Kingdom Manners, Kingdom Rules

Text:    Matthew 22:1-14

     I MISSED A WEDDING YESTERDAY.  THE groom is the only son of some friends of mine from way back, and I wish I could have gone.

    But they live all the way over on the far side of Illinois, and the drive was too far. So I followed custom and returned the RSVP card with my regrets.

     It's good to exercise good manners and follow the rules, especially on important occasions like weddings.  On this Worldwide Communion Sunday and every day of our Christian lives, Jesus wants us to know that when it comes to the marriage supper of the Son of God, we're both bound and set free by Kingdom manners and Kingdom rules.

    "The kingdom of heaven," Jesus begins in Matthew 22, "is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son."  Jesus told this parable in the Temple courts the day after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  A delegation of chief priests and elders of the people had marched up to Him to challenge His right to teach and act the way He did.  In response, He taxes them with their failure to carry out the responsibility God gave them as leaders over His people Israel.  Even now, when they should be the ones getting the people ready to receive God's Messiah and take their places at the great feast that will usher in the kingdom of heaven, these very leaders are deliberately ignoring the gracious call of God their King.   Will this parable wake them up, or will it make them more hardhearted still?

    This is no ordinary wedding Jesus is speaking of, it's the marriage for the son and heir of a mighty king.  Some of the customs will seem strange to us, and we may think that Jesus made them up for the purposes of His parable.  In fact, the manners and rules Jesus describes were expected behavior in ancient royal and aristocratic society.  The ancient Jewish Bible commentary called the Babylonian Talmud tells one parable of
    . . .  a king . . . who distributed royal garments to his servants.  The attentive among them folded them and deposited them in a chest.  The foolish among them went and did their work in them.  Days later the king asked for his garments.  The attentive among them returned them to him all sparkling; the foolish among them returned them to him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.1

And the king gives orders that the foolish should be locked in the prison house.  Another parable tells of

    . . . a king who summoned his servants to a banquet but he did not set a time for them.  The attentive got themselves dressed and sat at the door of the king's house.  They said:  "Is anything missing at the king's house?"  The foolish went on with their work.  They said:  "Is there any banquet without toil?"  Suddenly the king summoned his servants.  The attentive gathered before him all dressed up while the foolish gathered before him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.2

    Both these rabbinical stories and Jesus' parable of the wedding banquet reflected the customs of ancient Jewish society.  The priests and elders could never say, "That's impossible, Jesus!  You're just making that up to be mean!"  What the king did and what he expected from his guests exactly matched what everyone knew about good manners and obeying the rules.

    The two-part invitation, to begin with.  It took a long time to prepare a royal feast, and the king would give notice of it well in advance.  He'd invite his princes, his noblemen, and the head men and chief elders of all the towns under his rule.  As we saw from the Jewish writings, the king would send a beautiful festal garment, often made of shining white linen, to each guest.  They were expected to keep it safe and clean until the day they were summoned.  When you accepted the garment, you were committed to go.

    Then, when everything was ready, the king would send his servants around to his invited guests, saying, "Come to the feast!  Put on the wedding clothes I sent you and celebrate the marriage of my son!"

    The king in the parable is Almighty God.  The invited guests were the nation of Israel, especially their kings, priests, and rabbis.  These leaders claimed to love the Lord their God and to be waiting for His Christ.  And now, God the king has sent His servants the prophets to say, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand!"  And what do you think?  These guests refuse to come!

    Still, God didn't give up on His people Israel.  He sent more prophets to plead with them to get ready.  In that very time He sent John the Baptist and Jesus' disciples to announce the good news that the wedding feast was prepared.  You can hear the pleading in the king's voice in verse 4, as he says, "My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready.  Come to the wedding banquet."  Come, please, come!

    But, Jesus says, the invited guests pay no attention and go on about their business.  This was not something these men had a right to do.  These noblemen owed their positions to the king, and to disregard the wedding of the royal son for the sake of their everyday activities was an insult to their lord.

    But this is what the leaders of the Jewish people were doing.  Do you realize that if they had obeyed and welcomed Jesus, God could have brought in His kingdom in all its fullness, then and there?  But the priests and elders of His chosen nation thought their business, their speculations, their rules and manners, were more important than Almighty God's.

    And see how some of the other invited guests respond!  Jesus says in verse 6, "The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them."  Just so, the Jewish authorities from time immemorial had arrested, abused, and murdered the prophets God had sent; John the Baptist was only the latest to meet that fate.

    How ought a king of that time deal with this injury?  Could he just brush it off?  Absolutely not..  You harm a messenger of the king, you've harmed the king himself.  It's an act of open rebellion. No sovereign could let such a crime pass unpunished and expect to remain on his throne for any time at all.  So Jesus says, "The king was enraged.  He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city." 

    You may be thinking, "That's no fair!  Why not just arrest the murderers?"  But think of an ancient walled town, with the people inside of it loyal to the nobleman who is in rebellion against the king.  All become guilty together, all must be put down.

    In the same way, at the end of the age, God will send His angels to punish and destroy all those who remain in rebellion against Him, all those who killed His prophets or approve of those who did, those who hate His name and despise His word.  By God's grace, let us examine ourselves, that that crowd may that never include you and me. 

    Meanwhile, in the parable, the marriage banquet is ready.  In ancient Jewish tradition, the feasting together of the bride and groom and their guests, was the wedding ceremony.  The royal son cannot be wed until the guests have sat down.  Says the king, in verse 8, "‘[T]hose I invited did not deserve to come.'" What will he do for guests?

    The king does the unthinkable.  He commands his servants to "‘Go to the street corners and invite anyone you can find.'" Common, ordinary people.  Non-chosen people.  Whosoever will must come.  "So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests."

    By saying this Jesus departs from every rule and custom of His day.  How could a great king dishonor his son by filling his wedding hall with the dirty, stinking rabble?  It was bad enough that the servants bring in the respectable common people, "the good," but they also gather the low-down, disgusting, "bad" people, like tax collectors and prostitutes and even-- heaven help us!-- Gentiles!

    But this is exactly what our amazing, loving Lord did.  God willed that when His people Israel rejected and crucified His Son, that His death should open up a wonderful avenue of mercy to you and me.  Few if any of us here have Jewish blood.  We were not His princes and noblemen, originally invited to the wedding feast of His royal Son.  No, we were foreigners to his promise, disobedient to God and lacking His law.  But now through Jesus Christ the crucified and risen Son of God, we, too, are invited to sit down at His feast with His faithful people in all times and places.  As St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus."

    This promise is for you!  You and I had no right to the kingdom of God, yet the mercy of Christ extends to us and bids us come in to the feast.

    In the parable, then, the king comes in to view the guests.  And he notices a man sitting there in his ordinary street clothes, not wearing a wedding garment.  That tells us that all the other guests had shining wedding garments on.  Where did they get them?  The king hadn't sent wedding clothes to their homes; there hadn't been time.  Clearly, they got them at the door to the banqueting hall.  They put them on in accordance with the rules of the kingdom and made themselves ready to celebrate the feast.

    Isn't it the same way with us?  Here in this holy sacrament we participate in the wedding supper of the Lamb.  The church is the King's banqueting hall, and we enter through the door of baptism.  At our baptism the filthiness of our sin is washed away by the blood of Christ, and we put on the new robes of His righteousness, shining with His purity and brilliant with His truth.  As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, "all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Solely because of the finished work of Christ both the so-called good and the truly bad are made clean and fit to celebrate the marriage feast of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

    But here is a man who somehow has slipped in without a wedding garment.  There he sat in his own clothes, violating the rules, not fit, not ready-- as so many people try to come into the presence of God today.  They say they don't have to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ for God to accept them.  They think they can sit down and enjoy the good things of heaven in their own human righteousness.  The king challenges the man on his lack of wedding clothes, and the man is speechless.  And speechless everyone shall be who refuses to be covered by the righteousness of Christ that He won for us on Calvary.

    The king orders that the man be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, where, Jesus says, "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

    What kind of rule is this?  Aww, Jesus, he only showed up in the wrong clothes!  Can't you cut him some slack?

    No.  Brothers and sisters, the marriage feast of the Son of God is not a casual dress affair.  We're worthy to sit down at His table only if Christ has dressed us up in His righteousness alone.  He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.  To insist there is any other way is to insult God our King and call Him a liar.

    By His Spirit and His grace, may we know better.  Jesus concludes the parable by saying, "For many are invited, but few are chosen."  Don't be afraid of this teaching, brothers and sisters.  Those who were invited but not ultimately chosen-- who were they?  The ones who despised their invitations.  The ones who hated and rebelled against the King who gave it.  The one who wouldn't mind his kingdom manners and refused to submit to the king's rules, who tried to get in by his own way instead.

    But you who acknowledge your unworthiness and have been cleansed by the blood of Christ your Saviour, come.  You who despise your own good deeds as filthy rags and have clothed yourself with the obedience of Christ, come.  You who realize that it's all the overwhelming love and grace of God your Father and King that brings you to this Table, come.  The feast is spread, the wine is poured, it is time to sit down.  With Christians around the world today; with the faithful in all times and places, let us celebrate the wedding feast of the Son of God.  In His name, come.
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1.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 152b
2.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 153aB

How Long, O Lord?

Texts: Revelation 6:9-17; Luke 18:1-8

IF YOU WATCH VIDEOS on YouTube, or if you read online news reports, you've probably noticed a pattern in the comments. Say it's a news story about a pilot who's successfully landed a plane in the worst of conditions. Or maybe it's a video of the old Rescue 911 show, and a family has safely escaped a fire in their house. Some commenters will give God the glory. They'll say, "It was a miracle they escaped! Praise God!" And just as inevitably, ten other people will jump in with "What? How can you praise God for that? If God was good, he wouldn't've let that house catch on fire! And what about all the other houses that catch fire and all the people inside burn to death? Your god is evil! Or he doesn't exist! I don't think he exists and I hate him!!"

But you know what? It's not just atheists and scoffers who wonder how a good God can put up with evil. People who know God and love Him also struggle with the fact that justice seems to be in short supply in this world.

What is Justice, anyway? It's rendering each person what he or she has the right to and what he or she deserves. Sometimes individuals deserve bad things, sometimes they deserve good. Sometimes we forfeit our rights by our bad behavior, and we deserve to lose the benefit of them. However it is, Justice balances out the scales so good is paired with good and evil is matched with evil.

But we don't see it that way on this earth, do we? We see people whom we consider to be good receiving bad things all the time. Often the evil comes from other people, and it seems like our human justice system never gets around to punishing the guilty. Sometimes, the evil comes from nature or even seems to come from God Himself. As when someone we love gets incurable cancer. Or a child struggles with a terrible learning disability. Or a family member loses his home in a flood. And meanwhile, those we consider to be wicked seem to have no troubles at all. Where's the Justice in that? This world has a saying, "Justice deferred is justice denied." Is God unjust? Why doesn't He even everything out now?

But the Bible teaches that a day of Justice is coming in God's good time, a Day when Christ will return as Judge and lay down the verdict on Evil and mete out rewards and punishments according to what each person deserves. Both of our readings look forward to that Day, and they teach us to pray for its coming and to have faith in God, that He will indeed make Justice prevail in heaven and on earth.

In our passage from St. Luke, Jesus tells a parable illustrating how we, His disciples, should always pray and never give up. Yes, let us pray for healing for ourselves and our loved ones. Let's intercede for new jobs for the unemployed and petition God for solutions to our worries. Let us cast our cares on the Lord, for He cares for us. Let us do all we can in this world to live justly and see justice done to our neighbor. But first and foremost, as it says in verses 7 and 8, let us pray persistently for God to bring about ultimate divine justice for His chosen ones-- which is to say, let us pray without ceasing for the glorious return of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. For it is only when He returns that true Justice will have its day.

But how long, O Lord, how long? The widow in the parable knew she was in the right in her case. The unjust judge knew it, too. But he was so selfish, he couldn't be bothered to render the verdict she deserved. Or maybe he'd already ruled in her favor, but he'd done nothing to enforce the decision. This judge had no conscience before God, he didn't care what other people said about him, and he couldn't be bothered to do what he should. But the widow was going to bother him and bother him and bother him until he did his duty. He was a judge; it was his job to make sure that justice prevailed. For some time he ignored her. Maybe she'd go away. But she didn't. She kept bothering him: "Grant me justice against my adversary!" And finally, finally, out of his own selfishness, he finally does what he should have done all along: The unjust judge makes sure this widow gets justice.

Jesus says, listen to what the unjust judge says. The unjust judge finally does right by the widow because she's kept on bothering him with her petitions. So--- if a wicked man can be prevailed upon to do what is right because he's been hammered by a widow's pleas, how much more will the good and gracious God of heaven bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? How much more will He defeat their adversaries and bring them into the good they deserve, at just the right time?

Who are these chosen ones? They are Christ's elect, whom the Father foreknew before the creation of the world, to be adopted as His children through the shed blood of Christ. Brothers and sisters, we are Christ's chosen, and though all the forces of earth and Hell should come against us because we belong to Christ, all the more should we cry out to Him for justice against our adversaries.

Our passage from Revelation chapter 6 shows this from another point of view. St. John in his vision of the End watches as the seven seals of the book of judgement are opened one by one by Christ the Lamb. When He opens the fifth seal, John sees under a great altar in heaven "the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained." These martyrs cry out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" How long, O Lord, until we get justice? Our voices cry out to you day and night! They are each given a white robe-- which stands for the righteousness of Christ-- and are told to wait a little longer, for just the right time. For when? For when the number of their fellow servants who were also to be killed for the name of Christ was competed.

I have to admit that there's been something about this Revelation passage that has bothered me. It's just that, these martyrs are under the altar, and the altar represents the place of atonement, and our atonement is Christ. Moreover, St. John sees this altar as being in heaven. So, if these martyrs have found their refuge in the atonement of Christ, and they're in heaven, why are they so vindictive? Why are they so eager that their blood be avenged? Isn't it time they forgave and forgot?

Aren't Christian martyrs just ordinary human beings whom Jesus redeemed from their sins? Wasn't it the Holy Spirit who made sure they stayed faithful to Christ even to death? How could they claim anything for themselves?

And all the chosen ones of God: We didn't chose ourselves, did we? No. How can we claim to be more righteous or deserving than any other human being? It wasn't our works that got us into God's favor! Without the blood of Christ covering us, we would be just as lost and unholy as anybody else! How can we justify praying for Christ to come and judge the earth?

The answer lies every place the Bible speaks of God's love for His saints and His hatred of evil. It leaps out at us whenever we read that the Church is Christ's body on earth. We are His representatives here on earth, and the Word of salvation we carry into the world is the message of the living Word, Jesus Christ. Whoever persecutes His saints-- that's us, brothers and sisters-- persecutes Him. God has chosen us for Himself in Jesus Christ, and identified Himself with us and us with Him. So it is just and right that the souls of the martyrs should call out for vengeance on the earth. It is right that we His chosen ones should cry out day and night for Jesus to return and sit as Judge over this present evil age. Because ultimately, the One who deserves to have His right upheld is God. God is the ultimate object of justice. It is God Himself who must receive all the blessing, honor, praise, and glory He is due. As St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, the time will come when Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father, after He has destroyed all (rebellious) dominion, authority, and power. All His enemies will be put under His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. That will be ultimate divine justice.

So how can we not pray earnestly and persistently for that day to come? Should we not call out for the justice that will once and for all defeat evil and Satan and all who belong to him will get the punishment they deserve?

But how long, O Lord? Why can't God reach down and deal the evil of this world right now?

That's what some of these scoffing Internet commenters ask. They don't realize that if God were to make an end of evil in this world right away, He'd also have to make an end of them. We humans deceive ourselves when we think we ourselves are good and evil is Out There someplace. Evil resides in each of our souls, and none of us can begin to be free of it until Jesus clothes us with His righteousness and brings us from death to life. Strict justice would mean every last one of us should be separated from God forever, but Jesus paid the full price for our sin, so as it says in Romans 3, God is shown to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Through His blood we are not only justified, we are made holy before God and finally will be presented to Him glorified on the Day when Christ returns.

This is God's will for all His elect. And He is biding His time until all the company of His chosen is complete. There are some who are elect who are still dead in their sins, and one day the Holy Spirit will call them into life. There are some of the elect who have not yet been born. Every last soul whom the Father has given to the Son will come to Him, and every last soul who will have the honor of being killed for His sake will make their testimony in their blood, before the end will come and ultimate justice will prevail.

But how do you know if you are among God's chosen who know their cause is just and right? It's not my place to pry into the secret counsels of God. But if you want to be among Christ's chosen, that's a good sign. If you have a passion for justice and you look to God instead of away from Him to find it, that's a good sign. Jesus asks in Luke, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" Faith is a sign of those who belong to Him, of those who trust Him to make things right in His good time. Faith is a sign of those who love His appearing and who earnestly pray that it will be very soon. Faith is a sign of those who preach and testify to the Gospel of Jesus Christ died and risen again for the salvation of the lost, so that the full number of the elect will be speedily completed.

The sign of those who are not chosen? They are the ones described in verses 15 through 17 of our Revelation reading, the ones for whom the second coming of Christ is hateful, the ones who know they deserve His wrath and have rejected the blood that could have saved them from it. They beg the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the justice of God! Heaven forbid that anyone we love should be in that number! This is the tragic fate of all those who ally themselves with Satan and death and who turn away from the Lamb who was slain.

But you, people of God: Do you love Christ's appearing? Are you looking forward to the day when He will return and all evil, sadness, and death will be wiped away? Let us pray earnestly and persistently that Christ our righteous Judge will come quickly and bring justice to us, His chosen ones. For we belong to Him; and in Him, His cause is ours, and our cause is His own.