Today, we no longer know what true feasting entails. For few of us ever go hungry and, for many of us, we overeat more than we should. We see such excess in others, even ourselves. Our tight pants and honest looks in the mirror testify to this truth and betray our sinful gluttony. Some from poorer countries have even said that they wish they lived in America, for, in America, even the poor people get to be fat.
Yet, the feasts of old were not simply respites from the scarcity of food. For with God’s people, feasting also combined fellowship–eating in the company of fellow believers and the company of God.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus describes heaven as a large wedding party, which the King decides to host. In our Old-Testament reading, it was wine and milk without money and price. For the Host of the party was paying for it all. Those attending, not only didn’t have to pay to get in, but didn’t even need their own clothes!
God, the Host, sent the invitation to His feast long ago. He sent it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–to all His people. God, the King, engraved His invitation on stone at Mt. Sinai to His chosen people, Israel. “I am the Lord, your God,” He said (Exodus 20:2). At Sinai, the 70 elders of Israel ate and drank in the presence of God.
Israel was a people whom God had called and blessed by His promises. They were ancient promises that reached through the centuries to that first Promise, which God had spoken in the Paradise of Eden that Adam’s rebellion had brought to ruin. God said to the tempter, the serpent: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). God promised a Savior, a Deliverer, One who would defeat death and the devil.
And God made a people out of His promise. He promised a homeland to Abraham, with many descendants like the grains of sand on the beach. He repeated His promise to Isaac and Jacob. He freed His people from Egypt and gave them birth through the water of the Red Sea. He raised them in the wilderness and brought them to the promised land of Canaan, where they grew and prospered. They were His chosen people, chosen to be the people through whom the Messiah would come.
Time after time, God recalled His promises. Through His prophets, He read them to His people–the way someone rereads love letters from years gone by. “On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast for all peoples,” wrote Isaiah, 700 years before God fulfilled that promise through His Son, Jesus (Isaiah 25:6).
God promised a feast of salvation: Eating and drinking that would take away death forever. The Passover lamb and the sacrifice meals were foretastes of the feast to come. It was God and man in communion, table fellowship, eating and drinking together. That was one way the Old Testament pictured salvation. It was a lavish dinner party where God was the host, and you were the honored guest.
Jesus called people into table fellowship with Him. In Jesus, God came to eat and drink with His people. Eating and drinking were such a part of what Jesus did that His detractors called Him a glutton and a drunkard. He broke bread with Pharisees, prostitutes, and tax collectors. He ate with both the religious and the non-religious, with those who were the movers and shakers of His day, and with those who were not.
Jesus fed 5,000 in the wilderness, and another time, 4,000. Jesus came to be our Bread, the life-giving Food for the world. He said, “I am the Bread of Life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).
Yet, we hear in Jesus’ parable that many of the first guests whom the King invited said, “No.” Some were indifferent to the invitation. Others were too busy. They were too preoccupied with their own cares and concerns to take time off. Some went to work on their farms. After all, the fields needed tending, and they had chores to do. Others went, instead, to take care of business. Still others became enraged, killing the King’s servants for even bothering them with such invitations.
Today, many still say “no” to God’s feast. They fill the time when He comes to feast with us with work or play. We have our excuses, don’t we? But they all ring hollow when compared to the riches of God. That’s because Jesus offers His food and drink as the cure for what eternally ails us. He said, “The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day” (John 6:54). Think of the clamoring for that food and drink, if people honestly believed what Jesus said!
In Jesus’ parable, the king is persistent. He’s driven to fill his banquet hall. He sends his servants into town to invite everyone, gathering “everyone they found, both evil and good” (Matthew 22:10). When the respectable refuse, he invites the despised and disreputable.
When religious Israel rejected Christ, God went to the Gentiles. The king sent his servants into the highways and byways, into the alleyways and darkened doorways, the boarded-up buildings and crack houses. He invites those who have never been invited to His house before, and what a party that will be!
Notice that, when the parable ends, there’s no one left whom the king didn’t invite to his son’s wedding feast! And that’s the point of the parable. When God throws a party, it’s the biggest one in town, and He leaves no one off His invitation list.
When Jesus, the sinless Son of God, became sin for us, He left no one out of His forgiving and life-giving death. It’s our apathy, our refusing to be fed in the way He wants to feed us, and our hardened hearts rejecting His gifts that leave us outside the feast. It’s our own fault. God’s will is to fill His banquet hall. If people weep and grind their teeth for all eternity, it’s against God’s will to save them.
But when the king entered the hall, packed with guests, he saw a man who was improperly dressed for the feast. Remember the king had been pulling people off the streets to come to this party. Imagine what some of those street folks looked like. We’ve all seen what the homeless asking from money on the city streets look like.
For a moment, let’s suppose the king decided that he wanted a well-dressed crowd at his son’s wedding. But instead of handing out used coats and ties at the door, he handed out designer suits and dresses to everyone coming to the party. Now, you can understand his disgust when he sees some guy lurking at the corner table wearing a grubby t-shirt and ripped-up jeans.
I suppose the scenario sounds far-fetched. But it’s no more far-fetched than appearing before God in the resurrection wearing the rags of your own righteousness, boasting of your “good works,” which are never good enough. It’s no more far-fetched than coming to the Lord’s Supper on your terms, instead of Christ’s terms.
And the results are the same. Those who despise God, those who show contempt for Him by wearing their own clothes of righteousness, will find themselves reaping the results of their own righteousness. They will experience eternity, as Jesus described in the parable, as “weeping and grinding their teeth.” That’s not a pleasant thought. Even those who come to the Lord’s Table on their own terms, instead of Christ’s terms, receive what is life-giving to their spiritual harm. But it need not be that way.
God supplies the clothing. He covers us with His Son’s perfection. It’s as the Apostle Paul tells us, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). In your baptism, God clothes you with Christ, wrapping you in His righteousness. He covers you with His perfection.
Christ is the wedding garment; his seamless and spotless robe is your covering. Jesus’ death is yours. Jesus’ life is yours. His perfect keeping of the Law is yours. And God gives it all away in holy baptism. Better than a designer suit or dress, you have Christ in your baptism. And you dare not come to the Lord’s Table dressed in anything less than Christ. You come to the feast His way, or no way at all.
Well, we’ve now come to the end of the parable. It’s a parable of God’s kingly love that keeps His promises. It shows us His lavish love, which prepares a rich feast of salvation. It lets us know of His seeking love that goes into the highways and alleyways, inviting both the evil and good to come and be fed. It uncovers His unflinching, radical love that doesn’t look on our sin but covers it with Jesus.
When the parable ends, we realize the King had invited everyone to the party. But, sadly, it was only the riff-raff from the streets who were in the banquet hall wearing the King’s clothing, eating prime rib, and sipping the choicest wines. Jesus won salvation for everyone in His dying and rising, but only broken-hearted beggars take Him up on His invitation to have Him clothe and feed them.
It’s as Jesus said, “Many are invited, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). God invites everyone, but few are at the table. Why? It wasn’t the King’s fault. After all, he invited everyone! And it’s not God’s fault if we refuse to be fed in the way He wants to feed us. His feast of salvation is for everyone, but He forces no one to eat and drink. If you miss the feast and go hungry, you have only yourself to blame.
Jesus lived, died, and rose for you. He reigns for you from heaven’s heights. He clothes you in baptism. He forgives you in His Word of forgiveness. He even feeds you with His body and blood in His Supper. The banquet hall is here. You are His honored guests. And believing, faith-filled hearts say, “Yes.” Amen.
