Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost October 9, 2005 Matthew 22:1-14
After church one Sunday a father quizzed his young son over what the preacher talked about. The boy replied, "I'm not real sure -- a parable about cold people or something." "What?" The father was puzzled. The son explained, "Well, she kept saying, 'Many are cold, a few are frozen.'"
Apparently the text for that Sunday included one of the same verses we just heard today. "Many are called, but few are chosen." No wonder they were confused. Are you confused too? You should be. Jesus seems to be speaking with a forked tongue, or out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, today the king in this parable invites anyone and everyone to this wedding banquet -- the bad and the good. On the other hand, when he discovers that one of the wedding guests isn't dressed right, he throws him out. Come on, Jesus, what gives? How can we expect someone who's just been dragged in off the street to be wearing the right clothes? In "The Message," Eugene Peterson translates the last part of the story like this:
When the king entered and looked over the scene, he spotted a man who wasn't properly dressed. He said to him, 'Friend, how dare you come in here looking like that!' The man was speechless. Then the king told his servants, 'Get him out of here -- fast. Tie him up and ship him to hell. And make sure he doesn't get back in.' That's what I mean when I say, 'Many get invited; only a few make it.
So if many get invited, and only a few 'make it,' how do we know who qualifies for "making it?" First of all, in order to "make it", you have to respond to the invitation. The first part of our parable gives us one example after another of callous ingrates, none of whom can be bothered to show up, some whom go out of their way to abuse the servants sent to escort them to the party. Can you imagine this? You send a limousine to pick up your guest. The guest proceeds to punch the driver out and goes to the office instead.
These situations, perhaps we can understand. These guests may have been invited, but they don't make it because they don't even bother to show up, if they're not abusing those hired to help them. But the poor guy without the wedding robe? What's up with that? Why didn't the servants tell this poor guy about the dress code? Everyone else seemed to know. Isn't being thrown into the outer darkness a pretty harsh consequence for being underdressed?
We're confused because we don't live in ancient Jewish culture. You see, it just so happens that it was a custom in ancient Judaism for the host of the banquet to provide each guest with a wedding robe. The robes were handed out free of charge. All the guest had to do was put it on and party. To refuse to put on the garment was an insult -- a rejection of the gift.
The wedding robe, you see, is the righteousness that God gives us through Christ. It covers what is underneath -- our shame, our regrets. That robe of righteousness makes us all equal players. To refuse to put on that garment of grace implies that we want to try to impress God with our own righteousness. It means that we think we can do it ourselves. Putting it on means surrendering to our need for God. Putting it on means admitting, "I can't do it. God can. I'll think I'll let God." Putting it on means accepting the gift of grace, it means choosing to respond out of gratitude for the gift.
"Babette's Feast" is a novel by Isak Dinesen that has also been made into a movie. The story, like our Gospel today, is a startling parable of grace. It portrays a religious group -- Lutheran, incidentally -- that have become fractious while they revere the memory of their long-departed founder. Their traditions and their rituals have become ends in themselves. Their worship is completely empty of the power it once conveyed. Babette is a political refugee from France. She comes into their midst, and is hired as a housemaid and cook. She is instructed to prepare the usual lackluster fare -- boiled fish, ale bread, and tea.
After some years, Babette comes into a sum of money. She asks to be allowed to prepare a French dinner. These Lutherans were quite nervous about trying something new and different, about deviating from their routine. As the day of the feast approaches they begin to suspect that they had placed themselves in the hands of some sort of witch who would weave a spell. She's not only importing live animals, but wine! In fact, Babette does weave a spell. The feast becomes a religious experience, an experience of grace which prompts transformation and renewal and reconciliation among members of the group. They experience their own need for God's grace and a power not their own. I don't know if the author had today's Gospel parable in mind when she wrote the story, but Babette's comments about grace certainly capture the sentiments of our Gospel lesson. She says, "We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and shortsightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite... But the moment comes when our eyes are opened and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude." With these words, we finally learn that Babette has spent all her money on the feast, that she used to be a professional cook in France, and that her satisfaction in this event was being able to indulge her artistic gifts and share her wealth.
In one of the Harry Potter books, Hogwarts headmaster Aldus Dumbledore says, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Like Babette, like the King, like the guest without the robe, regardless of our abilities, we all make choices too. We make choices about how to respond to the grace we receive and experience, choices that either multiply or diminish or even close ourselves off from that grace. Those choices comprise our stewardship. Stewardship is our response to divine grace. As our Consecration Sunday approaches two weeks from today, we have an opportunity to formalize that response through an important spiritual choice. Each of us will be reflecting on the question, "What is God calling me to give as a percentage of my income? How might I choose to respond to the gift of that infinite grace?" This is a spiritual question, and three kinds of people choose to answer it in three different ways.
Some people answer it by saying, 'I feel God is calling me to give ten percent of my income to the Lord's work. I have been thinking about tithing for several years, and I choose to begin that spiritual journey this year.'
Another person might respond to the question like this: 'Eventually, I want to begin tithing, but I am not ready to do that this year. I feel God is calling me to start somewhere -- to drive my tent pegs in the ground at five percent or six percent or four percent -- knowing that God will bless that choice by helping me to increase my giving in coming years.'
A third kind of person has been tithing for many years. Like the couple who said years ago when they were just getting started, 'We'll tithe now; later we'll do more.' The years rolled by and now they say, 'Wow! Do we ever have more! So much more that we cannot fathom how we arrived at such a high annual income that ten percent does not even come close to a sacrifice for us. We feel God is calling us to give fifteen percent or twenty percent of our income to the Lord's work.' A story in Forbes magazine tells about one couple, Hugh and Nancy McFarland, Jr., who have been giving away seventy percent of their income for eighteen years, since they were thirty-nine years old. So there's certainly no limit to how we might choose to respond. As we anticipate Consecration Sunday, I know each of us will be praying for God's guidance as we prepare to make this spiritual choice: "What percentage of my income might God be calling me to give?"
I'll be the first to shout that stewardship is not only about money, and to presume that it is, is to misunderstand stewardship. Yet, Jesus talked more about money than anything else. Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables are concerned with how to deal with money and possessions. In the Gospels, an amazing one out of ten verses deals directly with the subject of money. In the entire Bible, we can find 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 verses on money and possessions. Money, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. Again, it is our choices that show what we truly are. What people choose to do with the money they have is the acid test of the soul. The choices we make with spending our money show us our priorities, our personalities, and our inner devotion.
I think Jesus talks so much about money in order to bring us another gift of infinite grace. He offers us a way out of the rat race. He invites us into a means of putting things in perspective. He places the value of humanity above the value of things and calls us into the grace of a healthier perspective. Jesus doesn't talk about money all the time because HE loves money so much. Jesus preaches about money because he loves US! He wants to invite us into the joy, the banquet, the feast, the grace, of generosity. He wants to save us from having a life that was never lived, but rather owned by a bank account or a corporation.
There is an old rabbinic parable about a farmer that had two sons. As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and he taught them everything that he knew about growing crops and raising animals. When he got too old to work, the two boys took over the chores of the farm and when the father died, they had found their working together so meaningful that they decided to keep their partnership. So each brother contributed what he could and during every harvest season, they would divide equally what they had corporately produced. Across the years the elder brother never married, and stayed an old bachelor. The younger brother did marry and had eight wonderful children. Some years later when they were having a wonderful harvest, the old bachelor brother thought to himself one night, "My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one. He really needs more of this harvest than I do, but I know he is much too fair to renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he is already asleep, I'll take some of what I have put in my barn and I'll slip it over into his barn to help him feed his children.
At the very same time the older brother was thinking about all this, the younger brother was thinking to himself, "God has given me these wonderful children. My brother hasn't been so fortunate. He really needs more of this harvest for his old age than I do, but I know him. He's much too fair. He'll never renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he's asleep, I'll take some of what I've put in my barn and slip it over into his barn." And so one night when the moon was full, as you may have already anticipated, those two brothers came face to face, each on a mission of generosity.
The old rabbi said that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but a gentle rain began to fall. You know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had not only been called, but were chosen -- had not only been invited, but 'made it.' They got the point. Two of his children had come to realize that generosity is the deepest characteristic of the Holy. Because we are made in God's image, our being generous is the secret to our joy as well. Our generous response to God's generous grace multiplies that grace, and on that grace we feast. Through that grace, we experience transformation, renewal, and reconciliation. On Consecration Sunday, two weeks from today, it could happen here. We too could come face to face on a mission of generosity. We will feast at one banquet, at our Lord's altar, and then at another, our celebration luncheon. When we gather that day, may we meet not as brothers and sisters bound together by blood, but by water -- the water of baptism. May we meet in that baptismal faith, not cold and frozen, but called and chosen, each on a mission of generosity. AMEN.
Pastor Dana Runestad
pastordana@holycrosslivonia.org
Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church
Livonia, Michigan
http://www.holycrosslivonia.org
Sources used but not referred to above:
Pastor Arthur Casci, "Come to the Feast," Resurrection Lutheran Sunday Sermon, http://www.cuaa.edu/~lcmresur/sermon10-17-99.htm
Father John Claypool, "Life Isn't Fair, Thank God!"
http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/claypool_4317.htm
Rev. Heather Hammond, "Stewardship at the Heart of the Lectionary," Notes About the Lessons for
October 9, 2005 http://www.elca.org
Pastor Marty Zimmann, Daily Devotions for Tuesday, October 4, 2005, pastorz@dundee.net
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