The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Philippians 4:4-13

Psalm 23

Matthew 22:1-14

The Reverend Michael Richardson-

Imagine being called to the White House for a State dinner. It's probably a very exclusive list of invitees and is an opportunity, no matter how influential you are at the moment, to become even more influential in significant ways. If you are a teacher then the moment will be relished in a future lecture to an impressed group of students.

If you are a young person then you will get to impress not only your friends as you recount the story, but all of your parents friends and co-workers as you are paraded about to build your parents to a new level of importance because you are, after all, their offspring and nothing is more important to the self esteem of a parent than taking pride in the accomplishments of their children.

An aside to young people who are here; you can set out to accomplish anything and we'll be proud of you, just do it well. Dig ditches if that is what you want to do, but put your heart into it. More about this later.

Whether you are in banking or building this invitation to the White House will be good for at least some conversation and perhaps a boost to business.

Now imagine that a number of your friends and acquaintances have received similar invitations and you have all failed to respond to the invitations. You don't even send regrets. You are too busy. There's a dance at school. There's a "big deal" going through soon at work and if you help to land it you'll get a special award of two nights and three days in one of the nicer motels in Wichita. You have to watch the Broncos - on television.

The President believes that somehow the invitations didn't arrive or that this group of people thought that they were a practical joke, so sends out personally delivered invitations assuring you that you are indeed invited to dinner with the Queen of England, President of Russia and so on. This time, to spite those who have brought the invitations and to show everyone that you don't need to go to the White House to be important, you and the other invitees spurn the invitations, making fun of those who put you on the list and turning them away from the schools, clubs and associations to which you all belong. Publicly belittled, they are destroyed in their schools and businesses.

The President responds by cutting all Federal monies and aid to Colorado Springs and the surrounding communities and moving the military installations to somewhere in the Texas hill country. He then issues invitations to people on the streets of Washington D.C. The folks in Washington are delighted to be invited to a State dinner and respond with enthusiasm. The dinner is going well and the people are having the times of their lives when the President notices someone who isn't wearing the appropriate attire. Someone sneaked in wearing loafers instead of cowboy boots!

Immediately the Secret Service agents are called to escort the offender to the outer darkness of Arkansas, or France, whichever is closer. The festivities continue and the citizens of Washington D.C. are treated to the best Texas barbecue in almost 40 years.

Many are invited but few are chosen.

How do those who are invited become "un-chosen"? In the beginning of the parable there are many who opt out on their own accord. They don't want to be chosen because they have better things to do or believe that they are already in a better position than the invitation would give them. At the very end of this parable of inclusiveness there is one person who is excluded from the festivities for a seemingly minor offense. So there appear to be two ways of becoming un-chosen. One is obviously voluntary, a matter of choice. The other looks almost accidental, but must also be a matter of choice.

Let's look at the first way, the way of voluntarily opting out of the invitation by choice. Why would someone turn down an invitation such as this? Assuming that they are not being coerced to do anything by coming to dinner, but that this is simply an opportunity for them to be part of a great feast, why not go and just enjoy the moment?

The people who have not responded to the invitation believe that they are already "above" the level of the invitation. They are acting as if this invitation is beneath them when they spurn the offer to come to the feast. I heard someone talk about going to church this way not long ago. The person was saying to a friend that he saw no reason to go to church to have someone tell him how to be good, he was plenty good enough on his own. I've got news for him; it's not about being good, it's about being God's. It's about belonging to God and being part of the celebration. Remember, it was an invitation to a party, not an ethics course.

Some people are sure that they've already finished the required course and that this is just another requirement for those who "need it". Even many people who go to church regularly don't believe that they need to set aside much time to be with God during the week. They go to church when they want to, they have already said the required formula that means that they are "saved", and that should be enough. They'll suggest that others, the masses of people who have not said the right words or the really bad people, make more time for God, but not those of us who are already "in". The Pharisees believed that.

The Pharisees believed that and we have a tendency to believe it. Because both the Pharisees and their modern counterpart, the church, think that life is about being good, or right, when it's really about being God's, about being in relationship and belonging to God.

The tragedy is that we are all longing to be "in" and believe that we have found the way to be "in" by being right. It's a tragedy because at the heart of it is a longing to be with God and to belong totally to God. It's a tragedy because even though that is the longing, it is scary to belong to someone else and it is easier to say the right thing and pretend that we are fine even as we are left out in the cold while the party goes on. We say to our friends and ourselves that we didn't want to go to the party. "It couldn't be any fun and look at the people who are there. We are much beyond their level."

Here is another of the hard parts of this story. The invitation is extended to all. Riff-raff, street people, beggars and just plain folks are invited to attend this feast that the "right people" have turned down. It's like the wanton scattering of seed. Love is simply strewn about with no regard for whether or not it's deserved. In fact, love is strewn about even when it appears obvious that it is undeserved, such as inviting street people to a feast.

In speaking about love being undeserved, perhaps we should look at the fellow who was thrown out of the feast. Wasn't he undeserving? The answer is no, he was no more or less undeserving as a person than were any of the people who were invited in off the street. We are all undeserving of this invitation. Some of us believe that we are undeserving of such an invitation because it is beneath us. Some of us believe that we are undeserving of such an invitation because we have done nothing to deserve the honor God has given us, and so we treat the invitation to be in communion with God with the special care that it deserves and make ourselves as presentable as we can, knowing that we are still common people even if we have put on the festive garments for the party.

Others, like the man who was thrown out of the party, assume that we deserve to be invited to the party and are welcome to just show up and act as if we were not at a party at all. The festivities are beneath this person, who can take no time to prepare for the feast by getting dressed and acting like he is attending a party. The attitude is the same as those who turned down the invitation in the first place. "If I needed to be at this party I would have thrown the party." It’s like coming to a dinner and holding the host in disdain.

God is not impressed by those who are too important to be in relationship with the rest of us. God is not impressed by those who are too good to be sullied with befriending the outcast in our society. God is not even very impressed that we know the right words and say the right things if we won't come to the party to say them. If we don't put our heart into the relationship, if we don't care enough about the party to get dressed, we are saying to God that we don't care about him.

I said earlier to the young people that you can set out to accomplish anything and we'll be proud of you, just do it well. Dig ditches if that is what you want to do, but put your heart into it. It's not always what we do; in fact it's rarely what we do, that matters. It's how we do it and what care we bring to the task that really matters.

Now that doesn't mean that I can take a math test, get every answer wrong and get an "A"; there are still consequences for what we do on this earth. If I jump off a ten-story building I will get hurt, so what I do while taking math tests or walking around on top of ten-story buildings does matter to some degree. But as much as those things matter in a temporal way, they really matter for what they say about the way in which we care for ourselves and the way in which we care for the people whom we love.

Whether we choose to dig ditches or do brain surgery we will have to chose how we are going to act out our calling. We can choose to serve God and others by doing what we have chosen with all the skill and care we can possibly bring to the task, or we can choose to believe that we are above caring about our work and the relationships that go along with it. We can find our invitation to be in an intimate relationship with God to be beneath us or we can find that invitation to be a privilege that is astounding for its generosity.

When we come to the feast to which we've been invited, and we are invited to one in this Eucharist today, we can know that we have been invited through the loving generosity of a God whose choice was to issue invitation in the first place. We didn't throw the party. We didn't send the invitations. God did and God continues to invite us to the greatest feast of all time. We choose to respond by ignoring the invitation or dressing up for the party. It's not about being right; it's about being God's, about being God's own children. 

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