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March 4, 2007
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The Last Week in the Life of Christ
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Karen Shimer
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"All Dressed Except for My Clothes"
Matthew 22:1-14
Good morning. I bring you greetings from Brian who had a very blessed time with the Board of Ordained Ministry last weekend. God moved in many ways and Brian really enjoyed ministering through his position of Chair of the Board. Thank you for your prayers for him and thank you for continuing to pray for him as he has arrived in Brazil and begun ministry there with the Warkentiens.
I would like to take a moment to explain the change in Scripture passages for today and at the same time give you some context for today's message. When Brian first approached me about preaching on this passage in Matthew, I read it and said I couldn't do it. I don't like the ending! So he agreed to another passage, one from John, that I felt more comfortable with. When John Kinsky was preaching last week, I realized how out of sequence the John passage was. And I thought, if we are trying to follow the days of the last week of Christ's life on earth, then we really need follow the story in Matthew. So that afternoon, Brian and I discussed the possibilities and brought the flow of the next two weeks back to Matthew.
One other word of introduction before I start into the sermon itself and that is regarding the sermon title, "All Dressed Except for my Clothes." When the girls were younger, especially when we lived in San Jacinto, I would get up early before Brian left for church on Sunday morning and get myself ready for church. All except for my nice clothes. I usually wore a robe or sweats until it was time to go to church. That way all the breakfast and baby messes stayed off my good Sunday clothes. I never thought much about this until one morning when we had a visitor staying with us, and I was explaining the Sunday morning routine to him and when the bathroom would be free for him to shower and get ready. Just as calmly as anything I related my routine and ended by saying, "I'm all dressed except for my clothes."
This young man looked at me strangely and burst out laughing. Then I realized how silly that sounded to be all dressed except for one's clothes. We all caught the giggles and that became a very memorable Sunday morning, birthing a phrase that has lasted a long time.
[Take off choir robe]
Last week John Kinsky began our look at the last week of Jesus' life and gave us some great thoughts on Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem as well as the way he spent the rest of the day in the temple. I want to touch on a few brief points between Matthew 21 and our text in Matthew 22 to give you a sense of the time frame and the people to whom Jesus is speaking. After Jesus made his visit to the temple, Matthew relates in vs 17 that he left the city and spent the night in Bethany.
In vs 18 we find that Jesus heads back into Jerusalem early the next morning, in our thinking this would probably be Monday, accompanied by his disciples. I'm not going to address every detail as we go here, but I do encourage you to notice what Jesus is teaching about and to whom he is teaching. I think it is very significant that the first issue on Monday morning's docket is to talk with the Pharisees, the resident authoritarian group about authority. Notice at the end of this interchange, the Pharisees are simply speechless.
After this Jesus speaks a parable which seems to indicate that others might be welcome in the Kingdom of God, maybe even tax collectors and prostitutes, certainly not the crowd expected by the Pharisees. Then comes the parable of the tenants in which those left to tend the landowner's vineyard killed the landowner's servants and then his son. Jesus speaks very clearly and with authority summarizing the teaching of this parable. In vs 43 Jesus tells the Jewish leaders that "the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit." We have seen Jesus give testimony of this with his life, eating with sinners and tax collectors, welcoming the blind and the lame into the temple and healing them (they had never been allowed into the temple because of their physical deformities!) Notice that the Pharisees are not just silent now, they "look for a way to arrest Jesus but are afraid of the crowd (v 46)."
Skipping over today's passage for a moment, look ahead to Matthew 22:15 and following. Jesus has a conversation with the disciples of the Pharisees who were sent to trap him. After that, the Sadducees talked with him about marriage customs. Notice in verse 33, Matthew relates that "the crowds were astonished at his teaching." He is teaching with authority. He didn't assert his authority to the Pharisees earlier by talking about it; he is showing them his authority. Mathew goes on to relate Jesus' teaching on the greatest commandment and other issues. One general concept to remember about this day of Jesus' life is that it is full of teaching and responding to various groups of people, each of whom has a different motive in seeking Jesus and listening to him.
Let's look back at the parable in Matthew 22, the parable of the wedding banquet. The first part of the parable seems very clear to me. The ending has been bothersome to me ever since I read it as a teen, because at first glance it just doesn't seem to represent the God I know or would like to believe exists. But I am jumping ahead a bit. Let's look at the beginning of the story.
The kingdom of heaven is like…we are getting a story, a parable that gives us a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like. The king character represents God and Christ is the son. What does the wedding banquet represent? There are various references in the Old Testament to the marriage of God and Israel. Isaiah 62:2-5 is an example.
2 The nations will see your righteousness.
World leaders will be blinded by your glory.
And you will be given a new name
by the LORD's own mouth.
3 The LORD will hold you in his hand for all to see-
a splendid crown in the hand of God.
4 Never again will you be called "The Forsaken City"[a]
or "The Desolate Land."[b]
Your new name will be "The City of God's Delight"[c]
and "The Bride of God,"[d]
for the LORD delights in you
and will claim you as his bride.
5 Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem,
just as a young man commits himself to his bride.
Then God will rejoice over you
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride.
This king sent his servants to tell those who had been invited to the wedding banquet to come. According to Jewish custom a wedding invitation was sent prior to the celebration and then when the preparations were complete, servants were sent to inform the guests it was time to come. In this parable, it appears that the first invitation has already been sent and the king is sending his servants to tell the guests it is time to come. Throughout the Old Testament and on into Jesus' day, God called Israel to be His own people, speaking through Moses, the prophets, John the Baptist and now Jesus. Verse 5 describes the reaction of the Israelites well, "they paid no attention and went off-one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them." The books of the Old Testament prophets attest to the fact that neither they nor their message was well received by too many people. The king was so angry that he sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. (Matt 22:7)
The king's response could represent at least two different times in history, either the coming of the Babylonians in 586 B.C. and the destruction of the temple then or the destruction of the temple and the ransacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. In either case, it is apparent that the king has had enough of apathetic and even aggressive responses to his invitations.
So he changes the guest list. He says again in verse 8 that "wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find." This kind of guest list reminds me of the people Jesus spoke about in the previous parable, when he said, "the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you." (Matt 21:31) The story continues, "So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests."
At this juncture in the story, I have usually pictured the servants walking around Burnside in downtown Portland and shaking people awake on benches in the park blocks. Maybe they did find people in places like that. What if they went somewhere like Washington Square on a Saturday morning to find the guests to invite? What would you do if you were out shopping and a well-dressed stranger came to you and said, "The Queen of England is in town and has invited you to dinner this evening?" I would rush home and get dressed in my best dress and go!
The next section pulls me up short. Maybe it does you as well. Read vs 11-13. This king, who has been so kind and generous, who has invited people off the streets, gets very angry because one of the guests isn't wearing wedding clothes. Let's look at this a little more closely. If the king noticed one guest NOT wearing wedding clothes, it means the other guests were wearing them. "Friend," he asked, "How did you get in here without wedding clothes?" The man is speechless. He has not come in a way that is honoring to the king. He has no response. Apparently the others who were invited came dressed in a way that honored the king, even though they had such short notice. This man evidently knew what was expected for a guest of the king and he chose to come unprepared.
The king's response surprises us and yet somehow I think it is justified. He has the guest bound and removed from the banquet. What does this mean? Up until now we have been nodding along with this parable, yes the Israelites missed it and yes, others, like you and me have been invited to join in the marriage feast of Christ, to become a part of God's kingdom. If this wedding feast is tied to the idea of salvation as some Christians think, those who were invited and allowed to stay are believers and those who didn't come or, in this man's case, got kicked out are out of the kingdom, or not saved. The original language does not necessarily indicate that he was thrown out of the kingdom, but rather just out into the courtyard of the palace. He was allowed to remain in the kingdom, but was removed from the presence of the king.
One of the most precious gifts for those who believe in Christ is the reality of His presence with us now and the promise of dwelling in His presence forever in heaven. To be separated from that presence causes great sorrow. In this case, the man was extremely sorry, and was wailing and gnashing his teeth. Jesus does use this phrase in other places in the New Testament, and in some cases it does apply to eternal judgment, but, depending on the context, it doesn't always mean that.
What about the clothes? Why was the king so upset about the clothes? Many commentators link the clothes to the garments of righteousness or right standing with God. This can circle right back around to eternal salvation, but I want to suggest a different direction, one that seems to fit in the context of the book of Matthew and more in the context of who God seems to be revealing Himself to be in this teaching of Jesus.
Look again at the larger context of the story. Jesus was talking to the Pharisees before the story and again afterwards. I think this man was like a Pharisee. He accepted the invitation to the banquet, he wanted to be included in the kingdom. But that seems to be all. He had no interest in really preparing to meet and honor the king. He was all dressed except for his clothes.
[Take off bathrobe]
What if we were to view the clothes as our own preparedness of heart? To live each day, aware of God in our lives, each moment listening for God's voice, watching for God's actions, walking our journey in the knowledge that he is present with us, longing to know God more?
For some, it might mean laying aside pride and stubbornness, inviting God's help in things we try to do on our own. For each of us, this could be a call to live in the present and realize that God is there, speaking to you, singing to you, loving you and loving the world through you.
Listen to some biblical descriptions of the clothes you might wear for the King's wedding feast:
12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Col 3:12-14)
One further word, because I can guess that it might be question for you…the last verse: "Many are called but few are chosen." This could be a whole new sermon and don't worry, I'm not going there. This seems to be a statement added on by Jesus outside the parable itself. The words "called" and "chosen" conjure up nearly 500 years of church debate. Let me leave you with this thought. According to the actual Greek words used, the phrase "Many are called" actually is more accurately, "Many are invited" and it seems to refer back to the early parts of the parable and the numbers of guests who were initially invited. The second phrase, "few are chosen" in English seems to infer that God is capricious and arbitrary with his choice of guests. The parable itself suggests that the "chosen" are the ones who accept the invitation, so a legitimate reading of this last line would be, "God invites many people to enter his kingdom, but few accept the invitation."
So, we've all been invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb. There's still time to respond. Will you join the King in this wonderful celebration of life? What are you going to wear?
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