"OPEN INVITATION"
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23)
October 15, 2017
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
"Those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests."
Matthew 22:10 (ESV)
If you've ever not been invited to something that you wanted to be invited to, you know all too well what it feels like to be "left out." In fact, not being invited can give you that feeling even if you wouldn't have accepted the invitation anyway. It's not a good feeling. It hurts to be "left out." It makes you feel as if you are somehow inferior to the people who were invited. What's more, you are denied the opportunity to enjoy the fun and fellowship that the others get to share in. And the more that they enjoy it, the more that it seems to hurt you. But looking at it from another perspective, have you ever had the experience of carefully planning a special event and inviting all the people who are important to you, only to find that most of them didn't bother to show up or even acknowledge your invitation because they were doing other things--things that really weren't all that important? That doesn't feel so good either--and unlike the first situation, this one cost you something in time, in effort, and probably in money as well.
I suppose that God can easily relate to both of these experiences. Especially at Christmas and Easter I often think of Jesus as the uninvited Guest. How does this sound: "Happy Birthday, Jesus! We're having a month-long celebration, but guess what? --You're not invited. We don't even want to mention Your name or admit that this celebration has anything to do with You. That would ruin all the fun."? Or what about this: "Happy Easter, Jesus! We know that this is supposed to be Your great victory day, but a grave is no place to have a celebration and death--especially a bloody death like Yours--is such a downer. So we'll just go with the theme of spring instead."? These statements would be ridiculous--even funny--if they didn't paint such an accurate picture of the world's attitude. But even more heartbreaking to God is the response that He gets to His invitation to a celebration of His love and glory that will last forever. So many people seem to be too busy pursuing things that they perceive to be more important, not knowing or perhaps just not caring that this celebration to which they are invited cost the Host the shedding of the blood of His one and only Son. As we consider God's great and unending feast of joy (the feast that we call heaven), let's focus especially on the invitation and the response.
Who is invited to God's great feast? The first thing that we have to understand about this, especially amid all of the religious confusion that surrounds us, is that God is always the One who takes the initiative and makes the decisions. If we listen to what a lot of evangelists out there are saying these days, we might get the impression that our Lord is so helpless and timid that He needs our permission to do great things for us. That's certainly not the Lord who I worship. My Lord is the Lord of the Scriptures, who is so great and powerful that He can do all kinds of wonderful things for me quite well without me having to let Him do it or prod Him along. My Lord is the One who says: "You did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16). He chose you and me just like He chose Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Mary, the twelve, and a host of others before us. He did it not because of who we are or what we've done, but because of what He might do for us and in us and through us. It was an act of His grace that He chose us through the power of His Holy Spirit after He made preparations for the unending celebration with another act of His grace: becoming human in His Son Jesus Christ and fulfilling the demands of His own Law perfectly with a perfect life followed by the perfect sacrifice of atonement for sin: His own life, offered up on the altar of the cross for sin of the world. And His resurrection from the dead proves that all of this is valid and true.
Lest we get a swelled head over having been chosen by Him, bear in mind that there is no one who is not invited to the great feast of heaven. The text before us describes the guests as "all [the people] whom [the servants] could find, both bad and good" No one is so sinful, so evil, or so repulsive as to be excluded because, when you get right down to it, none of us who are invited are really worthy. We get to go to heaven not because of how good we are but because of how good Christ is. Because of this you and I, as servants of the Lord, have no reason to "write" anyone "off" as a hopeless case, because every sinner is someone for whom Jesus paid the price of admission to heaven and every sinner who we encounter is someone who we are to invite to be a part of that joyful celebration.
But how do people respond to the Lord's invitation to heaven? The overwhelming majority have a whole list of excuses. We can easily see this if we only pay attention to the excuses that they already give for declining His invitation. Just listen to people explain why they don't attend worship or Bible Study, why they don't read the Bible or pray, and why the Lord and His Word are not the heart and center of their lives. Some think that they are too busy. Others are carrying guilt and hurt that they think is too great. Still others can't bring themselves to recognize that they are not self-sufficient, no matter how much evidence to the contrary confronts them. The fact of the matter is that even though no one can actively decide to accept God's invitation (only the Holy Spirit can empower us to do that), we certainly can--and unfortunately many do--reject it in favor of something else. And whether they realize it or not, whatever that something else is (the something else that they choose over God's grace in Christ) is their god.
But there are--thank God--those who are a part of the glorious fellowship of the saints--the fellowship of the baptized--a fellowship that begins right here and now and goes on after death into the glory of heaven. Their presence in this company is not their own doing; it is God's gift to them, brought about by the Holy Spirit who calls them to faith and discipleship and causes them to grow in both through the means of grace: the Word and the Sacraments. God's invitation to us in the meantime is to make use of these means and through them to receive the forgiveness and strength that we need to extend His invitation to all who are in need of it.
A number of years ago, at another place, I remember receiving in the mail from a sister congregation a newsletter with a thought-provoking question printed on the outside, where everyone, including the mailman, could see it. Here's the question: "If your only son died saving a neighbor from a fire, how would you feel if that neighbor skipped the funeral to watch television?" Dear friends in Christ, God's only Son died to save you and me and every other sinner from the fire of hell. Does that matter to us? Does it matter enough to make us long for every opportunity to participate in His worship and service? Does it matter enough to make us extend His invitation to others? Our answer to each of these questions, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is a resounding yes as that Spirit continues to daily give us the will and the strength that we need to reach the lost so that they may be found in Him.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.