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October 19, 2008
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Karen Shimer
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“All Dressed Except for My Clothes”
Matthew 22:1-14
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 usually get 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.
Our Scripture today is about a man who was all dressed…in the wrong clothes.
Before looking in depth at this parable of the wedding banquet, I want to touch on a few 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. Matthew 21 begins with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then describes the way he spent the rest of the day cleansing the temple, healing the blind and the lame and enjoying the praises of the children. As we look at Jesus’ interaction with people in chapter 21, pay special attention to the group that includes the chief priests, teachers of the law, scribes and Pharisees. Notice that their reaction in 21:16-17 is not exactly joyful when they hear the children singing praises to Jesus. Probably quite well aware of the Old Testament reference to praise coming from the lips of children, I can imagine they might be asking this question with a snarl and maybe clenched teeth. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” After this, Matthew relates in verse 17 that Jesus left the city and spent the night in Bethany.
In verse 18 we find that Jesus heads back into Jerusalem early the next morning accompanied by his disciples. On the way, Jesus curses the fig tree and the disciples are amazed at Jesus’ teaching about faith. When the Pharisees find Jesus teaching in the temple a little later that day, they are not only NOT amazed, but they challenge Jesus’ authority to teach.
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 verse 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, as He has been 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!) He lived the Kingdom among them. Notice that the Pharisees are not just silent now, they “look for a way to arrest Jesus but are afraid of the crowd (verse 46).”
Skipping over today’s passage for a moment, look at Matthew 22:15. The Pharisees continued in their choice to reject Jesus’ authority. They “laid plans to trap [Jesus] in his words.”
As most of you know, it never gets any better with the Pharisees. They have turned their hearts against God-in-the-flesh, Jesus, rejecting God’s offer to be God’s people.
Let’s take a look at the parable of the wedding banquet. Because it is a parable we know that the elements of the story are drawn together to teach a lesson or illustrate a point. This parable is a picture of the kingdom of heaven. The king character represents God and Christ is the son. The parable focuses most directly on the guests. Who was Jesus talking about? Let’s look at the details.
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 for the wedding. The first guests invited to the banquet most likely represent the Israelites, those to whom God issued His first invitation.
Throughout the Old Testament and on into Jesus’ day, God sent repeated invitations to the nation of Israel. God called Israel to be His own people, God spoke through Moses, the prophets, and John the Baptist. Verse 5 describes the reaction of most 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. In the parable, the king was so angry at their lack of response that he sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. (Matt 22:7) Apparently the king had had enough of apathetic and even aggressive responses to his invitations. Many scholars conjecture that the king’s response in this parable correlates to an actual event in history: the destruction of the temple and the ransacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.
Since the first guests declined the king’s invitation, 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 certainly makes me stop and think. Maybe it does you as well. Look at verses 11-13 with me. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ‘Friend,” he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 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.
If the king noticed one guest NOT wearing wedding clothes, it most likely means the other guests were wearing them. “Friend,” he asked, “How did you get in here without wedding clothes?” The man is speechless. Since the rest of the guests came dressed appropriately, we can surmise that this man knew what was expected for a guest of the king and he chose to come unprepared. He did not come in a way that honored 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.
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.
Let’s think back for a moment at the interactions and stories that come before this parable. Who are the ones listening intently to Jesus, asking deep questions, being healed and transformed? The disciples, the crowds, the children. This group reminds me of the second invitation list—an unexpected group gathering from surprising places.
Our other main group contains the chief priests and teachers of the law, the scribes and Pharisees. The representatives of Israel. In the passages just prior to this parable, they have questioned Jesus’ authority; they caught the fact that Jesus compared them to the wicked tenants in the vineyard parable. They were also looking for a way to trap and arrest Jesus.
I think the man who came unprepared was like a Pharisee. He knew what was expected of him; the Pharisees knew what it meant to be God’s people. Their behavior toward Jesus, the son of the king, makes their attitude pretty clear: they do not want to join the party on God’s terms, but rather on their own terms. When faced with receiving Jesus as God’s Messiah, they refuse. They are speechless, as it were, and eventually the king removes them from His presence.
The Pharisees and teachers of the law saw themselves as included in Israel, chosen by God for special connection. This guest was chosen to attend the banquet and he accepted the invitation; he wanted to be included in the kingdom. But that seems to be all. The Pharisees showed little interest in cultivation of heart attitudes that would bring them close to God. Likewise, this guest had no interest in really preparing to meet and honor the king. He was all dressed except for his clothes.
You and I have been invited to the banquet. The fact that we are here today indicates that we want to be a part of God’s kingdom at some level. When you heard the invitation, in whatever way it came to you, you responded. How did you, how do you prepare to come before the king?
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.
In Colossians 3, the apostle Paul provides us with a helpful list to prepare our hearts for the banquet with the King
…as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Col 3:12-14)
This parable ends with an interesting statement: “Many are called but few are chosen.” Since the king chose some guests and not others, and in the end, he ended up throwing the one guest out some have connected these actions to the idea of salvation. The king is thought to be making choices about the eternal destiny of various people. According to the actual Greek words used, the phrase “Many are called” can be translated as “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 could infer that God is capricious and arbitrary with his choice of guests. However, the verb used in the original language could refer to the guests as the ones who are making a choice. A legitimate reading of this last line would be, “God invites many people to enter his kingdom, but few accept the invitation.” Perhaps the Pharisees saw themselves here once again in the character of the man who was all dressed—except for his clothes.
We’ve all been invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb. We are free to choose how we respond to the King’s invitation, how we prepare our hearts to come to the King’s banquet. 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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