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St Matthew 22:1-14
'The Invitation of the King'
21st Sunday After Pentecost
Morning Service
Hope Lutheran Church, Aurora, CO
Pastor Wolfmueller
Dear People of God,
This morning we will consider the Gospel text appointed from the 22nd chapter of St Matthew, the parable that Jesus tells concerning The Wedding Feast of the King's Son. We will then have a few thoughts about this text and the Lutheran Women's Missionary League and their good works to support the mission of the church.
The text appointed for today comes from ancient times, on this, the 20th Sunday after the feast of the Holy Trinity, or as we number our weeks, the 21st Sunday after the feast of Pentecost. {I invite you to follow along with the text in the Bible located in your pew, or, if you like, with the text printed on the back of your bulletin.}
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. [22:1,2]
This parable, like most of Jesus' parables, is about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is the church, for the church is where the Lord Jesus rules and reigns through His Holy Spirit and His Holy Word. Jesus' kingdom is where ever He is, and He is in His Word giving out the gift of the forgiveness of sins. So listen to how we confess what the kingdom of heaven is in the catechism:
How does God's kingdom come? God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.
The kingdom of heaven is the church, and listen to how this church is described by Jesus in the parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. [22:2] A wedding banquet, what a wondrous image, for there is no more joyful or wonderful time to be had on earth than a wedding banquet. Husband and wife, promising their lives, their faithfulness, their love to one another, and then the wonderful work of God to create them into one flesh. What a wondrous day, what a wondrous event, and this is exactly what Jesus says His kingdom is, a wedding banquet.
This is one of the Lord's favorite images of the bond between Him and His people. Listen to how the Lord describes His people Israel in Ezekiel 16, 'When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,' says the Lord. [Ezekiel 16:8] The Lord is the husband who finds a wife, and takes care of her. We, the church, are the bride of Christ. As in the New Testament, in Ephesians 5, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. [Ephesians 5:31,32]
There is, of course, a great difference between our heavenly groom and any earthly groom. Earthly grooms look for and seek a lovable bride. The Lord, on the other hand, can find nothing lovable, no bride on earth worthy of His splendor. The love of our heavenly Groom, on the other hand, creates its own object. His love finds us, the unlovable bride, and His love makes us lovable. For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, [St John 3:16] and that sending, that Son, His death, it makes us holy, perfect, forgiven, lovable, not because of our own goodness, but because of His goodness in our place.
And so we, the Church, the Lord's dear Christians, are the bride of Christ. His church is a wedding banquet, the rejoicing of a Bridegroom over you all, His bride. And now the Lord intends to share the joy of this wedding banquet, the feast of salvation with all the world. The king sends out His servants to invite the guests to the banquet.
3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
These servants are the prophets, who come to call the invited guests. The quests, we understand from the context, are the Jews, God's chosen people. Jesus came, after all, first to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel [St Matthew 16:24]. But those who are invited refuse to come. This is the worst offense to the king. They are given the high honor of being invited to the wedding banquet of the prince, the son of the king, and they refuse to come. But the king again sends the messengers, to entice them even more.
4 "Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' 5 "But they paid no attention and went offone to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.
Instead of rejoicing at the invitation, instead of being honored and glad to have the call of the king to come to the wedding banquet, most of those called payed no attention, they ignored the call and despised the invitation. But if that's not bad enough, things are about to take a very ugly turn, for some of them, not content with insulting the gracious invitation of the king, actually take the servants and killed them. This is what Jerusalem does to those who God sends with good news, it kills them. As Jesus will lament moments later, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you are not willing! [St Matthew 23:37]
Don't shoot the messenger, that's what we say. But this isn't how the unbelieving Jews acted. They rejected and killed God's messengers, the prophets, and it is no different the the chief messenger, God's Son Jesus. He, too, was rejected and handed over to be killed because He brought the invitation to the wedding banquet, calling all people into the kingdom.
7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
It is no wonder. But notice here how it is the king's desire to send out messengers, not soldiers, to bring life, not death. Twice the king sends servants to call and invite and entice the invited to the wedding banquet. But the obstinate and hard hearted will, in the end, be punished.
This parable was fulfilled in history. Those unbelieving Jews who received not their Messiah, were destroyed in 70 AD, as the Roman army marched into Jerusalem and leveled the city, and even the temple. Not one stone was left on top of another, and the city was burned. The invited guests reject the graciousness of the Lord; the Lord rejects those whom He invited and called into His kingdom.
We might expect the parable to end there, but there is a second part. The wedding banquet is prepared, all is ready, but there are no guests. So the king sends out his servants again to fill the hall with guests. These servants are the apostles, and the pastors who are sent forth with the apostle's doctrine.
8 "Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' 10 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.
Now the feast is in full swing, the hall is filled and the guests are being filled with the finest food. This, then, is a picture of the Lord's church. From Jerusalem into all the earth the invitation went out. To all people, good and bad, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and free, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations [St Matthew 28:19] says the risen Lord Jesus, for His death was for all people, all nations, all nationalities. This is how the church is, all are invited to the wedding banquet. As St John saw heaven, After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, an to the Lamb!' [Revelation 7:9,10]
Notice how John sees the saints in heaven, they were from every different time and place, and yet there is something the same about each one of them, they were all wearing white robes. This is the white robe of Christ's righteousness which is given to us in our baptism. This is why we dress our children in white robes to be baptized, it is a symbol of the purity and perfection, of the forgiveness and washing away of sins that the Lord gives in baptism. This is what it means to be dressed for the Lord's wedding, to have faith and trust in the Lord Jesus.
But again, the parable takes a turn. The rejoicing of the feast is interrupted. Jesus continues:
11 "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless. 13 "Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 14 "For many are invited, but few are chosen."
So the Lord ends the parable of the Wedding Feast. Many are invited, but few are chosen; many people hear the preaching of the Gospel, but few mix that hearing with faith, few cling to the free forgiveness that Christ gives us in His Word. May the Lord grant that, at His coming, He would find all of us clothed not in the filthy rags of our own good works, but in the white robes of His righteousness which are given to us in our baptism. This is the parable of the Wedding Feast of the King's Son.
Now, what can this parable teach us about the LWML? The Lutheran Women's Missionary League is a group devoted above all else to the Mission of God. The most important letter of the LWML is not the L, nor the W, but the M, missionary. The efforts of the LWML are to support and sustain the mission work of our church. And this parable gives us a picture of what that mission looks like.
8 "Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' 10 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.
Go into the streets, whoever you find, invite them to the wedding banquet. I suspect that if you asked the average unbeliever about church that they would think of it more like a funeral or a classroom, but not like a wedding banquet. A banquet is full of gifts, and that is exactly how the Lord's church is, full o life, and salvation, and the forgiveness of all sins. And so we, as the people of God, are privileged to be invited to the banquet. And we, as the Lord gives us opportunity, give the invitation to our neighbor: Come, come to the wedding banquet, come to church with me, and see what good gifts the Lord. They gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad. And so we don't pick and chose who we want to hear the Gospel. 'This person seems nice, I'll invite her to church.' No, both good and bad, all people are invited, called to the wedding banquet.
We rejoice that the Lord Jesus has granted to the LWML the Holy Spirit, that they do the good work of supporting this missionary work of the church, and pray that He would continue to give them joy in their labors, and more, we rejoice that the Lord has called all of us to His wedding banquet, that we feast on His goodness and rejoice in His mercy, this morning and forever more. Amen.
And now may the peace which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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