20th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Weddings are a lot of work! So much has to be prepared: The dresses for the bride and her bridesmaids, the mothers and flower girls need to be purchased, and tuxes for the groom and all the other men rented. A reception hall needs to be found, along with a caterer and DJ. You need a florist, maybe transportation for the wedding party, maybe rooms for out-of-town guests, maybe musicians for the service, maybe hair stylist and photographer and videographer. And, o yeah, a pastor; and heaven help her if she can’t preside on the day for which the hall has already been booked.

Because so much work and money go into a wedding celebration, you send out invitations well in advance, so as many people as possible can come and celebrate with you. You include reply cards so you know who will be there, which allows you to plan for the right amount of place settings and food.

Bride and groom and their families are not the only ones who have to prepare for the wedding celebration, however. Guests have to do some preparing, as well. Guests need to set aside time to come to the wedding. They need to buy a gift. They need to check that they have something nice to wear. They have to make travel arrangements.

The invitation to the wedding is totally free, given to the guests out of love by the bride and groom or their parents. The food at the wedding is free. The call to come and share in the joy and happiness is totally free. But some preparation is needed to fully and appropriately participate in the celebration.

The most crucial thing for the guests is to show up. Nothing is more frustrating and sad for the host than to arrange place settings according to RSVPs received, only to have a large number of guests not show up. Empty places at the banquet are a depressing sight and feel like a slight to the hosts.

That’s where the trouble starts in today’s parable. A king has planned a big wedding celebration for his son. The invitations went out a while ago. The cooking has been going on for days. Lots and lots of work has been done. Now the day has come, and the king sends out his slaves to tell the invited guests that it’s time to come and eat. These are guests who had said they were coming. All they needed was the signal that the meal was ready.

But when the slaves give that signal, what happens? The guests change their minds. All of them! They don’t want to come. The king can’t believe it. He sends out his slaves again, “You guys said you were coming. I slaughtered my best animals. Dinner is on the table. Please come and party with me!”

Yet the guests can’t be swayed. They go to their farm, their business, their work. And as if that’s not bad enough an affront, they mistreat the messenger slaves.

The king is disappointed, and then mad, and then he lashes out rather harshly against this faithless bunch. What the king does not do is cancel the party. The food is on the table. There is joy to be shared. His son is getting married. Let’s find people who will appreciate the invitation.

For a third time, he sends out his slaves, this time with the order to invite anyone they can find, anyone at all. Now the banquet hall gets filled with guests. All kinds of guests, both good and bad, we read. There are no requirements to getting an invitation to the king’s banquet.

The invitation is totally free; the meal is totally free; the joy and happiness are totally free.

However, to fully participate in the celebration, the joy, the happiness, some preparation is needed on the part of the guests. In order to fully gain the blessings of the king’s banquet, just showing up is not enough.

The parable ends with this odd episode of the one guest who doesn’t wear the appropriate garment; he gets kicked out in severe fashion. I do not believe that Jesus is worried about clothes, actually. After all, he told us that the guests had been dragged in off the street; how could they possibly have changed into nicer attire?

Rather, I believe that Jesus uses an image we encounter numerous times in the New Testament: A change of clothes symbolizes a change of heart and soul. Being transformed by the gospel of Christ is described as putting on Christ like a new shirt. Having encountered the power of the spirit changes people so much, it becomes outwardly visible, like a change of clothes.

It is that change that is lacking in the wedding guest. Having been invited, having been fed, having been called to share the joy and celebration has not affected him at all. It didn’t do a thing for his heart and soul. He enjoyed the free-for-all but was not willing to do what was needed to fully participate in the feast and let it have an impact on his life.

We all are invited. We all have come to the banquet of our king today. All people can come, both good and bad; just come in off the streets and take your place at the table. But come prepared to be changed. Come prepared to be touched in a new way. Come prepared to be drawn into the world of the king. Come prepared to enter the kingdom of God. Come prepared to participate in the work of that kingdom.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians this morning, he describes what the effect of the wedding banquet on our lives looks like. Once you have dined at the Lord’s table, your mind grows closer to the mind of Jesus Christ. You seek to imitate Christ. You become gentle, so gentle that others will notice.

You will seek whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, whatever is excellent, and whatever is worthy of praise. You will become part of a community, like that gathered around the Lord’s table here today, that will help you figure out just what is just and true and pure and worthy of praise.

You do not worry about anything. Worry is very distracting. The original wedding guests worried about their farm, their business, their income, their work; as a result, they missed out on the celebration. Don’t let that happen to you, Paul writes, but pray with the mindset of thankfulness, and you will find peace.

Once you are a guest at the king’s table, you begin to focus less on yourself and more on others. Paul writes his letter from jail, and while he is incarcerated, he hears bad news from some of the congregations he has founded. He would have plenty of reason to complain about how hard his life has become. Yet what he does think and pray and write about is the church in Philippi and its mission and its struggles and its faith. He is focused beyond himself and on the work of the kingdom of God.

Paul is laying out very nicely what it means to put on the wedding garment for the banquet of the king. Pray, be thankful, imitate Christ, seek what is good and just, focus on the work of the kingdom. Paul also describes what blessings result from this kind of mindset: no worries, peace that passes understanding, a community of love and care and support, and the comfort of knowing that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

The leadership of this congregation would love for all of you to enjoy these gifts Paul is describing. We wish for all of you to find peace and community and a strong faith. Towards that end, we have begun discussing what we as a congregation expect of our members. Like the wedding guests were expected to be prepared in order to fully participate in the king’s banquet, so we want you to be prepared to fully participate in the Lord’s Kingdom.

We have not finalized our expectations yet, but these are some of the guidelines we are discussing:

We expect our fellow believers to worship regularly. I read that bowling leagues have an attendance rate of 95%. Churches should be doing better than that. Come and worship and be touched by the gospel joy and be refreshed at the Lord’s table.

We expect our brothers and sisters in Christ to build up their faith through daily prayer, daily Bible reading, meditating, and/or attending Bible studies or other small group ministries.

We expect our members to work towards the kingdom of God by getting involved hands-on in the mission of Christ in this church. Everyone will find at least one ministry to be a part of.

We expect our fellow disciples to contribute money towards the work of God in this place and beyond. Generosity is an act of praise and an expression of faith. It fills the heart with gratitude.

Through expectations like these, we want you to prepare for the Lord’s banquet and God’s kingdom. It is the way to find what we wish for all of you: a sense of peace and a caring community and the kind of faith that knows how to rely on Jesus for strength.

You can’t expect to show up for worship once in a while and gain such peace and community and faith. Bible scholar Harry Wendt says, “If all you learn about Jesus comes from a 15-minute sermon now and then, then you gain a little picture of a little Jesus who demands little of you, but also can only do little for you.” But the more you learn, the more you pray, the more you serve, the more your give, the more you worship and study, the more you participate in congregational life – the closer you will come to imitating Christ and to experiencing peace and caring community and strong faith.

God is inviting us to the banquet of his son. Let us come. Let us come prepared. Let us come open to being touched and effected and changed by the gospel. Let us come to fully share in the joy of the feast and celebration. Amen.