The Marvelous Style Of Jesus: Truth And Love
Sermon
Where Gratitude Abounds
Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Last Third)
Jesus' use of parables is his way of communicating a striking truth with significant love. In my own journey as a Christian person, the most amazing quality of God which has been so instructive to me is that He approaches us with equal doses of love and truth. How different He is than us. When I see someone in error and that error has personally hurt me, I go for that person's jugular, to deliver the truth, but little or no love accompanies it. Hence, the person becomes defensive and flatly refuses the truth which could correct the error.
In this parable, Jesus shows himself to care both about the truth he wants to communicate and the manner in which it is cradled, via an earthly story. It serves to reiterate a precious principle to us: You and I will never be able to separate God's love and God's truth. We will always receive both. We need both. All people do!
For hundreds of years, the Jewish people have had a special focus of God's love. God's Son, Jesus, was born through Jewish lineage and of the Holy Spirit. He is a true fulfillment of a number of messianic passages in our Old Testament, also the Jewish Scriptures. Full grown, a rabbi and Holy Spirit-driven, Jesus is given great press by the Gospel writer, Matthew. The material most unique to Matthew gives central focus to Jesus as the One who truly fulfills the Old Testament prophecies. With all his heart, the Jew-become-Christian, Matthew, provides a proof-text that Jesus is the true heir of King David and the hoped-for Messiah for all Jews.
In this parable, we note that the original invited wedding guests -- invited twice, not just once -- are God's beloved people Israel. Historically and spiritually, they should be the first to say "yes" rather than "no." They are the people who know the true God and who, with their forebears, longed for the Bridegroom, Israel's Messiah. Ages earlier, God invited them to be His chosen people. When the Jews spurned God's repeated invitation, God broadened the invitation appeal to non-Jews, to the Gentiles, who were in the midst of the highways and byways of life; i.e., they were sinners to whom such an invitation into God's kingdom was more new than familiar.
The reference in verse 7, about the King being so enraged that he sent out his troops to destroy the murderers and to burn their city, some scholars tell us, is Matthew's way of referring to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The destruction was so complete that "a plough was drawn across it."1
The reference in verses 11-14 to the wedding guest not wearing the proper attire is the old rabbinic way of reminding us of "the duty of preparedness for the summons of God, and the garments stand for the preparation that must be made."2
"Jesus told them several other stories to illustrate the kingdom" (v. 1).
In the midst of an infant baptism, I encourage the parents and sponsors to make as much of this spiritual inauguration of their child's life as they do the baby's natural birth date. I invite them to consider an annual celebration where they unfold before their child the detailed story of the baptism, so that s/he can tell from both the time taken and the personal way in which the parents share that the baptismal event was and continues to be very special. The child will know baptism carries an abiding significance.
Meaningful storytelling speaks personally to one's heart and is instructive to one's mind of the specialness of a person and of an event. The fact that Jesus spent time and used his creative energy to share a number of stories about the kingdom of God reveals his gracious willingness to connect his Father's kingdom to the living of people's lives. How special both God and we must be to Jesus!
In verse 2, we are reminded of God's excitement about and commitment to arranging His Son's wedding feast. The word "prepared" or "gave" reveals one who has been willing to wait and to plan for centuries for His Son's wedding. Think of the centuries God has moved with, through, and even against people and events to stay on target for that day when His Son would arrive on earth!
I often share with wedding parties during rehearsal times that God is truly the most imaginative of all. We need only look around at one another to easily note how unrepeatable and unique each person is. God must delight in diversity! Yet given all His imagination and creativity, when it comes to talking about His kingdom, both in this passage and elsewhere where it also makes reference to His second coming, God chooses to use wedding feast illustrations. Why lift up something so familiar as a wedding event to portray something so unique and profound as His Son's first and second comings? A couple of answers I would venture: (1) The kingdom of God is about relationships between God and His people on earth and about their relationships to one another as well. They are permanent relationships. They mean a lot to us. (2) We gather together around one heavenly Father to be in Holy Family again, and in that context joy is then rebirthed.
In verse 3, regarding the invitation and assembling of guests to the wedding banquet, it is not a good day for the slaves. At the first invitation attempt, they return with a whole list of refusals. In verse 4, even as the Lord takes pains to explain, through His slaves, the specialness of the event and His excitement and anticipation in their coming, the slaves are mistreated and killed. As ministers of the gospel, whether lay or ordained, we too return at times from our work for the Lord empty-handed, discouraged, and even at times sorely mistreated. But this state of slavehood, being sentries and messengers for Christ, is, comparatively speaking, preferable to the spiritual slavery of those in this story, as verse 5 reveals.
Why do the invitees make light of the invitation and choose to return to the farm or to the business? Could it be that their lives are connected more to earthly duty than to revelation and the eternal side to their lives? As William Barclay put it many years ago,
It is very easy for a person to be so busy with the things of time that s/he forgets the things of eternity, to be so preoccupied with the things which are seen that s/he forgets the things which are unseen.3
Are we at times so busy making it in life that we obscure the meaning of life? When I counsel with couples who are dating and they reach an impasse, I sometimes see one choosing to retreat from further involvement and exhibiting fear of the demands of relationship. I have often observed that one of them, quite frankly, does not yet have the maturity of personhood truly to see and to appreciate the gifts and qualities the other person carries and is willing to offer. The more immature person in the relationship simply cannot see the gift package in the other and is not ready to continue to build the relationship. Indeed, s/he takes flight from any deeper sense of intimacy and shows interest only in the more superficial physical and social expressions of that intimacy. So to work an eight-hour day, but not ever to inquire and to reflect on life is to miss its upper half and to be consumed with dwelling on its lower half. God's kingdom coming into our lives, through the person of Jesus Christ, is to affirm and to understand life in its fullness and not merely in its points of duty. As my good teacher and mentor, Pastor Bill Coffin, once said, "You're young only once, but you can be immature indefinitely!" Kingdom living and kingdom understanding are truly calls to maturity of personhood.
Why do you suppose the invitees in verse 6 seized the slaves and mistreated and killed them? Could it be connected to their anger over their own agendas of daily life being disturbed, coupled with their lack of peace of mind in not being more intently spiritual? No one knows for sure, but I know in my own life, my first reaction to God's invitation to me to consider something sometimes disorients me, and I react angrily. At the same time, I know on a more significant level, I should not be angry at the Lord and what He is inviting me to consider. So, I feel unsettled inside, and a lack of peace of mind about it ensues. I don't make good company for anyone at such times. I don't think constructively, and I will act out my lack of peace in a variety of ways. These invitees went "to town and back" and behaved very destructively. In not liking to be disturbed and interrupted in their own agendas, they revealed a deeper abiding disturbance within themselves: They were out of harmony with the Lord, and they lacked a willingness to reconnect with Him.
In verse 7, we see God's response, a very different one than that expressed in the repeated invitations He graciously extended earlier. He is now enraged because He has been insulted. What He is really offering, in this story of a wedding feast, is His love, salvation, and eternal presence. What the invitees have really turned down is not a mere dinner date, but that invitation. When you and I turn our back to repeated invitations to salvation and blessing, we will receive judgment and destruction instead. In the words of one pastor:
Some of Jesus' parables are like that. Some of us are under the mistaken idea that God's grace cancels out God's judgment. Not according to the teachings of Jesus. Many of them are quite demanding and the consequences of disobedience are quite severe.4
In verses 8-10, we see how committed God is to community and to salvation. If the original guest list has no takers, people found in the mainstream of life on one level, to their own utter surprise, are invited to an event they never sought after. Somehow, in their persevering service to their master, the slaves were able to gather into the wedding hall a great number of guests, "good and bad" (verse 10). In the last analysis, neither those originally invited nor those subsequently invited "were worthy" (verse 8b). This reveals to us the precious truth that the invitation is not based on merit, but on grace, on "undeserved" love. Not only Jews but also Gentiles and sinners are included in the loop of invitees. God's love for us, whether we are prior religious practitioners or not, must be so deep that the sins which break His heart and scar our lives will never be deep enough to cancel His love and redemption of us.
However, as verses 11-14 counsel us to note, we must not presume to be forever welcomed by the King, if that presumption assumes no significant change of heart or new life direction on our part. Hence, the man who was not wearing a wedding garment in verse 11 was "speechless" in verse 12; i.e., he had no justifiable excuse for not being properly prepared. The mystery of God's open, loving heart to us coupled with the mystery of a sinful life willing to be transformed provide a balanced picture of this parable and passage. How can one really get into the spirit of the wedding feast without adopting within oneself a true love and joy for all that the event characterizes? God wants to be so deeply central and residential within our lives that we carry new affections for Him and His holy purposes. In the words of William Barclay:
But there are garments of the mind and the heart and of the soul -- the garment of expectation, the garment of humble penitence, the garment of faith, the garment of reverence -- and these are the garments without which we ought not to approach God.5
Yes, Jesus shares an earthly story to convey a precious truth in as loving a way as one could convey. You and I are invited to be his kingdom sons and daughters. Our names are on his first and second lists of guests. Will we truly enter into this wedding feast, i.e., into the matter of salvation and redemption, with hearts and lives willing to be changed and transformed? If so, you and he shall share the same joy and eternal company. If not, darkness and unhappiness will be the predictable end result. Choose wisely! Welcome his welcome. Let's line up our hearts with his!
____________
1. William Barclay, Matthew, Volume II, Westminister Press, p. 267.
2. Ibid, p. 269.
3. Ibid, p. 268.
4. Dynamic Preaching, September-October, 1996, Volume XI, No. 8, p. 37.
5. Barclay, op. cit., p. 270.
In this parable, Jesus shows himself to care both about the truth he wants to communicate and the manner in which it is cradled, via an earthly story. It serves to reiterate a precious principle to us: You and I will never be able to separate God's love and God's truth. We will always receive both. We need both. All people do!
For hundreds of years, the Jewish people have had a special focus of God's love. God's Son, Jesus, was born through Jewish lineage and of the Holy Spirit. He is a true fulfillment of a number of messianic passages in our Old Testament, also the Jewish Scriptures. Full grown, a rabbi and Holy Spirit-driven, Jesus is given great press by the Gospel writer, Matthew. The material most unique to Matthew gives central focus to Jesus as the One who truly fulfills the Old Testament prophecies. With all his heart, the Jew-become-Christian, Matthew, provides a proof-text that Jesus is the true heir of King David and the hoped-for Messiah for all Jews.
In this parable, we note that the original invited wedding guests -- invited twice, not just once -- are God's beloved people Israel. Historically and spiritually, they should be the first to say "yes" rather than "no." They are the people who know the true God and who, with their forebears, longed for the Bridegroom, Israel's Messiah. Ages earlier, God invited them to be His chosen people. When the Jews spurned God's repeated invitation, God broadened the invitation appeal to non-Jews, to the Gentiles, who were in the midst of the highways and byways of life; i.e., they were sinners to whom such an invitation into God's kingdom was more new than familiar.
The reference in verse 7, about the King being so enraged that he sent out his troops to destroy the murderers and to burn their city, some scholars tell us, is Matthew's way of referring to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The destruction was so complete that "a plough was drawn across it."1
The reference in verses 11-14 to the wedding guest not wearing the proper attire is the old rabbinic way of reminding us of "the duty of preparedness for the summons of God, and the garments stand for the preparation that must be made."2
"Jesus told them several other stories to illustrate the kingdom" (v. 1).
In the midst of an infant baptism, I encourage the parents and sponsors to make as much of this spiritual inauguration of their child's life as they do the baby's natural birth date. I invite them to consider an annual celebration where they unfold before their child the detailed story of the baptism, so that s/he can tell from both the time taken and the personal way in which the parents share that the baptismal event was and continues to be very special. The child will know baptism carries an abiding significance.
Meaningful storytelling speaks personally to one's heart and is instructive to one's mind of the specialness of a person and of an event. The fact that Jesus spent time and used his creative energy to share a number of stories about the kingdom of God reveals his gracious willingness to connect his Father's kingdom to the living of people's lives. How special both God and we must be to Jesus!
In verse 2, we are reminded of God's excitement about and commitment to arranging His Son's wedding feast. The word "prepared" or "gave" reveals one who has been willing to wait and to plan for centuries for His Son's wedding. Think of the centuries God has moved with, through, and even against people and events to stay on target for that day when His Son would arrive on earth!
I often share with wedding parties during rehearsal times that God is truly the most imaginative of all. We need only look around at one another to easily note how unrepeatable and unique each person is. God must delight in diversity! Yet given all His imagination and creativity, when it comes to talking about His kingdom, both in this passage and elsewhere where it also makes reference to His second coming, God chooses to use wedding feast illustrations. Why lift up something so familiar as a wedding event to portray something so unique and profound as His Son's first and second comings? A couple of answers I would venture: (1) The kingdom of God is about relationships between God and His people on earth and about their relationships to one another as well. They are permanent relationships. They mean a lot to us. (2) We gather together around one heavenly Father to be in Holy Family again, and in that context joy is then rebirthed.
In verse 3, regarding the invitation and assembling of guests to the wedding banquet, it is not a good day for the slaves. At the first invitation attempt, they return with a whole list of refusals. In verse 4, even as the Lord takes pains to explain, through His slaves, the specialness of the event and His excitement and anticipation in their coming, the slaves are mistreated and killed. As ministers of the gospel, whether lay or ordained, we too return at times from our work for the Lord empty-handed, discouraged, and even at times sorely mistreated. But this state of slavehood, being sentries and messengers for Christ, is, comparatively speaking, preferable to the spiritual slavery of those in this story, as verse 5 reveals.
Why do the invitees make light of the invitation and choose to return to the farm or to the business? Could it be that their lives are connected more to earthly duty than to revelation and the eternal side to their lives? As William Barclay put it many years ago,
It is very easy for a person to be so busy with the things of time that s/he forgets the things of eternity, to be so preoccupied with the things which are seen that s/he forgets the things which are unseen.3
Are we at times so busy making it in life that we obscure the meaning of life? When I counsel with couples who are dating and they reach an impasse, I sometimes see one choosing to retreat from further involvement and exhibiting fear of the demands of relationship. I have often observed that one of them, quite frankly, does not yet have the maturity of personhood truly to see and to appreciate the gifts and qualities the other person carries and is willing to offer. The more immature person in the relationship simply cannot see the gift package in the other and is not ready to continue to build the relationship. Indeed, s/he takes flight from any deeper sense of intimacy and shows interest only in the more superficial physical and social expressions of that intimacy. So to work an eight-hour day, but not ever to inquire and to reflect on life is to miss its upper half and to be consumed with dwelling on its lower half. God's kingdom coming into our lives, through the person of Jesus Christ, is to affirm and to understand life in its fullness and not merely in its points of duty. As my good teacher and mentor, Pastor Bill Coffin, once said, "You're young only once, but you can be immature indefinitely!" Kingdom living and kingdom understanding are truly calls to maturity of personhood.
Why do you suppose the invitees in verse 6 seized the slaves and mistreated and killed them? Could it be connected to their anger over their own agendas of daily life being disturbed, coupled with their lack of peace of mind in not being more intently spiritual? No one knows for sure, but I know in my own life, my first reaction to God's invitation to me to consider something sometimes disorients me, and I react angrily. At the same time, I know on a more significant level, I should not be angry at the Lord and what He is inviting me to consider. So, I feel unsettled inside, and a lack of peace of mind about it ensues. I don't make good company for anyone at such times. I don't think constructively, and I will act out my lack of peace in a variety of ways. These invitees went "to town and back" and behaved very destructively. In not liking to be disturbed and interrupted in their own agendas, they revealed a deeper abiding disturbance within themselves: They were out of harmony with the Lord, and they lacked a willingness to reconnect with Him.
In verse 7, we see God's response, a very different one than that expressed in the repeated invitations He graciously extended earlier. He is now enraged because He has been insulted. What He is really offering, in this story of a wedding feast, is His love, salvation, and eternal presence. What the invitees have really turned down is not a mere dinner date, but that invitation. When you and I turn our back to repeated invitations to salvation and blessing, we will receive judgment and destruction instead. In the words of one pastor:
Some of Jesus' parables are like that. Some of us are under the mistaken idea that God's grace cancels out God's judgment. Not according to the teachings of Jesus. Many of them are quite demanding and the consequences of disobedience are quite severe.4
In verses 8-10, we see how committed God is to community and to salvation. If the original guest list has no takers, people found in the mainstream of life on one level, to their own utter surprise, are invited to an event they never sought after. Somehow, in their persevering service to their master, the slaves were able to gather into the wedding hall a great number of guests, "good and bad" (verse 10). In the last analysis, neither those originally invited nor those subsequently invited "were worthy" (verse 8b). This reveals to us the precious truth that the invitation is not based on merit, but on grace, on "undeserved" love. Not only Jews but also Gentiles and sinners are included in the loop of invitees. God's love for us, whether we are prior religious practitioners or not, must be so deep that the sins which break His heart and scar our lives will never be deep enough to cancel His love and redemption of us.
However, as verses 11-14 counsel us to note, we must not presume to be forever welcomed by the King, if that presumption assumes no significant change of heart or new life direction on our part. Hence, the man who was not wearing a wedding garment in verse 11 was "speechless" in verse 12; i.e., he had no justifiable excuse for not being properly prepared. The mystery of God's open, loving heart to us coupled with the mystery of a sinful life willing to be transformed provide a balanced picture of this parable and passage. How can one really get into the spirit of the wedding feast without adopting within oneself a true love and joy for all that the event characterizes? God wants to be so deeply central and residential within our lives that we carry new affections for Him and His holy purposes. In the words of William Barclay:
But there are garments of the mind and the heart and of the soul -- the garment of expectation, the garment of humble penitence, the garment of faith, the garment of reverence -- and these are the garments without which we ought not to approach God.5
Yes, Jesus shares an earthly story to convey a precious truth in as loving a way as one could convey. You and I are invited to be his kingdom sons and daughters. Our names are on his first and second lists of guests. Will we truly enter into this wedding feast, i.e., into the matter of salvation and redemption, with hearts and lives willing to be changed and transformed? If so, you and he shall share the same joy and eternal company. If not, darkness and unhappiness will be the predictable end result. Choose wisely! Welcome his welcome. Let's line up our hearts with his!
____________
1. William Barclay, Matthew, Volume II, Westminister Press, p. 267.
2. Ibid, p. 269.
3. Ibid, p. 268.
4. Dynamic Preaching, September-October, 1996, Volume XI, No. 8, p. 37.
5. Barclay, op. cit., p. 270.
