You are invited to God’s banquet here on earth…and even beyond this earth! You are invited. Come in! I don’t care, says God, if you’re new to the banquet family or if you’ve been here the whole time. I don’t care if you’ve committed all kinds of terrible deeds in your life, or had all kinds of terrible thoughts. You are invited to the banquet!
“You are invited to the banquet of my grace,” God tells us today! “It is yours to enjoy. Yours to savor. Yours. Take some and pass it around the table, like it was your favorite dish. Feast at this holy banquet,” God says. “This is your party, and by you I mean all who live and breathe upon this planet, which means you. Come to the banquet, the feast of the universe!”
“This is how much I love you, how much I forgive you, how much you mean to me. Look, I made your favorite thing! Can I get you some more to drink?” God’s banquet is here and now spread out before us. God’s grace and God’s love fills us. It connects us to one another and gives us peace. Thanks be to God for this banquet that you are invited to.
The question is, are you going to accept the invitation? Or like the characters in the story Jesus tells us today, are you going to make light of it? One is too busy and too shortsighted to recognize the big picture of God’s all-encompassing grace, and he goes back to his field to farm for himself. Another goes back to his business. How we can be consumed by our business, so much that we can’t even stop to enjoy the party that God has thrown for us.
I don’t want to compare the big banquet that we here at Shepherd of the Valley threw a few weeks ago, to the banquet of God’s grace, because even that beautiful event doesn’t even compare. But I can’t help reflect on it, as I ponder this text and this banquet image. And one of the things that was so wonderful for me, was the opportunity to take the long view. As those of you who were there may recall, I likened the evening to a mountain top experience, particularly because it’s a rare thing to take such a long view – 50 years into this congregation’s past, dreaming and gazing into God’s future for this church. Most of my time in this congregation is spent, not taking the long view, but just being in the day-to-day. Business around the office, farming in the fields as I go out meet with some of you, and some who are not yet a part of this family of faith. It’s hard to get the big picture, when you’re not on the mountain top. But the banquet is a symbol for the big picture. A huge table, plenty of food. And all are welcome to it.
And all you have to do is accept the invitation to this long view, this big picture. And what an absolute, undeserved gift it is—this grace—spread out like a picnic blanket over God’s green universe!
And it is for you to accept, to open your hands and heart and enjoy.
But if you do accept and come to God’s banquet, are you going to wear the garments provided for you? This is where our text gets particularly Matthean. This story, when it’s repeated in the Gospel of Luke, doesn’t include this next part…(Luke’s community was more interested in unpacking the radical welcome of all people.)
Matthew’s community is more interested in the purity of heart of the invited. And if the invited are not participating in response to the invitation, then they never really got it, and OUT THEY GO!
The part about the one caught without his proper wedding garment: this is really something! It doesn’t mean, that we have to go buy the right thing to wear for God’s party.
That outfit is given to us for free, in our baptism, in the Word of God that we hear Sunday after Sunday, in the Communion that we share, all of that is putting on Christ Jesus. That’s the garment that we are given when we accept the invitation and walk in the door. But we have to let that garment go on us and stay on us, as we live our lives as though we are truly at God’s banquet!
Have you ever had the nightmare that you show up to an event wearing the wrong thing…or worse yet…nothing?
This welcome that God has is to be stewarded – which means we have to trust that God will provide the best outfit, the best garments. Let’s not show up wearing the wrong thing. When God invites us to a banquet and gives us even the clothes to wear, we don’t show up in flip flops and a tee shirt!
The question that keeps recurring for me about God’s banquet is “Are you coming to the party, or are you COMING TO THE PARTY.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but when you throw a party there are some people who come to the party, and then there are others who really COME TO THE PARTY.
Some just kind of show up, but they don’t take interest in anyone, I was at a dinner party the other day, and one of my friends was off in the corner texting almost as soon as he arrived. They were somewhere else.
Maybe that’s a helpful image: are you off in the corner just communicating with your little circle of friends, completely unattached to the stranger, to the new face at the party, unconnected to the bigger, wider picture of God’s welcome…just kind of at the party.
So much has happened this last week, amidst it all, we in the church honor the life of Henry Muhlenberg on October 7. First Lutheran pastor in America, 1787. “Satan will allow a lot of external things like going to church as long as there is no true turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to complete freedom in and through the Son of God.”
Are you at the party…just going through the motions…or are you AT THE PARTY. Turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to complete freedom in and through the Son of God! Connecting, connecting, laughing, helping, paying attention to who is in and who’s left out. Have you ever seen someone like this at a party? I’m not talking about people who have to be the center of attention…I’m talking about the ones who are really present and participating. I know many of us are pretty introverted; I’m not saying we all need to force ourselves to be extroverted. But wearing God’s garment does mean that we are permanently changed to be reaching outward, reaching outward, which is the literal translation of extro-vert: “to be turned outward”.
Even the most introverted personality becomes extroverted to sharing God’s love and God’s grace with the world, after being clothed with Christ’s garment at the banquet.
Accidents – tragic and otherwise
New Members joining
Stewarding our welcome
Busy, misprints, barely getting by, etc.
50th debriefing
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