Sermons

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RSVP
May 11, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Matthew 22:1-14

We’ve been going through the gospel of Matthew, though you may have forgotten after the long break from it that we took over Lent and Easter. But way back in Advent, we started with the Christmas story in Matthew, and then Jesus’ baptism and the beginning of his ministry. Since then we have been looking at Matthew in groups of three: 3 messages on the Sermon on the Mount, 3 Encounters Jesus had with people.

Today we continue 3 Parables Jesus taught…then in the coming weeks, 3 Questions Jesus Asked, and 3 Questions Asked of Jesus.

As you know, Jesus did a great deal of his teaching in parables, in stories. One writer calls parables “small stories with a large point.” Normally I read a parable that way: looking for the main point, and not wanting to get bogged down with the details. Parables are not allegories. But even as I say that, I’m going to break the rule a bit with this morning’s parable…because, in this one, I think the details are important.

Jesus told a lot of stories. Wouldn’t it have just been easier…clearer, neater…if he just said what wanted to, and laid it out in a list, or a theological treatise? Then it would be crystal clear, not having these lingering interpretation questions.

Anne and I went to the Art Museum two weeks ago, to see the Jacob Lawrence exhibit. Jacob Lawrence was the marvelous African-American painter who died just a few years ago, one of my very favorites. His paintings are very very simple, brightly colored pieces…that tell stories. Wouldn’t it have been easier if he had just made statements, just said “slavery was inhuman, racism is wrong, stand up in the face of evil like Harriet Tubman (the subject of one of his famous series)?” It would have been easier, neater. But far less powerful. Lawrence’s picture stories grab you, heart and mind. They make room for you to think about possibilities. They cause you to look for yourself, to look at your own heart.

Jesus’ parables are like that…very simple, very powerful. They make room for your heart to engage, and cause us to look for ourselves in these stories. Sometimes what we find is a little shocking. Which is exactly what Jesus intended.

We received an invitation to a wedding in the mail last week. At the bottom it said “RSVP.” For years I thought that meant “ReSpond Very Promptly.” The dictionary tells me that it actually abbreviates the French phrase “Respondez sils vous plait.” Or simply, “Respond Please.” It could be the title of this parable.

In this section of Matthew, Jesus is looking right at the religious leaders of the Jewish people, who are so very suspicious of him. As always, Jesus is pushing them to look beyond their conceptions of who God is, and what he is doing. They are mired in an abyss of “religion,” and “privilege,” of thinking they know the mind of God, of complacently resting on their identity as “God’s Chosen People.” Jesus wants them to get a glimpse of the “kingdom of heaven.” But their blinders are firmly in place, and so he tells this story:

A man -- no, a king -- gives a wedding banquet for his son. These are very familiar things for Jesus’ listeners. Most the nations of the world had kings. And weddings were major cultural events. Weddings were milestones, markers…a long, festive, major event for the people being married, and at least as much for their families. Reputations were often built on the hospitality they extended at such functions.

But because there was no post office, no snail mail, no Fed Ex, no telephones, pagers, e-mails, automobiles…notice of a wedding took place like this:

Word was sent out by messenger/servant, inviting people to the event. The first time out, no specific time was given…but sort of giving a “heads up,” that it was going to happen. In this case, it was EXTRA big news, because it was the KING sending out word. So the message goes out: “Hey! Prince to be married…next Friday. Stay tuned for details!” So the invited people plan on the day, talk about it, anticipate it. And they wait for the final word, the specific invitation.

The King has invited them, TWICE, then. “Please, come and be with me.” All they need to do is RSVP…Respond, please…by going to the party. Go and celebrate with the king and his son.

The kingdom of heaven…is like a huge wedding party. A time for the joy of fellowship, of laughter, of friendship. God does not invite people to a funeral, nor a life of drudgery…but God invites to the excitement of a wedding party, the wedding of his son, Jesus, the bridegroom, and his bride…people, the Church. God invites to the kingdom of heaven…that’s like a wedding party full of joy. What do you invite people to?

Sometimes I wonder what we invite people to when we talk about Jesus. We have it drilled into us that we need to “share Jesus with others.” What do we share, what do we invite to? A set of beliefs? A church? Private religion? A worship service? Or is it something exciting? Something profound? Something personal?

Last month I was invited to my son’s school to speak in his social studies class, which was studying “World Religions.” With his permission, I accepted the chance to talk about Christianity for 45 minutes, then answer some questions. The school is a private one, and decidedly NOT Christian-based. It was an intriguing opportunity. And a little overwhelming. Wonderful to get the invite, but how do you decide what to talk about?? My assignment was to do it all: beliefs, the Bible, 2000 years of church history, practice, worship, churches….all in 45 minutes! It actually was an incredibly helpful thing to have to narrow down, and narrow down…what is REALLY important? And how could I communicate what I really feel: the excitement of life with Jesus Christ? I finally decided on one phrase that I could start with, and come back to, and end with: “The amazing claim Christians make is that we can know God. We can actually know God!” It was a lot of fun. And I hope I was able to communicate not just the facts or beliefs…but my own excitement over this adventure.

God (the King) invited the people in this parable to the joyful celebration…for a second time. But no RSVP. No response. They didn’t want to come.

AGAIN the king sent servants (and this is where grace appears in this parable. Over and over he invites them). “Look, maybe you didn’t get it! I’m the KING! I’ve invited you! The dinner is made, Eugene Peterson's The Message says the prime rib is ready, the gifts are waiting. C’mon! I’m inviting you again, the THIRD time.” The king didn’t need to do that. He didn’t need to explain His gifts or repeatedly send out the servants…but he does. And STILL they don’t respond.

They, in fact, walk away. One goes back to his farm. Another goes back to his business. Not bad things, actually. Lots of things that keep us away from God are not bad things, in and of themselves. But they are bad when they make us miss the kingdom party. When they cause us to somehow miss the fact that the King himself is inviting us! One author says, “Normal occupations are sinister only when they are PRE-occupations.”

Do you ever miss what God wants for you…because your life is too bogged down with good things?

A third group of people not only rejected the invitation…but killed the message bearers. The king was angry, and sent soldiers and destroyed the murderers and their city. If Matthew wrote this gospel around 90 AD, which most people think…those people reading this originally would have clearly understood him to be talking about the killing of God’s prophets, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple that occurred in 70 AD.

Because no one responds…the king changes things. Those that had been picked, the Invited Ones (and Jesus is looking squarely at the Jewish leaders here) won’t come.

And so the king says to his other servants, “Go, Therefore.” It says here, “go…to the main streets,” but probably a better translation is “go to where the streets leave the city,” “go to where the city streets give way to the open countryside.” Go, in other words, outside of the expected, normal, routine places. “Go find some different people, and call everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” “Go, therefore,” the king says.

“Go,therefore,” Jesus says in Matthew 28, “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations.” The invitation is no longer only for the invited ones, for the Jews…it is for Everyone. The Messiah of Israel has become the Savior of the whole world. “Go, therefore and find some people who will RSVP. Find those who will respond.”

And so the servants go, therefore, and gather…one of my favorite phrases: “the good and the bad.” Just gather those who will respond. Those with the right pedigrees and those without. Those educated and those uneducated. Those born into God’s people and those not, Those raised in the church and those not…Gather the ones who will respond to the kingdom work that God is doing in his son Jesus. The problematic, the flawed…invite them in. The good and the bad.

You have to understand how grating this would have been on the Jewish leaders. Not only is the concept of God’s chosen people being blown wider than they ever thought imaginable…but even within Jewish worship and practice, there was great exclusivity. Those with defects of various sorts were always placed outside of the full community…but here in this parable, Jesus is only asking: Who will respond?

And the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

Now. If we stopped right here at verse 10, we’d have plenty to think about. Those listening to Jesus 2,000 years ago would have had plenty to think about. The Jewish leaders were extremely agitated, rightly hearing that Jesus was calling them on the carpet for refusing to see what God was doing. They rightly heard that the call of the kingdom was going out…to whoever would respond. But there were others around Jesus who HAD responded, who were following him. They were standing around listening too. And we’re standing around too. And if the parable ended here, it might be easy to be smug, and to take a very historical look: This is the story of the Jewish rejection of Christ. The prophets killed, Jesus killed, Jerusalem taken, the temple destroyed, the gospel goes out to a wider audience.

But then there are these four other verses, almost a parable within a parable, that Jesus puts on the end. The king comes to SEE (to observe, review, examine)…how things are going at the celebration. One man there is clearly out of place, not being garbed in the robe provided for the feast. “How do you come to be here without a wedding robe?” And the king harshly calls for him to be cast out into utter darkness.

What’s going on here? Everyone was invited. Yet here’s someone who has shown up for the party…and is sent away because he lacked a robe. Apparently a robe wasn’t necessary to get into the party…but to stay there.

In the New Testament clothing -- robes and linens -- is often a metaphor for righteous living, for what we do, for the way we live our lives. In Revelation 19, it says that the bride of Christ (the church), “has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure “ … for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

And in the book of Colossians, the Apostle Paul says to the church,

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony…”

The end of the parable throws everything into disarray. AND it forces us to ask AGAIN: Am I the one? First, the question was, “Am I the one who has rejected God’s invitation in Christ?” But now secondly, “Am I the one who has been invited to the feast…and even accepted God’s grace…but have no righteous deeds, no right living…to clothe myself in? How am I living?” All sorts of questions are raised:
I thought entrance into the kingdom depended solely on God’s grace? I thought works were dead, that we were to relax and rest in God’s assurances. I thought that, in the end, it didn’t matter so much what we did?

None of those things are wrong. And in fact, if we had time to look at many other passages in scripture, we would find a much more complete picture of God’s gracious provision in salvation. One parable is NOT a theological treatise. But these four verses OUGHT to make us squirm. It’s just a story. But why does Jesus put such an end on it? I think it’s for the people inside the community of faith.
Because grace is not intended to make us lazy. On the contrary. Experiencing God’s grace elicits response. Actually, God’s grace DEMANDS a response with how we live our lives. Remember…the man without the robe is cast out.

I want to close by telling you about one of my heroes in the faith. His name is Howie, and he lives in Minnesota. Howie is in his 80s now. When we lived in Minneapolis, he attended our church and was part of a group of men who met every Tuesday morning. I was invited to be with them several times. They met EVERY Tuesday. Every Tuesday at 6:30 AM. Every Tuesday at 6:30 AM in the same restaurant, sat in the same seats, had the same waitress, ordered the same food…every Tuesday. The waitress didn’t know their names, but she knew them by what they ordered every Tuesday! So if someone missed a day, she’d ask, “Where’s “whole wheat toast, no butter & coffee?” Howie was part of this group.

Howie knew another man in the church named Bob Peterson. Bob had early health problems with a severe form of degenerative arthritis that left him crippled by the time he was in his late 50s, and in a wheelchair. Bob’s wife, Bev, had to work to support them. And so Howie and the other men set up a rotation so that every weekday … someone would come to Bob’s house. Go up the steps, and in the unlocked front door, and wheel Bob out into the kitchen and make soup or bologna sandwiches for lunch. They’d tell the jokes they heard on Tuesday morning, and then if it was nice out (it occasionally is in Minnesota!), they’d wheel Bob outside for a walk around the block. Every week day. For TEN YEARS! Now, if it was only duty and obligation Howie and the others felt, they would have burned out. But they had experienced God’s grace themselves, and they were now responding by how they lived out their lives.

The grace of God invites us to the party thrown in Jesus Christ, and says RSVP: Please Respond. Having experienced the grace-filled invitation which cost God His only Son…we respond in right living. We put on the robe: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, love. And looking around, we see others, from time to time, with robes on as well. And the kingdom of heaven is seen a little more clearly. Let’s pray.