Matthew 22:1-14; Pentecost 21 - Thanksgiving; "You're Invited"

Can you imagine receiving a card in the mail that that bears a postmark from Ottawa and the Governor General's seal? And the words: "You are invited to a reception at my residence with Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Canada. Please come and join me in welcoming her Royal Highness. A limousine is ready to pick you up. R.S.V.P.

Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada."

Would you find such an invitation hard to believe? Then what if God, the Creator of the all things, the master of the universe and Lord of all mankind, were to issue you an invitation? In fact, God has issued you an invitation. You just heard it. Not only once, but twice in our readings: This is how God spoke to us through the prophet Isaiah: "The Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine-the best of meats and the finest of wines." And this is not just some ordinary wedding party. Just listen to the entertainment God has lined up for you: Foe the Lord "will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever." Have you ever hear of such a show and such amazing party favours? God is going to destroy death and give all his guests the gift of immortality. For the feast and fellowship God offers us is not something we will grow bored of after a few hours, or a few weeks, or even after a lifetime. If God is preparing a wedding feast for us, then that is something we want to be part of forever and ever.

Can you imagine anything more enjoyable and fulfilling than celebrating a royal wedding? But this wedding is special, for we are the ones who are getting married-married to the one who loves us more than anyone has ever loved us, and the One we're getting married to also happens to be the richest, most handsome, most powerful person in the whole universe. For we will celebrate our marriage to Christ, our Lord. This wedding banquet is ultimate happiness, a happiness that is ours for the taking. As Jesus speaks the parable of the Wedding Banquet, he shows himself as the one who fulfills the Old Testament banquet prophecies. As God came to earth in the person of Christ and shared in table fellowship with sinners, the reality of the heavenly wedding banquet was beginning to break upon earth. With his return to heaven the celebrations started to begin in earnest: The appetizers are now being served. But don't feel left out. While those who have gone before us are already enjoying the opening celebrations, we are privileged to participate via satellite hook-up-well, actually much better than that-for in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, our Lord himself is really present with us in his body in the meal he offers us. So when you come to the Lord's Supper, you are actually part of the opening celebrations taking place in heaven for the coronation of Christ and the wedding feast of the Body of Christ. As you kneel before this altar, in reality we are kneeling before Christ's throne, and you are not alone, for invisible to our eyes, surrounding this throne are all the saints and martyrs who have gone before us, all our loved ones who have died are also here. Here, as we stand before Christ's throne and receive his body and blood, for a moment, heaven is opened before us and we are part of something that is too wonderful for us to understand. Yes, the wedding feast is ready and has begun. Let us then joyfully partake of it here on earth as we await its final fulfillment when we reach our destination where our eyes will finally see and our hands will touch the things that so far we have only known through faith.

Yes, we have a remarkable wedding invitation, for we have a remarkable God. And all we have to do is show up. We don't have to cook up a dish to bring along. We don't have to run around for a wedding gift, nor do we need to fret about wedding clothes. All has been prepared for us by our Lord. Really, all you have to do is show up; empty-handed and hungry. It is really that easy. But this matter of "showing up" is just the problem: In Jesus' parable, no one does. They had sent back their RSVPs saying they'd come, but then they don't, and so the king begins to panic. The food is ready, but the guests are late; they aren't showing up!

Have you ever cooked a meal and the guests were late in coming? As the minutes go by and the food grows cold, you become impatient, wondering what is holding them up. You call your guests to see if they are on their way. Perhaps you can keep the roast in the oven a little longer. It appears that God does just that. He sends out his messengers again. The messengers urge the guests to come, for the feast is ready. They even go into great detail, describing what is on the menu and who is all invited. But the guests refuse to come. Can you believe it? Here are people who would rather work than enjoy a party! It is hard to believe.

If the leaders of Israel reject God's invitation to the banquet, Jesus predicts that his Father, the king in the parable, will eventually run out of patience and kill those who keep abusing and killing his messengers and that he will destroy their city, Jerusalem. This was not an idle threat. It actually happened that 40 years after Jesus spoke this parable, the Roman general Titus conquered rebellious Jerusalem and completely destroyed it, leveling that great city to the ground and killing all of its inhabitants.

It has happened to us a couple of times that because of some miscommunication, we were ready to serve a meal, but no guests were coming. What do you do then when the food is ready and no one shows up? Then we quickly got out the phone book to see who we might be able to call on short notice, anyone who might just answer our call and be willing to join us so our work preparation would not go to waste. And guess who joins us at the table? Someone we had never thought of inviting comes to join us and we end up having a wonderful and blessed time, for although we had prepared the meal, the guest is there by God's appointment.

So also in the parable. If those who were invited proved to be unworthy, we see another amazing aspect of God's grace. He doesn't remain content that his banquet hall stands half-empty. It was his desire to see it filled, for he was preparing a party that was too good to let go to waste. Surely, someone would come. The call then goes out to the streets and shopping malls; the bus stations and homeless shelters. Bring in whoever you can find. Don't discriminate. Bring in the good with the bad. The main thing is that a feast as lavish as this one gets enjoyed by someone!

This is the call we received and to which we have responded. But how does God's call go out to the others who are not here with us? Think about it. How did it happen that you responded to God's call? In many cases, I am sure, it was because someone brought or invited you to the Lord's house. That person was responding to God's desire to see you at his table. How about you? How have you responded to God's desire to see your family members, your neighbours at his table? You see, God allows us to invite our friends to his amazing banquet, in fact, you can invite all your friends to his banquet, because God knows how much we would like to see them all there. God also knows how much it will honour us to have our friends come and say to us, "Look, I'm so glad you invited me to this banquet."

The scene at the banquet is one of extravagance. Before the evening is out the king's banquet hall is filled with people who cannot believe their good luck. Folks who usually drink Muscatel from bottles in brown paper bags suddenly find themselves sipping Dom Perignon champaigne, with their glasses getting refilled by tuxedo-clad waiters! Folks for whom finding a half-eaten cheeseburger in a McDonalds dumpster is a treat suddenly get to wolf down prosciuto-wrapped scallops and rack of lamb in springtime fashion with braised morel mushrooms and a pinot noir pan sauce.

It is an extravagant scene, which also tells you something about God's grace. God does not skimp! He squanders his goodness freely on the people who seem to deserve it least. Indeed, the ones who seemed like the natural candidates for such a banquet are the ones who decline the invitation in favour of working. These folks who would rather work than play, rather keep busy than waste precious time at a formal dinner party. Time is money, after all. Some has to make a living!

But God did not send his Son into the world to reward the living. He came to raise the dead! Perhaps that is why it is the economically, socially and religiously dead who end up at this feast. They had nothing better to do! No urgent phone calls vying for their attention! No business deals to close. People like this appreciate what the king offers far more than those who were used to getting such invitations. They figured they could afford to skip this one meal as there would be other meals like it later.

You may be wondering about the one who attended the banquet without proper wedding clothes. That is quite a scary scene Jesus adds at the end of his parable. So we must ask ourselves: "how can we be sure that we are wearing the proper attire when the wedding begins?" Perhaps some of you may recall that a few years ago fifty or so of the Oscar statues given out at the Academy awards in Hollywoood were stolen. The cache of golden Oscars was found under a dumpster a couple of days later by a street person. The Academy rewarded this man by giving him a good seat at the Oscar ceremony, taking him to the awards in a limousine but not before getting him over to a tailor where he was fitted for a custom tuxedo.

I'm sure something like that must have happened in Jesus parable. After all, how could all these people who were brought in off the streets at the last minute when the meal was being served, find time to get changed, much less, find the money to buy appropriate wedding garments? While Jesus does not tell us where the garments come from, I believe his Jewish audience was aware of what God has spoken through the prophets on this subject: Isaiah wrote: "[The Lord] has clothed me in garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." (61:10) And Zechariah adds similar words saying that when we appear before our Lord, our filthy garments representing our sin will be stripped off and replaced with rich garments. (Zechariah 3:3-4).

The apostle Paul explains what that means for us: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." In Baptism we become united with Christ who gives us his goodness to wear as he takes our filthy sin-stained clothes to the cross. By dying on the cross Jesus paid the price for all our sins, so we could be free and dressed with his fine clothes, the kind of clothes we will wear for the great wedding banquet. Jesus once said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:7). There is no other name, except the name of Jesus, by which sins are forgiven. Only Jesus can provide the right clothes for the wedding feast. So don't leave home without him, or you won't be coming home!

Originally, Jesus spoke this parable to the religious leaders of his time. For they had refused John's baptism of repentance and they rejected Jesus as their Saviour. For they believed that they were good enough to be acceptable to God. They did not want to wear the clothes God was offering them in Jesus. It would mean taking off their own clothes-it would mean acknowledging that their own righteousness they had worked so hard at to achieve would not pass muster, and that can be a very humbling experience. For who likes to wear someone else's clothes? That's why so many people even today refuse to be clothed by Christ. It would mean admitting that I am a sinner. That I have failed and cannot do it on my own.

In this parable Jesus is appealing to you to swallow your pride and to exchange your clothes for his clothes. For his clothes constitute a festive resurrection outfit that will see you right into the wedding hall. Now, these clothes certainly don't fit in with the rest of the world's fashions. But what do the fashions of this world have to offer us? It's all just work clothes that wear out by the time we're ready to join the wedding party.

In her novel A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley shows her readers a highly dysfunctional family, which nevertheless attended church each Sunday. Yet this is how the novel's narrator sums up this religious exercise: "We came to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks." When faith becomes a compartment of life instead of life's vibrant center, when you're just stopping off to put in your time, squeezing God in between everything else that you clearly value much more highly, then you reveal yourself as an ill-clad imposter. You haven't put on the festive wedding garment because you fail to realize that the kingdom of God is a high and holy and hilarious feast thrown by a king who has prepared the best of everything. The man tossed out on his ear is said to have been speechless when the king asked him why he wasn't dressed for the party. Indeed, there is finally no explanation for knowing about the great price Jesus paid with his own blood to get us our wedding clothes and yet to insist on doing it our own way. There are no words in heaven or on earth to explain such stubborn rejection of God's amazing grace.

Then again, we who are clothed in Christ find ourselves sputtering to express our own shock at having been invited. There are not enough words in heaven or on earth to give voice to that happy reality. But you've got to start somewhere, and so as in this service of Thanksgiving to our gracious God, so every day of our lives, let us "Rejoice in the Lord always-I will say it again: Rejoice!" Amen.