Sermon for October 11, 2026

Readings:

Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon 10-11-26

If the end of this morning’s gospel reading has you scratching your head, then you are in good company with about 2,000 years of Christian biblical scholars. At first, this parable that Jesus is telling makes all kinds of sense. It is exactly the sort of inclusive story about God’s love that we like to hear. It makes us feel good…and then we get to the end. We get to that last little bit there when the King in Jesus’s story kicks this one man out. And he does it for something that seems completely trivial: he isn’t dressed appropriately. Dare I say it, this sounds unfair. What do we do with this?

We just read it, but let’s just review for a second the whole story Jesus tells. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” So far, so good. I love it when the bible talks about heaven as a banquet or a buffet. Works for me. But Jesus goes on. The king sent his slaves to remind the folks that had already been invited to the party, but they wouldn’t come. So the king sends out another reminder, tell folks “look, we’ve got steak. I’m not serving crudite and cold cuts. It’s prime rib! Do you know how expensive beef is these days? This is going to be a great party.” But the people either made light of it, and said “thanks but no thanks, I’d rather go work.” Or, they were completely hostile to the King’s messengers to the point of killing them. I guess this is what the king gets for inviting vegetarians to a steak dinner. I’m kidding of course…we can’t be sure that they were vegetarians, but the King’s description of this glorious banquet’s menu did not sweeten the deal any to those he was inviting. Maybe they just weren’t hungry. 

OK. So the king says, “well I’m not going to let all of this juicy ribeye and roast beef go to waste. Just go out there and invite anyone that wants to come. Rich or poor, worthy or unworthy, good or bad…go out and invite everyone.” And the wedding hall was filled with guests. That’s a great story if we just ended it right there. That is the Jesus that we like. Unconditional love. Abundance. Everyone is invited to the party, only some folks just don’t want to come. It is how we like to think of Church too. Everyone is invited, but sadly some folks choose not to accept the invitation. It’s a great story, but it doesn’t end there. Jesus goes on.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’” And the man’s response was…..nothing. He didn’t have any defense or answer. He didn’t apologize or ask for mercy or even ask for a garment. He says nothing. So the king has him bound and thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. OK, that seems a bit harsh. I mean, I have seen people wear things to weddings that I don’t necessarily think are all that appropriate for church, but I haven’t tossed anyone out on the street just yet. There are some outfits and types of clothes that I don’t necessarily love to see in church, but I want people to be here and I want them to be comfortable (to a degree), so I have never hired someone to work the velvet rope at the door to enforce a dress code. But on the surface that is kind of what it seems like this king is doing. Why would he do that? It leads to so many questions and interpretations.

Were wedding garments being handed out at the door and this guy just couldn’t be bothered? Is a wedding garment something that you just assumed everyone had? Was this man being intentionally disrespectful to his host? Since this is a parable and everything is symbolic, what is the wedding garment supposed to symbolize? We know that the King in this parable is meant to symbolize God, Jesus makes that pretty clear, so please push aside any thoughts or opinions you may have about earthly kings. This is not a commentary on earthly kings. This is about the Kingdom of heaven. So if the King is meant to symbolize God, then what is the wedding garment? Is the wedding garment faith in Jesus Christ? Is the wedding garment good works? Is the wedding garment the proper attitude and spirit of joy and gratitude that you would expect from someone invited to a party that he didn’t really have any business being at? Maybe. I don’t know. It isn’t spelled out for us, and we are left to wonder. Left to wonder with the cryptic words “many are called, but few are chosen.” 

What do we do with that ending? Well, the approach that some biblical scholars like to take whenever they encounter something they don’t understand is to say that “clearly this part of the story was added later. This must have been some editor with his own agenda adding something to Jesus’s story.” That’s convenient, but I can’t say that I find that way of reading the bible very compelling. I don’t think that we get to just dismiss things we don’t understand and decide for ourselves what Jesus said and what he didn’t say. Even if this was a later addition to the story, it wasn’t written yesterday. It was recorded by someone that was a lot closer to Jesus than I am, so I think we have to deal with it. This is the story that the bible has recorded, so what do we make of it, as it is?

Look at the basic story again. The whole story. The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king throwing a wedding banquet for his son. Everyone is invited. The ultimate invitation is not based on wealth or goodness or relationship. Any random person off the street is invited in. Many do not come. But even among those that do come, not everyone gets to stay. At the end of the day, at the end of the story, it is still the King’s party. He is the host. And it is the host who decides who stays and who goes. 

I do not know what the issue with the wedding garment was. I don’t think any of us actually know. Christians have argued about this for centuries. My own take on this, is that maybe the garment is meant to symbolize humility or maybe gratitude, or both. I don’t know. I don’t know what the garment was, but I do know who the king is. The king is God. And my God is merciful, but also just. And Jesus has taught me to trust in God’s judgement more than I do my own. I trust in God’s welcome and mercy, I believe in it, but I don’t think we should ever presume upon it, as if we deserve it or have a right to it. It is a gift. The kingdom of heaven is God’s party, his banquet. It would be unwise for us to refuse God’s invitation, but even after we have accepted it and shown up, it would still be unwise for us ever to assume that we have a right to be here and that God has absolutely no expectations of us whatsoever. There are limits. We may rejoice in knowing that our God invites both the good and the bad to his banquet. We may celebrate God’s open invitation, but that does not mean that God ever stops caring about how we behave or that our actions will never have consequences. Maybe Jesus is just using an extreme example or illustration in his story to get his listeners to recognize the great gift of grace that has been offered to them, and to encourage them not to take that for granted. Jesus does like to shake people up a bit with his stories.

One of my clergy friends has a sign in her office that says “all of y’all are welcome, but you gotta act right.” All of y’all are welcome, but you gotta act right. Our goodness, our worthiness, is not the reason we were invited to this party. That is good news. That is gospel truth. BUT, and this is the but that we don’t always want to hear, BUT, God, the King, always has the right and the power to uninvite us. We say it every week here, but we can never say it enough. “We do not presume to come to this thy table, o merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.”  This is not our party. We have no right to be here. God has invited us to come, but lest we get too comfortable we are reminded, now and then, that God always retains the right to ask us to leave. He might not do ever do that, but it is his party and not ours. We can’t take his grace for granted. All of y’all are welcome, but you gotta act right.