Sermon manuscript:
Birds of a feather flock together. People with the same
tastes or interests gather themselves together. Oftentimes you can just look at
a person and know a lot about them. What kind of clothes do they wear? How is
their hair cut? Do they have piercings or tattoos? With simple questions like
these you will have a pretty good idea of what their social class is, what kind
of work they do or don’t do, who their friends are, what their family life is
probably like, etc. You will also know if you are one of them. If they are from
your class of people, then you are more likely to interact with them. If they
are from a higher social class, then you might be a little bashful. If they are
from a lower social class, then you mightdistain them.
Nobody has to teach us to do this kind of thing. We all do
it. We were already doing it by the time that we were in middle school. By the
time we got to high school the social classes were almost set in stone. There
were the rich kids, the poor kids, and the kids in between. Each group dressed
and acted in a different way. Each group protected themselves from the others.
Each group regarded themselves as the best for one reason or another.
It was therefore dangerous to go from one group to another.
If you left your own group and started associating with another group, you
might not be accepted by the new group. Plus, you might not be welcomed back
into your old group. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, “Be careful who you
associate with”? If you start hanging out with losers, other people will see
it, and then what will they think of you? People will start to say, “Oh, you’re
one of them!” Some people don’t care what others think of them, but most people
care intensely about such things.
Let’s apply this to Jesus’s story in our Gospel reading. A
man put on a great banquet. This must have meant that he was a man of means. It
also appears that there were formal invitations that went out. This also
indicates that the man was from a certain class. Finally, the excuses indicate
that the people to whom the invitations went were probably from the same class.
These were people who could afford to buy new fields and big machinery. But the
man’s invitation was rejected by these people.
Then an entirely different class of people ends up getting invited
in. The servant is told to go out quickly into the streets and alleys. “Bring
in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” The man needed to have
more guests. But the servant had already done that! Now what? “Go and beat
the bushes! Compel them to come in!” You won’t find members of the country
club hanging out in alleys and in the medians of highways. If you round up
people from such places you are going to find that they have different problems
than the country club variety.
So perhaps, when everything is said and done, everybody ends
up being happy. The man who puts on the banquet ended up with a bunch of
losers. They’re happy enough, getting a free meal out of the deal. Those
originally invited are happy too. They weren’t hurting for food. If they could
afford those big ticket items, certainly they could go to a nice restaurant.
Plus they didn’t need to pollute themselves by hanging out with people who were
poor, crippled, blind, and lame. They probably laughed at the man who had
invited them when they heard about that ridiculous gathering. They thanked
their lucky stars that they hadn’t accepted it. Everybody’s happy.
But Jesus is not just talking about social dynamics with
this story. He is talking about the kingdom of God. This banquet, you might
say, is the wedding feast of the Lamb in his kingdom which has no end. These
people are not being invited just for a meal. They are being invited to
salvation.
But there are social dynamics involved, even with the
invitation to salvation. The old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,”
holds true here too. The thing that is different is the feather. What tastes
and interests hold together the group who would be at the wedding feast of the
Lamb in his kingdom?
These tastes and interests are obvious and distinct from the
ways that we associate otherwise. Believing Christians are concerned about
Jesus and his teachings. Jesus said, “Whoever confesses me before others, I
will also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever is ashamed of
me and my words, of him will I be ashamed when I come in the glory of the
Father.” Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the
world. He has come to destroy the works of the devil. He has come to redeem us
and make us holy. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are being conformed to
Jesus’s image. We learn from Jesus, and we teach others what we have been
taught. This is what holds Christians together as a group.
However, it is all too easy to make a Christian congregation
into something else. One of the biggest issue at the time of Jesus and the
apostles was how the people of God were all descendants of Abraham. They were
from one people. They had their customs and norms. They also had Moses and the
prophets. Moses and the prophets testified to Jesus being the Christ. But they
rejected Moses and the prophets. They stuck with their own Jewish standards
instead.
This is the background to Jesus’s story today. If there is
any royal people among human beings, it would have to be the Jews. They are the
chosen nation. They were given the Law and the promises. These are the people
who should be invited to the banquet.
They are the right people. They have the right standing. But when the fullness
of time came and the Son of God was born under the Law to redeem us from the
Law, they didn’t recognize the time of their visitation. They did not recognize
the banquet. If anything they noticed that their one-time, Jewish friends, people
like Paul or Peter who became Christians, were associating with loser Gentiles
who ate unclean food and were uncircumcised. It didn’t take a lot of convincing
for them to reject this invitation. They much preferred their own customs that
they had made for themselves.
The same thing can and does happen today, but the roles have
changed. Gentiles have been grafted into the vine of salvation. Most of us,
through our ancestors, have been grafted in. We have the treasures that once
only belonged to the descendants of Abraham. The invitation to salvation sounds
forth among us.
How is it received? And how do we react when people from
another class begins to hear the call and are ushered in?
The middle class has gotten tired. There are a lot of things
besides the Gospel call that they would rather spend their energy, money, and
time pursuing. Allegiances to other things has grown strong among our
respectable, middle class folks. The thing that should unite all Christians is
very weak. Believing in Jesus, loving his words, carrying one’s cross, loving
fellow members of the congregation has not been the main concern. Family, 401Ks,
inheritances, vacations, sports, new cars, and any number of other things get
top billing. From one generation to another we are getting weaker and weaker.
So, to answer our first question, the invitation to salvation has not fared
well among our people.
And what would our reaction be to a different class of
people hearing the call and entering in? The people from our own class and
those who are from a higher class than us are not interested. They have stuff
they’ve bought that they’d rather be engaged with. What would happen if poor
people started to come to our congregation—people who are not of our
socio-economic feather?
In the abstract we all think this would be just great. The
more the merrier. But what if they didn’t dress like you or talk like you or
have the same problems as you? What if they were poor, crippled, blind, and
lame? What if they came from the highways and byways?
I’ve seen with my own eyes the way that we receive members
in our congregation from our own class of people versus having visitors from a
different class of people. There is a lot more warmth with the former than
there is with the latter. In a way this is natural. We have an easier time
talking to people with whom we have a lot in common. We are somewhat at ill
ease with people who are different from us.
But it is very important for us to recognize as a Christian congregation that we already
are supposed to have those things that hold us together, and those things do
not have to do with the way that we dress or speak or what we enjoy doing with
our free time. We are one body and have one Spirit. We were called to one hope.
There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Being
disciples of Jesus, believing that Jesus is Lord, is what is to hold us
together. This transcends and is separate from any other social factors that we
might otherwise have.
This can and will put us in a tight spot when our loyalties
are tested. There may very well be members of this congregation who don’t care
very much about what we teach, how we pray, or the life that we share in common
with Jesus. What might be important to them are other factors. For example, this
place might hold a lot of memories. Maybe friends go here. Maybe the socializing
is nice. If other people started to come this might throw the whole thing out
of whack—at least to their thinking. So, in such a case, who are we going to
associate with?
There are only two possibilities and only one right action.
The two possibilities are to be with those who believe in Jesus or to be with
those who believe in whatever else. Christians have no other choice than to
rejoice in and support their fellow believers—no matter who they might be. If
they do not do this, they are simply showing their colors as ones who despise
the master of the banquet who invited them.
When John received a revelation from God, a vision of
heaven, this is how he described it: “After these things I looked, and there
was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe,
people, and language, standing in front of the throne and of the Lamb, clothed
with white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. They called out with a
loud voice and said, ‘Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and
from the Lamb.’”
These people of heaven, these people who have received and
embraced the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb in his kingdom which
has no end, are totally varied. As John says, there are people from every
nation, tribe, people, and language. What unites them is what they cry out in a
loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and from
the Lamb.”
Among these people will be rich people, poor people, and
people in between. There will be white people, black people, Asians, Hispanics,
and Native Americans. Most of them will have lived earthly lives where they
were poor, crippled, blind, and lame—at least metaphorically speaking. As Paul
says, “Not many who are wise, not many who are strong, not many who are born
with high status” are Christians. God chooses the foolish things of the
world to shame the wise. He chooses the weak things of the world to shame the
strong. God chooses the lowly things of the world, and the despised things, and
the things that are not, to do away with the things that are, so that no one
may boast before God.
So we are presented with a warning from Jesus today. We must
not do as the vast majority of the Jews did. We must not despise the invitation
to salvation because we prefer other things, and because we do not want to
associate with the lowly. If there are those who come to church who are not
from the same background as us, we dare not give them the cold shoulder, glare,
or look down at them. If anyone were to do that, then every true Christian must
take the side of the weak and despised rather than sticking together with their
friends.
Do not be ashamed of Christ, of Christ’s words, and of
whomever he might call to be his disciple—no matter who he or she might be. If
the person has become a disciples of Jesus, then whatever is truly offensive or
evil about them is forgiven, and they are in the process of being healed. This
means that they are in the same boat as any one of us as Christians.
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