Matthew 22:1-14
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Going to Parties
We like to go to parties, right? How many of you don’t like to go to parties? Not many.
When Joy and I were at FCBC in the late seventies, we received a wedding invitation to attend a banquet in Stockton. It came in the traditional Chinese red invitation with engraved gold lettering. We were invited to “Drink whiskey.” as the Toisanese would say. We had no idea who these people were. Not long afterward, my Mom called us and said, these are your distant cousins. Since you are closer to Stockton than Boston is, can you please attend on behalf of the family?
I must have given her a disinterested “yes.” It was my first job out of seminary. With our infant son taking up most of any free time, and with other seemingly more important priorities, we didn’t attend! I really made a mistake. My Mom couldn’t stop yelling at me for embarrassing her by our lack of attendance.
I go to every banquet now. And when we can’t, we will definitely have a real good excuse.
Kingdom of Heaven
In the Matthew lesson for today, Jesus was teaching the religious leaders of his time, what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king throwing a big party—a banquet for the wedding of his son. There is so much joy that the king wants to share that he invited all his relatives and friends to attend. But for a variety of reasons, they had excuses and declined on the invitations. But then the king sent out his hired hands once again to extend the invitation and said, “Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready for the banquet; come to the wedding banquet.” In other words, the rice is washed, the steak kew is marinated, and the roast pork is seasoned and crispy, so come.
The invited guests made light of the invitation. Sounds familiar, huh? They made light of it and went away. One went back to his farm, another went back to work, and the rest got so irritated by the generous invitation that they seized the messengers and murdered them! This is more than a polite social snub. This is murder!
So the king tries the third time. He sends out his slaves into the main streets to invite anyone they can find—the good law abiding people as well as the bad law breaking people. If his friends and relatives wouldn’t come, then he would fill the banquet hall with street people.
Jesus’ parable teaches us that God’s kingdom is inclusive, embracing, and gracious. It’s somewhat like our worship time today. Everyone is here—those who worship at 9:00; those at 10:05, and those at 11:15. Even the children were here. Everyone is invited to the banquet because God’s love is open and available to all, if we would only come.
Dressing Up
It would be nice if this story ended right here. It would be like one of those movies that has a good feeling ending to it. The snobbish people don’t get the chance to eat a great banquet and the lowly people get it all. However, the story is not yet over.
Apparently more than just showing up for the party is required. When the king came over to see his guests just like when the bride and groom with their parents are going from table to table for a toast and to thank the guests for coming, the king noticed that one of the guests didn’t dress up. The king said, “Friend, how did you get in here, slipping through the maitre de without wearing a wedding robe—a tuxedo?”
Why on earth does this once gracious and inclusive king get so mad about a poor man’s improper dress? These guests were both “good and bad” people. Some of them must have been poor. How would poor people have the ability or the chance to go out and buy a wedding robe at a moment’s notice? This is a mystery. We don’t really know how the other street people got their wedding robes either. One possibility is that the king may have given out wedding robes as the street people entered the banquet hall. For some reason, this guest refused to wear it. He may have said, “If he wants me there, he can take me like I am.” Not to put on the black tie must have been an intentional decision.
When the king confronted the guest, the man was speechless. Then the king ordered his guards to tie him up and throw him out of the banquet hall and into the darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. It’s like how angry my Mom was of me for not attending the wedding banquet in Stockton.
The point of this parable is that there are consequences to our decisions. We are free to come or not come, to run our lives fairly much as we choose. But there are consequences, and the consequences are great and can be severe.
Serious Business
When Jesus was telling this parable, he was teaching them about how serious it is to understand the Kingdom of Heaven. The king is God. We are the invited guests. All of us have received the invitation to come to the banquet. The food is ready and the first course of a 12-course wedding banquet is about to begin. But some of us have other things to do—more important than coming to God.
But when we do decide to come to the banquet and to become a part of God’s kingdom, there are certain expectations that God has for us. Wearing a wedding robe means:
*Coming to God’s party is serious business. It’s not a “come as you are” affair. This party is a matter of life and death. This means that when we are deciding about our relationship with God, it is the most important decision for our lives, not some superficial party chats about sports or the weather. We may choose God’s party that will lead to eternal life or choose another priority to give our faith to. It’s up to us.
*And if we choose to accept God’s invitation to his party, God expects that we have good etiquette at his table. God wants his guests to become friends with each other. It’s like when we serve our neighbors at the table before taking food for ourselves. It’s like serving each other tea and tapping your fingers to acknowledge thanks. It’s making sure that we use both hands to present and receive our rice bowls. When we come to God’s banquet, there are expectations to behave.
*Finally when we come to God’s banquet party, we need to remember that it’s God who’s throwing the party. God expects respect and reverence. Maybe we have become so buddy, buddy with God and with the story of Grace that we have forgotten that there is a sternness, there is a demand in grace, that there is rigidness of justice that cannot be ignored. We so focus on the God as my buddy, “I talked with him this morning,” that we have forgotten that it is an awesome thing to fall into the hands of a living God. It is a frightening thing to be told that we are the creatures who have been given stewardship of the earth by God. Having fear in the presence of the Holy God is the beginning of wisdom.
FCBC is One of God’s Banquets
When Joy and I were married 27 years ago, our parents threw a big party for us. For Joy’s parents, this was the first wedding of their four children and being a pastor of a large New York City church, there were many guests to invite. For my mother, she was sponsoring her first wedding banquet in America since my brother was married in Hong Kong. There were so many guests that we had three banquets in our honor: one in New York, one in Boston, and another in Singapore. We couldn’t attend the one in Singapore.
God has many banquets too. First Chinese Baptist is one big banquet. Look at us all crammed into this sanctuary praising God’s name. Everyone is always welcome to come to our banquet with no restrictions—both the good and the bad. We are called to fill the wedding hall with guests!
As invited guests who have decided to RSVP to attend, we have all arrived. God is handing out wedding robes at the door. And are we willing to put them on? Are we willing to recognize that these wedding robes are really baptismal garments symbolizing the new life in Jesus Christ?
This parable urgently reminds us that being a part of the Christian community should make a discernible difference in who we are and how we live. In other words, there should be a sense of awe and responsiveness about belonging to the community of Christ, being a child of the kingdom of heaven.
And just like the guest who didn’t get dressed up and probably came in cutoffs and a T-shirt should have known that once inside, only a fool would fail to see the difference between what he wore and where he was. We should know better. He was in the banquet of the king; he was at the wedding feast for the royal son. When we come into God’s banquet, God expects us to see the difference between the life we left outside the banquet hall and what the new life in the banquet will be like. In God’s banquet, there are no more good people and bad people. We have all become acceptable in God’s eyes because we chose to put on the baptismal robes.
Our new lives, clothed with baptismal robes, give us a transformed self-identity in God’s own likeness. We are to show compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience as those who belong to the kingdom.
We are to be good stewards of our resources, time, money, talents and abilities. When we arrive at the wedding banquet, we bring our time, money, talents, and abilities as gifts to the Son and his Father. And you and I know that when we go anywhere to visit a friend or to attend a special event, especially a wedding, we are to bring a gift. When we come to God’s wedding party, the gifts that we bring are our lives.
Today is Pledge Sunday at our church. You are invited to the banquet. If we want to wear the wedding robes at God’s banquet, we are also expected to give of our talents, abilities, gifts, and resources for his kingdom. Giving is what God expects from us at the banquet. I pray that your love for God overflows and that you will give generously and sacrificially to God’s kingdom at one of God’s wedding parties, being held everyday of the year since 1880, the First Chinese Baptist Church.
Let us pray.
Dear Gracious God, we pray today for your guidance in our lives. We have received your invitation to attend the banquet of eternal life. Remind us of what you expect from us when we do attend—to put on the wedding robe of transformed lives for Christian giving and discipleship. Amen.