Time for Some Serious Partying

Praying through the Parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew 22:1-14 this week.

And what about the poor fellow who came to the party under-dressed?  God's kingdom is certainly open to all, but not if you come just for the buffet!  This is more than a wedding reception.  This is a kick-off banquet for God's new world order.  Those who just want a to-go box cannot be welcomed because they never really arrive.  Jesus seeks partners not poachers.  Wedding crashers will be escorted to the door.

The robes are not some human set of affirmations.  God dresses us in the royal robes of baptism to make us part of the royal family.  The wedding guests become what the king intended.  Or they must leave because they have refused the full invitation.

"The point of the story," Tom Wright says,

is that Jesus is telling the truth, the truth that political and religious leaders often like to hide: the truth that God's kingdom is a kingdom in which love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness reign unhindered.  They are the clothes you need to wear for the wedding.  And if you refuse to put them on, you are saying you don't want to stay at the party (Matthew for Everyone, page 85).

This parable speaks volumes about how we must view Christian worship.  After all, the wedding feast is an image of the kingdom coming--both in Jesus and in its fullness at the end of all things.  We describe Holy Communion as "a foretaste of the feast to come."  N. T. Wright describes our Christian worship as "the most politically charged act we can ever perform.  Christian worship," he writes, " declares that Jesus is Lord and that therefore, by strong implication, nobody else is" (Simply Jesus, page 217).

In our worship we accept the invitation to God's party for life.  On the Working Preacher web site Lance Pape writes,   "Within the world of the story as told, the problem with this guy is not that he is not taking things seriously enough.  No, his problem is his failure to party."

Our worship is not merely advertisement for pie in the sky in the sweet by and by.  Our worship is our weekly affirmation of our allegiance here and now to Jesus, our Lord and our Leader.  We will not make excuses about businesses or farms.  We will not protest that we forgot our wedding clothes.  We will say yes to the invitation and get down to the serious business of joy.