Got Time for a Feast?

Matthew 22:1-14                                                                   October 9, 2005

   Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

    "Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.'

    "But 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 king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

    "Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' 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.

    "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.'

    "For many are invited, but few are chosen."

CCI: We will experience the kingdom of God when we open our eyes and our hearts to least of those around us.

Intro: As we approach the parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew’s gospel, it is important that we stop for a moment and think about this gospel. Matthew is recognized as the gospel to the Jews. It was probably written not long after the destruction of the Temple. Matthew often speaks of the Old Testament scriptures. The Kingdom of God is the central thought throughout the gospel.

         When we hear about the Kingdom of God, we usually think of something that is yet future. I was always taught that the Kingdom will only exist when Jesus returns. However, as I have studied this gospel, I have come to believe that this is not Jesus’ understanding. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom, he is speaking of something that is at hand. He is speaking of a reality that is among us. The sermon on the mount is about the Kingdom. The parables of Jesus are stories of life in the kingdom.

         The kingdom of heaven, according to Jesus, exists wherever God reigns in the hearts and lives of people. It is a cake of yeast that moves through a lump of dough. It is a tiny seed that grows into a tree that provides a place of safety for birds. It is a treasure that is found in a field and a pearl that is worth all we have.

         The kingdom in all its fulness will be finally realized when Jesus returns, but even now, the kingdom of is among us when we submit to the reign of Christ in our lives.

         And this parable of the Wedding Feast, is a parable of the Kingdom. Jesus begins this story just as he begins most of the stories in the Gospel, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like. . .” In other words, where God reigns in the lives of people, this is what it will be like.

I. Balance in our lives.

         We live in a world that is out of balance. We are a people who live in debt because we want more and more things. So we work more and more hours to pay for the things we want. And then we discover we do not have time to enjoy the things we went in debt and worked ourselves to death to possess.

         We want to give our children everything they want. To do that we work hard and spend our time on the job. And the one thing our children need the most, our presence, is lost.

         But it not just in our time that this happens, the same was true in Jesus’ day. A king had planned his son’s wedding. It was to be a great banquet. In the book of Esther, we read of a banquet the king gave that lasted 7 days the servants were ordered to provide anything any of the guests desired. This banquet was to be a display of the king’s wealth and generosity.

         So when everything was ready, he sent out his servants to call the guests. There were oxen roasted on a spit and grain fed cattle prepared for the meal. There was wine and fruit in abundance. Many had been invited, but when the invitation went out, everyone had an excuse. “I need to plant my field.” “I am in the middle of a business deal, I can’t come.” “My wife is expecting me home.” “I’m just too busy.” Some, Jesus said, even beat up the servants for telling them to come. They had no intention of going to the banquet.

         The king was disgusted, he had gone to a lot of trouble to open this up to the people of his kingdom, and now they were unwilling to share in his celebration.

         How often are guilty of the same thing. Larry Crabb has said, the danger in our lives is not that we are passionate about evil things, but rather we are not passionate enough about good things.

         There is nothing wrong with working, or doing business, in fact when we do these things as our vocation for God, they are praiseworthy. But when work and business supplant the important things of relationships and service, we fall into terrible evil. Ralph Turnbull said, “There is a danger of doing too much as well as of doing too little. Life is not for work, but work for life, and when it is carried to the extent of undermining life or unduly absorbing it, work is not praiseworthy but blameworthy.” That is where the men in Jesus story were living. Their work had blinded them to the good gift that the King longed to give them.

         We need to learn balance, Eugene Peterson, the translator of the Message wrote, “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is essentially laziness. It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God's actions. It is taking charge.”

         But when we let the laziness of being busy with things get in the way of God’s work, we are the losers. The Apostle Paul, in the scripture we read as our call to worship, said, “Rejoice in the Lord, always. . . Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and requests with thanksgiving, tell God what you need and his peace, the peace that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds secure in Jesus. This is the key to balance in our lives, gratitude.

         Those who had been invited, missed out because instead of gratitude, they were living with anxiety. They needed to finish the next deal, to make another dollar, to appease other people and so the king changed the invitation and opened it instead to those who would be grateful.

II. The Kingdom is best experienced when we realize our need.

         Go out into the Highways, go into the alleys, look under the bridges, search the hedgerows and bring any you find. This was the King’s new approach to the feast. No longer would he offer it to the rich business men, they were too busy, instead he would celebrate with people who had nothing.

         This story is a story of the Kingdom of God, it is a story of Grace. Grace is the undeserved favor of God poured out without reserve. It is the gift of God. We do nothing to earn Grace, we simply receive it. When the invitation went out to the poor and outcast, . . . well, listen to this modern story of how the kingdom of God is revealed.

         One of my favorite stories of Grace, comes from Philip Yancey in the book, What’s so Amazing About Grace.

         In Boston Globe in 1990, there was the following story of a wedding party: It seems that a woman went with her fiancé to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston to arrange the details for their wedding banquet. The couple pored over the menu, selected china and silver, ordered flower arrangements, and so on. Because they had pricey tastes, the bill totaled more than $13,000! They left a deposit of $6,500 and went on to tackle the seemingly endless list of other details for the big day.

         Then the romance soured. The day the invitations were to be sent, the potential groom got cold feet. "I can't go through with this," he whined. "I must break off our relationship."

         When the fiancée tried to cancel the banquet, the events manager at the Hyatt could not have been more sympathetic. She even shared her own story of heartache. "But about the refund," she said, "I have bad news. The contract is legally binding. You're entitled only to $1,300 back. You have two options: forfeit the rest of the down payment, or go ahead with the banquet. I'm sorry; I really am."

         It was a wild idea, but the more the jilted bride thought about it, the more she liked the idea of going ahead with the party. It wouldn't be a wedding banquet, of course, but a banquet just the same.

         You see, 10 years earlier this woman had been living in a homeless shelter. Thanks to some community servant leaders, however, she was able to get a good job and save some money. Now she wanted to treat the down-and-outs of Boston to a night on the town.

         Yancey writes: "And so it was in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel of downtown Boston hosted a party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu to boneless chicken--'in honor of the groom,' she said--and sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters. That warm summer night, people who were used to peeling half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard dined instead on chicken cordon bleu. Hyatt waiters in tuxedos served hors d'oeuvres to senior citizens propped up by crutches and aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts took one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks outside and instead sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big band melodies late into the night." [Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p. 49]

         That night, the kingdom of heaven was shared with the down and out in Boston and gratitude flowed.

         I believe that all around us there are opportunities for us to see and experience the grace of the kingdom. On Friday, as a woman came down the street, I let her pass in front of me. She then came to the door of my car and asked if I would take her home. As I opened the door, her gratitude poured out. As I drove the 10 blocks to her home, the beauty of this old woman who had lived a hard life shone through. That afternoon, I had the chance to experience and share the kingdom of heaven.

         As I spend time in the preschool, I see the kingdom of heaven being lived out. One day recently, as I left the basement, I found a child at the top of the steps crying for his mother. I went back and called Miss Kathy. She came quickly, she picked him up and loved him as he screamed in her ear. She got him back to the classroom and his 4 year old friends gathered around him to comfort him and support him. These were four year olds who were learning to bear one another’s burdens. This is a glimpse into the kingdom of God.

         Within our congregation, there is a lot of division. Many are hurt, others are angry, and yet as the diaconate gathered on Thursday and talked about helping the church move into the future, I was blessed with a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven as people offered to publically pray for one another and pledged to encourage each other.

         These are signs of God’s grace. Though we do not usually use the word, they are sacraments, they are tangible evidence of God’s grace, these actions are vessels in which God’s grace is passed from person to person.

Application: Friends, today, it is time for us to reevaluate what we think is important. God’s grace seeks to flow through our lives all the time. When we are open to letting God move through us, the rush of his Grace will overwhelm us and impact the world around us. However, we can block that flow, the indifference of the first guest list hushed the flow of grace into their lives. And it can happen to us as well. “An estimated 500,000 tons of water rush over Niagara Falls every minute. However, on March 29, 1848, the falls suddenly stopped. People living within the sound of the falls were awakened by the overwhelming silence. It was thirty hours before the rush of water resumed.

         What happened? Heavy winds had set the ice fields of Lake Erie in motion. Tons of ice jammed the Niagara River entrance near Buffalo and stopped the flow of the river until the ice shifted again.”

         Are we permitting cold indifference to dam up the flow of Grace? Are we so busy with our own things that we are missing the feast? Do we pay so much attention to our own schedules that we miss those glimpses of the kingdom that God would reveal in our lives?

         Today, you are invited to come to the feast. We come as we open our lives to the Kingdom of God which is erupting around us. We feast as we live in gratitude for all of God’s gifts. We feast as we extend the kingdom through grace to those who live on the fringes of our society, those who live on the highways, and under the bridges and in the shelters and on the streets. We share in the feast as we live in gratitude. So in the words of Isaiah 55

       "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters;

        And you who have no money come, buy and eat.

        Come, buy wine and milk

        Without money and without cost.

Come to the feast, let nothing keep you away, and you will know the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds secure in Christ Jesus.

.