You're Invited!

Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “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.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “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.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

You’re Invited!

What kind of tickets would I have to have in my hands for you to drop everything and change your plans and attend this event? How about the Heritage Classic coming up on October 29 – Calgary v. Edmonton outside at Commonwealth Stadium? Sign me up. I don’t care what’s going on that day. You got tickets? I’ll be there.

How about Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Monday, November 6 at Rogers Place. Do you want to go? Or if Bruce isn’t your beat, how about KISS’s End of the Road World Tour; same place, just a few days later?

There are certain moments and events that become available in a person’s life that you’d have to be crazy to miss.

What if I told you that you were invited to a wedding? Where would that rank on your list of social calendar priorities? If it helps, it’s not just any wedding. It’s even better than a family wedding. It’s a royal wedding. The King himself wanted to invite you personally! Would you go? You’d be crazy not to!

Imagine the food. I mean, I loved my wedding, but we just offered the option between chicken or pork. The King is going to serve nothing less than Grade-A Alberta beef, if not better. You might get lucky and get Wagyu beef. Or if that’s not your thing, you know that the King isn’t going to limit his options to one. Seafood buffet. Sushi bar. Desserts of every kind and variety. Appetizers that’ll make your taste buds sing. Drinks that’ll make your head spin. Who could say no to that? You’d have to be crazy.

But that’s exactly what the Jews did to Jesus. And that’s why Jesus told the parable that we heard a moment ago from Matthew 22.

It was a parable, so it wasn’t exactly direct – it was a story filled with symbolism – but as parables go, it was about as transparent as a parable gets. The king who was throwing a wedding banquet for his son is God the Father. The son whom he is celebrating is the Son of God, i.e. Jesus himself. The invited guests are the Pharisees, to whom Jesus is telling this parable – and really, the whole nation of Israel. And the servants whom the king sends to extend his invitation to the wedding banquet are the prophets, i.e. the proclaimers of God’s Holy Word.

Already by the time that Jesus was telling this parable, God had sent countless prophets to his people – prophets like Moses and Isaiah, Elijah and Elisha, even prophets as recent as John the Baptist who was Jesus’ contemporary. The prophets were there to prepare the people to enter heaven, to encourage them to be true to God, to call them out on their sin and to call them to repentance trusting in God’s forgiveness.

It was a gracious thing that God. It demonstrated his love and commitment to a people who, frankly, didn’t reciprocate it. You think of Moses; the Israelites were constantly grumbling and complaining. And when Moses turned his back for 2 seconds, he turned around to find them worshiping a golden calf. You look at Elijah; he had epic showdowns with false prophets and definitively showed that there is only one true God, but the people didn’t care; they kept worshiping Baal instead. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way for Jesus, and what did he earn for his faithfulness? Beheading and martyrdom.  

To people who were lukewarm in their love for God, to people who murdered his prophets, God continued to send more and more servants extending the same gracious invitation to join him in an eternal celebration in heaven, but incredibly they refused to accept. They paid no attention. They went off and occupied themselves with other business, and almost without fail, they persecuted the very prophets God sent to show them his love. They even refused to accept God’s own Son, whom he had promised to send to save them from their sin, but instead of celebrating him, they crucified him.

It's not a stretch for us to understand the king when he approached his servants in v.8 of Jesus’ parable:

“The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come.”[1]

How could they not see? How could they be so disrespectful? How could they be so crazy to reject God’s gracious invitation so many times in a row?

It’s not a stretch for us to understand how they were unworthy of being welcome to the wedding. What’s harder for us to understand is what happens next. The king, in his graciousness and in his desire to have a full wedding feast to celebrate his son, isn’t deterred by rejection. He tells his servants to go find more people to invite – anyone they could find. That’s beautiful. And the response is beautiful too. The wedding hall was filled with guests.[2] The servants finally found people who understood how special this invitation was and how crazy they’d have to be to turn it down.

But what’s strange is to hear this bit about the man who was not wearing wedding clothes and, as a result, was bound hand and foot and thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.[3]

Christian, that’s a warning a to you. That’s a warning that you don’t get too judgmental about those ancient Jews – who were crazy to reject Jesus – that you neglect to see the danger lurking in your heart.

What was the problem with those first invited guests? It wasn’t the invitation. The king had done everything. He prepared a feast. He killed his oxen and fattened cattle. He signed and labeled the envelopes and didn’t entrust them to Canada Post but put them in the hands of his own servants, not once but twice to make sure that those invitees had every opportunity to come. The problem was that they didn’t want to. The problem was that they valued other things more – the silliest of things, e.g. their businesses and occupations. The problem was their hearts.

That was the problem with the man without wedding clothes too. He didn’t care about the king or his son. He wasn’t concerned with showing respect or honour. He got an invitation to a nice meal and he came on his own terms. He abused the gracious invitation of his king and suffered the consequences for it.

Do you? Abuse God’s gracious invitation? How many times have his servants come to you inviting you to his house and you’ve been unwilling and apathetic? “Meh, I’ve got better things to do.” How many times have you convinced yourself that those “better things” include silly things like sleep or work or playing sports or watching sports? How many times have you walked in these doors or engaged in devotions or Bible studies wanting it to be on your terms instead of God’s? How many times have you folded your hands in prayer saying “My will be done,” instead of, “Thy will be done”?

Like this man without the wedding clothes, have you ever told yourself or someone else, “I’m sure God understands.” “I’m sure he knows how busy I am, how tired I am.” “I’m sure he knows that I’m sincere, even if I don’t really want to change anything about my faith or life.”

If we’re honest with ourselves I think we’d have to admit that the king’s assessment of those first invited guests applies to us too: “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come.”[4] But do you know what’s amazing? You may not be worthy, but he invited you anyway and continues to invite you day after day as long as you live.

Did you catch that in the parable? The king says to his servants,

“So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” So the servant went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good.[5]

God does not limit his invitation to the “good.” He invited you too. He wants you to be part of the celebration of his Son. And even more than that, he clothes you in robes of righteousness that you could have never pulled out of your own closet. As one of those prophets whom the Israelites ignored and rejected once said:

I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.[6]

God wants you to be dressed appropriately for the feast, but he doesn’t expect you to furnish the clothes yourself. He provides them for you in a visible, tangible way that you can rely on:

All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.[7]

In Baptism God not only washes all your sins away, he clothes you with Christ. We sang it a moment ago:

Jesus, your blood and righteousness
my beauty are, my glorious dress;
mid flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
with joy shall I lift up my head.

It was the blood of Jesus that those first invited guests shed on the cross that now covers over all your sin and makes you worthy in God’s eyes.

None of us deserves that invitation. None of us deserves to be here. None of us deserves to receive the body and blood that Jesus poured out for you and me, and yet, in his infinite grace and persistent mercy he nevertheless extends that invitation to you today and every day: Come. Celebrate my Son, your Saviour, Jesus. Come, I have heaven prepared for you with joys unending and happiness unimaginable. Come, not as you are, but as I’ve made you – clothed in the robes of Christ’s righteousness, with hearts filled with love for him.

You’re invited. Accept that invitation with joy and eagerness. Mark that event on your calendar as the top priority – greater than the grades you get in school, the performance review you get at work, the amazing places you get to visit on God’s green earth. Heaven is better than all of them put together and God has given you free tickets through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. In him and through faith in him you may accept his invitation with joy. Amen.

[1] Matthew 22:8

[2] Matthew 22:10

[3] Matthew 22:13

[4] Matthew 22:8

[5] Matthew 22:9,10

[6] Isaiah 61:10

[7] Galatians 3:27

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Love for Our Community

Jonah 3:10-4:11

10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

1 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Love for Our Community

Many of you know that I spent much of this last week in Ottawa. On the way back home, I ran into a member of Parliament in the airport; we were waiting for the same plane. Can you guess what we talked about? Politics.

Even more than the policies that he mentioned and the insights into why certain things have been said and done recently, I think what stuck out to me the most was the underlying attitude that both he and I and anyone else who chimed in had. Can you guess what those attitudes were? I’ll make it easy on you; I’ll just give you two options. Do you think our attitudes about politics were generally positive or negative? They were generally negative.

It didn’t really matter whether he was a member of the NDP, UCP, ABC or EFG party. Among members of every party and people with any perspective, there is always some level of dissatisfaction with something that someone else has said or done. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it will always be, whether the issue is education, immigration, inflation, sexual orientation, or all of the above. It doesn’t matter; we have this incredible knack for dissatisfaction.

That was a sad realization to make at 11:00pm as we were waiting for a 4-hour flight back to Edmonton. What made me sadder still, though, was seeing the impact that that dissatisfaction had on the relationships of the people who were part of that conversation or the subject of it. There were unkind things said about other members of Parliament, and I felt my blood pressure rising as we got into controversial topics. I had to go and take a couple of deep breaths and loosen my shoulders when we were done.

And I get it. We react strongly because we care deeply. Albertans care deeply about the health of our province and the way governmental policies seem to be harming it… in exactly the same way that people from other provinces feel protective and possessive about their homes and livelihoods. You could say that we feel and act this way because we love our communities – and that would be true – but in all three passages that we read from God’s Word today, we see God define love for community entirely differently.

I’d like to focus on Jonah today. He was a man who loved his community and cared deeply about it. We didn’t read this but in 2 Kings 14 we find out that Jonah came from a city called Gath-Hepher, about 2 miles from where Jesus grew up in Nazareth in Galilee. Jonah was a Jew and proud of it. So proud, in fact, that when God came to him one day and instructed him to go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it,[1] Jonah decided to run away instead.

You see, Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, which, at the time, was the sworn enemy of Jonah’s Israel. Not only that, Assyria was an ascending world power that posed a clear and present danger particularly to people from the north, like Jonah. To put that into context, imagine that you were a Ukrainian from Kharkiv in 2021 and God came to you with a special mission to preach the Gospel in Moscow. How would you have felt about that? Probably not very good. “I’ll go to Germany, Lord. Send me across the Atlantic to Canada. Send me anywhere but there.” That’s how Jonah felt.

And we can understand whatever fear may have filled Jonah’s heart as he chartered a boat to the western coast of Spain instead. But what’s fascinating is to hear from Jonah himself why he ran away and didn’t want to preach the Gospel in Nineveh. It was the first few verses of our text for today:

When God saw… how the [Ninevites] turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I know that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”[2]

Did you catch what Jonah said about why he didn’t want to go to Nineveh? It wasn’t that he was afraid for his life. It was that he was afraid that God would be gracious and compassionate to the Ninevites. Jonah was afraid that God would spare them, because what Jonah wanted was to see his enemies get destroyed. You even get the sense that that’s what Jonah was waiting to see when he went out and sat down at a place east of the city. He was waiting for fireworks. He was secretly hoping that the Ninevites’ faith was fake so that God could rain fire and brimstone down from heaven to wipe their wicked city off the face of the map.

Do you ever secretly wish for fire and brimstone to rain down on your enemies? Do you derive a guilty pleasure from seeing your opponents fail? Do you intentionally avoid that house on your street with that one flag hanging in the window because you don’t even want to have a casual conversation with someone whose entire worldview is so drastically than yours? Then you and Jonah have something in common – a lack of love for your community.

Jesus taught us who our neighbour is in our Gospel for today with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The people whom God tells us to love are not just our family and friends. Our neighbours are not just those who are nice to us or who agree with us. Our neighbours include the ones who call the peace officer on us for not mowing our lawn to their satisfaction. Your neighbours include the ones who blow their leaves across the street and into your yard. Your neighbours include the ones who bullied you in school, who cut you off in traffic, who voted opposite you in the last election. They are the ones we’ve been commanded to love, but whom we so often fail to love and whose downfall we may even pray for, whose forgiveness and salvation we begrudge, just like Jonah did.

It’s not a good look, for Jonah or for us. But look at the gentle way that God rebukes his reluctant prophet. First he provided a leafy plant to give Jonah shade during the heat of the day. It was a miracle! Plants don’t grow that much over night. But then, the next morning, God performed another miracle by providing a worm to chew through the plant so that it withered and died.

By providing a worm and a plant, God was proving a point to Jonah. Jonah had gotten so invested in that plant – that he did plant or tend or water – that when he saw it die, he wanted to die. God cared much more about the people of Nineveh than Jonah ever could about this inanimate object that he had met the day before, and God shows grace to those he loves.

He sent Jonah to preach to that wicked city, because God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. His wish is that they turn from their wicked ways and live. And God got his wish! The people repented, so God relented on his threat to destroy them. This was a miraculous victory for the Gospel. Jonah should have been happy – if not sincerely happy for the salvation of their salvations, at the very least selfishly happy that these new believers were not going to invade Jonah’s hometown any time soon because they had found God and morality and grace and compassion.

But the people of Nineveh were not the only ones who got a second chance that day. Jonah did too. God even shows grace to his people – to us – when we’re not willing to reflect his love to others. Again, look at how gentle God is with Jonah. He doesn’t yell at him. He doesn’t punish him. He teaches him a lesson in love – that God loves the lost, just as much as loves the found, and that God’s own people need his love just as much as everyone else.

God is still teaching you that lesson. He is opening your eyes to the truth that your community needs your love, just like you need his. I think we can all think of situations when we have pouted like Jonah did and resented God’s patience with others, and forgotten that that’s how God treated us. He didn’t send a prophet to us – although we are blessed with the prophets’ words and pastors to preach them. God sent someone better; he sent his Son, Jesus – not to sit on a hill outside of town and watch as God rained down our punishment from heaven, but to step in and to take our place and the punishment we deserved so that we could be spared. God intervened for you and showed grace to you, so that you could know that he forgives you and will not bring about the destruction he threatened, but so that you can know that you will spend eternity with him in heaven.

And that’s the same love with which God views everyone around you – the lady who calls the RCMP on you for not mowing your lawn, the guy who blows his leaves across the street and into your yard, the bully who made your life miserable in school, and the activist down the street who spends all their time campaigning for things that go directly against your conscience and collective wisdom.

The book of Jonah ends with this haunting question:

“And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left?”[3]

I ask you a similar one: Should we not also be concerned about our city – about all those people whose politics frustrate us and whose actions may even injure us, because they need Jesus, just like we do? The only difference is that we have him. They don’t. So let’s bring Jesus and his love to our community. Put aside whatever petty differences threaten to separate you from your neighbour and focus on the love that God demonstrated equally to all through his Son on the cross. God give you strength and patience and hope and love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1] Jonah 1:1

[2] Jonah 3:10-4:2

[3] Jonah 4:11

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