Matthew 22:1-14 [Pentecost 20 A]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
October 15, 2023
The Foolish Rejection of a Gracious Invitation I know for certain that some of you watched Monday Night Football this last week, just like I did. If you caught the intro, you heard Aloe Blacc sing Lionel Richey’s old song “All Night Long.” Some of you know it: Well, my friends, the time has come, to raise the roof and have some fun. Throw away the work to be done. Let the music play on (play on, play on, play on...) …We’re going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, forever. The night is going to be fun, a party! You could just as easily play that song at a wedding reception—and many have! Because that’s how wedding receptions are, right? No one’s worried about work; it’s a party—a party we want to go on and on. There is a story of a gracious king who invited all kinds of people to join in him at a wedding banquet he was hosting. What an honor to enjoy an elaborate meal and celebrate with the king and his son! Jesus is the one telling the story, so you know where he’s going with this—well, maybe. What at first might seem like an easy parable to understand does have some tricky parts. God, in his grace, invites all people to believe in his Son as their Savior. There it is. That’s what Jesus’ story is about—and he has in mind for us to learn a number of things from it. So instead of working through the parable and then discovering the point, let’s do it this way today—know up front that this story is about God, the king, extending a gracious invitation to all people to experience the joy of salvation that comes only by faith in his Son, Jesus. This is a story that really requires us to understand what was going on when Jesus told it…and who he told it to. It was not on just any Jerusalem-Tuesday that Jesus told parables to the religious leaders of every kind, it was Tuesday of Holy Week. There was a parade of them—the chief priests, the teachers of the law, the elders of the people, the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees. Every group questioned Jesus that day and he responded to them all. He preached, he taught, he told stories. He spoke to the men who had been plotting and planning to put him to death and who were still doing so at that very moment. He knew this was coming, and he could see right through to their stony hearts. If we didn’t know this, it would be hard to fully appreciate why Jesus told this parable. But now that we know, we might ask, “Why waste time and effort on these people?!” Well, it wasn’t a waste. There is sharp law and indictment in his words, but Jesus was not simply condemning them; he was offering them a last chance…for them to listen this time…to see him for who really was…to accept God’s invitation to trust in him. The loving heart of Jesus that was propelling him to the cross wanted all of them to be saved. So, he told them a story.
If we don’t know all of that, we might not understand that the first people invited by the king to the wedding banquet of his son represent the Jewish people who rejected God’s invitation to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Now this makes more sense: The king sent out his servants to summon those who were invited to the wedding banquet, but they did not want to come. God chose the Jewish people to be his people, the people through whose family tree the Savior would come, the people who would be the keepers of the promise for centuries until he did come. The first invited to the party. When Jesus came, God sent John the Baptist to these very people listening to this story. John tried to focus their spiritual attention on Jesus, the Messiah God had promised and the One they were waiting for. The Lord sending John to them was like a gracious king sending servants to invite people to celebrate with him and his son! Sadly, the Jews rejected John’s invitation to come and see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. They are those in the story who did not want to come to celebrate with the son. So, the king sent more servants to tell them that the time had come to celebrate! Cue up Lionel Richey’s All Night Long! Everything was ready! Food was on the table; it was time! How many times had these Jewish leaders seen Jesus’ miracles? How many times had they heard him teach and preach about repentance and eternal life through him? How often had they questioned him and listened as he explained that he was God’s Son? So many chances to accept the invitation to trust in him! But they disregarded the invitation. They had other more important things to be concerned with. They had no interest in the things of God; no interest in his Son. They were interested in themselves and their things. Jesus’ story pictures it like this: those who were invited paid no attention and went off, one to his own farm, another to his business. Then some of them did something even worse. Can you imagine anyone giving their RSVP to a wedding reception by killing the ones who invited them to it? That’s insane! It seems like it doesn’t fit the story because no one would ever do that! That’s absolutely crazy. Call it crazy. Call it insane. The Bible has a way of talking about such rejection: It calls it foolishness (Proverbs 1:7; Psalm 14:1). “Foolish” doesn’t sound quite as harsh, but the reality is that you do not want to be a spiritual fool—one who opposes and rejects God. Spiritual foolishness leads to death in hell. As crazy—or as foolish—as it sounds that those invited would kill the messengers, it really is a crazy/insane/foolish thing to reject God’s gracious invitation to trust in his Son for forgiveness and eternal life. God offers it for free. A person needs to do nothing at all. The invitation is to believe and be saved. Why would a person turn that down?! That’s crazy!
Those who opposed Jesus and helped to get him crucified just days later are the ones in Jesus’ story whom the king had killed and whose town he burned. It seems there’s a bit of prophecy in Jesus’ story. Less than 40 years after they put Jesus to death, the Romans killed countless Jews in and around Jerusalem, burned the Temple to the ground, and destroyed the city. On a visit to Rome today, you can see images related to this victory and destruction on the Arch of Titus, built in 81 AD, just 10 years after it happened. Jesus’ story says that the king sent servants again, this time out into the streets to find whoever they could and invite them to the wedding banquet. It didn’t matter whether they were considered good people or bad. What did matter is that the king invited them all. The king considered all of them worthy of being part of the celebration. The invitation to see in Jesus the answer to sin and guilt and shame, to see in him forgiveness and a life after death with God, went out to all of the people who were not Jews too. The Jews were the first to know about a Savior from God, but they weren’t the only ones. God’s invitation to salvation in his Son has always been for everyone. The world’s crossroads are full of all kinds of people—and all are still invited to the wedding banquet of salvation in Jesus. All are invited to accept the invitation to become children of God by faith in Jesus. It’s so nice to know that God’s gracious invitation is sent to all people, but it’s hard to see people reject it. You might have some people in your life who have done that. I know a number of them. It’s sad to know that people who interacted with Jesus when he was in this world rejected him. It’s sad to know that people are still doing that. Jesus’ judgment on those who reject him is a warning for us. We want to be sure that we never become disinterested in Jesus because we are more interested in our “farms or businesses,” to use the story’s imagery. How close are we to doing that if our life priorities shift from Jesus to ourselves? Pick your subject, but… Maybe it’s in the raising of your children. Where does Sunday morning Children’s Bible Hour rank in your family priorities…or consistency in worship …or dinner and bedtime prayers? Do we value our worship of God or is that not as interesting as other things that we can fill our Sundays with? Does it happen that you students get so consumed with campus life that Jesus often gets crowded out of the picture? Do we somehow miss that our offerings to God are a way that the message of salvation gets out to the crossroads so that people can be invited to the king’s wedding banquet? Do we go about our days only interested in our lives instead of thinking about how to build a bridge to sharing Jesus with someone we know who has no faith?
There’s lots of stuff we could talk about, but the point is, are we slipping into a selffocused life at the expense of our relationship with our Savior? You don’t have to be violently opposed to the King’s Son and his servants to fall under his wrath; the disinterested find themselves in the same spot. We should pay attention to Jesus’ story for ourselves and not just see it as an indictment on those who put him to death. Jesus told the story to give them yet another opportunity to attach themselves to him. He tells us this story so that we will remain with him. Besides seeing people reject Jesus, you know what else is hard to take? Knowing that some people in the church are faking faith right in front of you. Of course, we can’t really tell that it’s happening because we can’t read hearts, but it does happen. Just as the king knew the man in the story did not belong at the wedding, God knows those who mingle with Christians but who are not clothed with the righteousness of Christ, which comes by faith in him. And when the King and that person come face-to-face on the Last Day, the judgment upon them will be outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. In a lot of ways, this is a kind of a rough parable, isn’t it? It’s a Tuesday-morning-ofHoly-Week parable told to people on the brink of destruction because they rejected Jesus. The warnings to them about disinterest in Jesus, rebellion against God, and hypocrisy are all there for us too though. But you know what? The fact that Jesus tells the story to us is a sign of his love for us! He wants us to be with him now and in eternity—which he also pictures as a wedding feast! He warns us so that our relationship with him is not threatened. He tells us so that if we realize that we have kind of been disinterested in him and more focused on our lives, we can repent and know that he forgives us. He tells us so that if any of us are really just putting on a show here, not really concerned about life after death or trusting Jesus as our Savior—not dressed for the occasion, so to speak—we can think again about that. Three days before his death in Israel’s Holy City, Jesus was still reaching out in an effort to save the lost. He was going to the cross for them as much as he was going there for us. Any that listened to him that day and repented found in his sacrifice, forgiveness—and in his resurrection at the end of that week, eternal life. That’s true for us too. We have received the King’s gracious invitation—don’t treat it foolishly, but gladly accept it! Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.