Sermon text: Matthew 22:1–14
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
That used to be a troublesome Bible passage for me: "For many are called, but few are chosen." That's how Jesus ended our parable this morning: "Many are called, few are chosen." There was a time when I heard those words and I worried a bit. I wondered, "How do I know? How can I be sure I'm among the chosen? How can I be certain of my salvation?" Luther once referred to this type of thinking as the monster of uncertainty, which is worse than all the other monsters.
While today's parable is primarily a word of judgment and warning against the religious leaders of Israel — and indirectly to you and to me — it also is a gospel illustration showing the certainty of God's generosity and divine grace and His rule and reign in Christ Jesus for all who believe.
I'll set the scene briefly. It's Jesus in Jerusalem. It's Holy Week. He's just a few days away from His crucifixion. His opponents are working feverishly to trap Him. They're conspiring against Him. These religious leaders have had enough of this Jesus; they've rejected Him, and they're plotting ways to get rid of Him. Jesus knows what they're thinking, and on the other hand He tells them that because they have rejected Him as their Messiah, God the Father now rejects them and is pronouncing a judgment upon their heads. God will find others to take their place — others who will receive the Christ of God. And Jesus delivers this news by way of parables.
In a few days, Jesus will be crucified on the cross to win salvation for mankind. Many people have heard Jesus's teaching. They've witnessed His miracles, and many had come to believe in Him. But the religious leaders see Jesus as a threat to their power and to their status among the people and the ruling class. They're looking for a way and an opportunity. They have Him arrested, but they fear the crowds, who believe Jesus to be a prophet, likened unto the Old Testament prophets as in Isaiah.
So Jesus tells them this parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son." The king in the parable is God the Father. The son and groom is God's beloved Son, Jesus Christ. The wedding feast is God's outpouring of eternal salvation for the sake of Jesus's innocent suffering and death on the cross. The parable is the wedding feast of the Lamb with His bride, the Church, from Revelation 19:6–9.
The king had already sent out invitations — or some kind of weird save the date. The king had already sent out an invitation, some kind of save the date, because the text makes it clear that he has sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, to come, for all was ready. They knew in advance they were invited. Now they're being called to the feast, but they're not willing to go when called.
You can ignore your friends. You can ignore your second cousin. But you can't ignore the king when he issues an invitation to come to a feast. You don't reject the gracious invitation, nor do you reject the gifts of the king. Yet that is what the first round of invitees did. Verse 5: they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.
This is a picture of Old Testament Israel. The servants are God's prophets. They're sent out to proclaim the good news of the love and the mercy of God. They invited the children of Israel to trust in God and join Him in eternal life. But, as the text tells us, they would not come. They were caught up in their own forms of idolatry. They held the king in low regard. They didn't have time for the king, and they didn't have any regard for the son either. The king had given them everything, but they had neither the time for the king nor the desire to receive any gifts from him. They rejected His love, His generosity, His patience, His friendship — everything.
Even in the face of their rejection, though, the king didn't abandon them. They abandoned Him. Our King, as Psalm 86 says, verse 15, is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness," just like He was in last week's parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard. The king kept sending servants to announce the feast, saying, "See, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast." The king has prepared a lavish feast, after the fashion of the one in Isaiah, the Old Testament lesson this morning.
You don't have to bring a gift. You don't have to bring your own bottle of wine. You don't have to bring your own food. You don't even have to bring your own garment. The king has provided everything: a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine — a rich food full of marrow and aged wine well refined.
Which brings to a couple of questions: Who wouldn't want to go to this banquet? Why would anyone reject the free gift of salvation? Sadly, there are a great many people who don't want it, who don't want to receive the gifts. They don't want salvation on God's terms. They want a relationship with God on their own terms. And the truth of the matter is, we aren't much different. We have our own ideas about what the God-and-me relationship ought to be. We want to be selective in what we believe and how we live. And these days there are so many competing images. We want to be able to select which one fits the occasion. And we just don't have time for the King of kings these days. Everything else is more important than going to church and receiving the Lord's Supper or holy baptism.
But the king has given us everything — chief among them, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. But oftentimes you and I have neither had the time for the king nor desire to receive any more of His gifts. We have time for everything else under the sky, but you don't have time for prayer or meditation on God's word. No time for His gifts in the word and sacrament ministry. No time left for Christ at all.
In the parable, the long-suffering king finally becomes angry. Those who were originally invited to the feast were declared to be unworthy, because they shamed and dishonored the king and his son. So the king sent troops to destroy the city and to kill those who had rejected his invitation — a foreshadow of His righteous anger that He will pour out in the end time on the temple and the people in Jerusalem, which He did in 70 AD. He sent the Romans to destroy the temple and all. Unbelief and opposition to Jesus and His ministry brought God's righteous judgment down upon their heads. They should have repented and believed John the Baptist when he proclaimed the way of salvation is the righteousness given by Jesus Christ alone. They should have recognized his miracles were works of God the Father. Instead they rejected the stone who became the cornerstone of the church.
In the parable the king still wants to give. He still wants to give of his riches. He wants to give a party. So the king said to the servant, "The wedding feast is ready. But those invited were not worthy. Therefore," he says, "go into the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find." And those servants went out into all the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Finally, in the second round, multitudes came flocking to the wedding feast, both people good and people bad. With the feast underway, the parable ends on a confusing and rather tragic note for one guest. When the king enters the wedding feast to look over the celebration, he finds a man without a wedding garment. When the king confronts the man, asking how he got into the feast without a proper garment, the man is silent. He offers no excuse and seems entirely unrepentant. It's a slap in the face to the king — to the king's generosity, to the king's righteousness — dishonoring both king and his son.
Verse 11: When the king came to look at the guests, he saw that there was a man with no wedding garment. And he said to him, "Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?" And he was speechless. And the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And Jesus then concludes the parable with that saying, "For many are called but few are chosen."
In the parable, to be unworthy is to dishonor and reject the king and the wedding feast for his son. Scholars debate the meaning of the wedding garment, but the point is this: the man is without proper garments. He was deliberately dishonoring the king and his son in the ceremony and the celebration. He stands among the guests, insisting that he can attend the banquet on his own merit and on his own terms.
What this parable is telling us and warning us about is that we all have the capacity to mess up our place in the wedding feast — and by abusing God's gracious generosity and His grace and the forgiveness of sins. After all, it's by His grace alone. It is the king who chooses you for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
You and I — the truth is, we spurn not only the king time and time again, but also His only-begotten Son. We forget the price paid for our entrance into the feast, and exactly what it cost Him to bring us into the feast. Luther describes the who and the what perfectly in his explanation of the Second Article of the Creed, where he writes: "I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father before all eternity and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity."
Many don't want salvation on God's terms. But you, as brothers and sisters in Christ, have been called into faith by the Gospel and have been united with Christ in holy baptism. To paraphrase St. Paul from Ephesians chapter 5: Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present her to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
The righteousness of Christ is your invitation. It is your wedding garment. He forgives you all your sins. The king has given you everything that you could possibly want: forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, a heavenly home, peace, rest from the monster. He has destroyed the monster of uncertainty, because by your God-given faith in Christ, you have certainty of eternal salvation.
Again Luther writes: "Let us thank God, therefore, that we have been delivered from this monster of uncertainty, and that now we can believe for certain that the Holy Spirit is crying and issuing that sigh too deep for words in our hearts."
And this is our foundation. The Gospel commands us to look not at our own good deed, at our own perfection, but at God himself as he promises, and in Christ himself, the only mediator. The same Holy Spirit empowers you to flee sin, enables you to trust in the certainty of your salvation, and that you rejoice in the Lord always, and not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, that your request be made known to God. He strengthens you to keep you in Christian virtues. The fundamental ideals of how, according to God's design, we ought to live should always be forefront in your mind, so that they inspire and guide all that you do — by thinking and meditating on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, any excellence, anything worthy of praise.
So I say to you that the parable of the feast is a word of judgment and warning against the religious leaders of Israel, and indirectly to you and to me, so that we do not spurn the king. But it is also the gospel illustration of the certainty of God's generosity and divine grace in His rule and reign in Christ Jesus, for you and all who believe. You need not fear the monster any longer, for your sins are forgiven. Amen.