi you’ll know what he meant.
And isn’t it always amazing that food and feasts usually go hand in hand with good emotions. It’s almost as if the food and company rule out negative feelings. The vast majority of get-togethers we go to are happy affairs.
The bible readings today mention 2 feasts. Jesus feast is a warning that God invites everyone to be part of the kingdom but there will be those who reject the invitation or try to enter on their own terms. Isaiah’s feast is part of God’s promise that he will save the world and that there will be a time when death will be destroyed and there will be no suffering.
There are common themes to both these feasts we read about in the passages.
The first theme is that there will be those that reject the offer with all the consequences that the rejection of God brings. Isaiah points out that even the mighty cities will be destroyed. To put this in context the OT often uses the word “City” as something that is organised in opposition to God. Having not heard the Word of God through the prophets those empires working to oppose the will of God will inevitably be destroyed.
But is that same warning explicit in Jesus’ feast. The answer is yes. Those that rejected the invitation will face destruction. Jesus’ parable about the wedding feast is in the middle of a discourse about who Jesus is and where his authority comes from and as I read
the account again and again I came to the conclusion that Jesus was using the King’s promise to burn down cities as a prophetic promise about the destruction of Jerusalem as a result of the rejection of him as messiah.
The second is all about God’s grace. Jesus’ parable is about how God has offered salvation to the Jewish people through Christ but they rejected it so God in his generosity has offered his love and salvation to those who would normally be excluded from the celebrations. Isaiah takes the idea one step further and promises us that God will destroy all that is evil when his Kingdom is established. There will be no more poor or tears promises the prophet.
But there is a third theme that comes through reading about the feasts. In Jesus parable we see the King approaching a person who is not in wedding clothes. This unfortunate fellow get thrown out into the darkness. This seems really out of character for the parable but I believe Jesus is saying something we really need to pay attention to.
The immediate question that comes to mind is why the guest wasn’t wearing wedding clothes? Everyone else was even those who were poor. A commentator has suggested that what Jesus was talking about was those who try to enter into salvation by their own means. This ties in with Isaiah’s prophecy about God giving us new clothes and how our own righteousness is like filthy rags. I believe what Jesus is saying is that the gift of salvation is a free gift that we choose to accept and so there is a sense of someone having to take personal responsibility for their own acceptance of the invitation. This is not something we can achieve by ourselves we can only accept it as a free gift from God.
This poses particular problems for those who assume that simply because they go to Church that they will be able to enter the Kingdom of God. Simply being at the feast does not make one a guest
any more than hanging around in a field of cows makes me a cow.
I think what I want to leave with you this week is this. We have been offered the opportunity to be part of the greatest gift we can be given: an opportunity to spend the rest of our lives and the rest of eternity with God. It is a free gift that only requires us to take up the invitation. Imagine the joy when we get to share in person the wedding feast promised in Revelation. When we get to meet Jesus face to face and we get to be in the presence of God! But it is not something we can earn!
I urge you today if you haven’t yet accepted the invitation: Accept it. The God of grace and love is waiting. He wants to give you hope and peace. He wants you to be guest at the greatest party in creation. You just need to say: “Yes. I’ll come!”
Amen
