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Lesson: Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-5
Epistle: Philippians 4:1-9
Holy Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14
The Rev. Karen Evans
I speak to you in the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Have you seen all those television commercials where they advertise that you can gather up all your old gold and old jewelry, send it to them, and they will send you a check back in 24 hours. The one that gets to me is the woman who says, “I sent all my rings from my first marriage and I got a check right away!” Or have you tried to plan a wedding on short notice? People are laughing because our daughter is getting married in two weeks and she gave us about five week’s notice. So it has been interesting.
When I read today’s first lesson about taking off “the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters,” and taking them to Aaron to be melted down; and then I read the second lesson about a wedding reception; I thought how can anyone say that the Bible is not relevant to today?
In all seriousness, these lessons point to some very real, human situations. They speak to us because they deal with the kinds of issues that affect all our lives.
The Exodus lesson takes place about halfway through the journey in the wilderness. The Israelites have faced challenges and great hardships, but God has provided for them at each place. You will remember the water from the rock and the manna that came down from heaven. Then they arrived at Mt. Sinai, and there, in thunder, lightning, in clouds and storm, they had an experience of meeting God, and in that experience, they were consecrated as God’s chosen people. A covenant was established between God and the people, the center of it was the Ten Commandments. That is what we heard last week in our lesson. The response of the people was, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”
That was great until God called Moses up onto the mountain and began giving Moses directions for setting up the worship life of the people. Those directions were pretty extensive and specific: what you could use as an offering, when you should do it, how you should do it, what robes the priests should wear, all of those things. God also gave Moses the two stone tablets that had on them the basics of the covenant of God. But it all took a long time. In Everett Fox’s translation, he says that Moses was “shamefully late” in returning to the Israelites.
The people did not know what happened to him. They were impatient, and they were self-centered, and they were afraid. They despaired of making it through the wilderness, so they came to Aaron and demanded a god that they could see. That is very important. They had experienced God, but when they got anxious, when they got afraid, what they wanted was a god that they could see. So Aaron took their jewelry and made a golden calf from it – an act of disobedience and ingratitude – but even more, a rejection of the God who had brought them to freedom and had chosen them as God’s own.
That is the problem with impatience and self-centeredness and fear. If we allow them to take control of us and of our lives, we regress. We no longer act as self-determining adults and we seek security wherever we can find it. We seek security at the cost of rejecting God and God’s promises to us. While we may not make golden calves, we do set up our own idols, things that we think we can control that will keep us safe in uncertain, difficult or dangerous times. We forget that God has been with us in those times.
The Gospel lesson is very different. It is the third parable in a series that started with the chief priests and elders asking Jesus by what authority he did what he did. All three have an element of judgment to them, but this one is unique.
The Bible calls it a parable, but more properly, it is an allegory. Every element of the story represents something or someone. We read, “the kingdom of heaven may be compared with a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” The king is God. The wedding feast is what is called “the messianic banquet,” or the “marriage feast of the Lamb.” It is the joyful celebration at the end of time when everything is as it should be and all are in the presence of God.
Traditionally, guests would be sent an invitation to such a feast, and then they would be sent a reminder shortly before it was going to start. In our story, first, the king sends out his slaves to remind the people of the wedding feast. Those he sends out first are the prophets, but the guests would not come; they ignore them. The second group that is sent out are the Christian missionaries, who were not only dismissed, but also mistreated and killed. Third, the king’s response is to destroy them and burn their city, which was considered to be a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (which was seen by the early Christians as God’s punishment for the rejection of Jesus). Then finally, the slaves were sent out one more time, with an invitation to everyone who was out on the street, to all of the others, "both bad and good," which refers to the Church, and particularly the Gentile church.
So the first part of the lesson is a judgment on those who have heard the Word of God and rejected it. For Matthew and his community, it justified the transfer of those privileges that were given to Israel as God’s chosen people to the Church.
It is also, and it is particularly about the grace of God. The invitation to the heavenly banquet goes to everyone, whether they are worthy or not. In fact, no one is worthy, and no one comes to God except that God generously invites him or her to the table.
In Luke’s version, the story ends here. But Matthew adds another paragraph. When the king comes in, he sees a man who does not have on the appropriate wedding garment. I do not know about you, but I have always thought that seemed arbitrary and unfair. But Matthew’s congregation would have understood the reference. At baptism, new Christians left their old clothes and their old belongings in the first room that they entered. Then they went through the water of baptism, and when they came out on the other side, they were given a white robe. It symbolized the movement of leaving behind their old lives and putting on the new life in Christ.
The man in the parable has been offered the grace of God and has accepted the invitation, but he has not put on the new life in Christ. He has not changed the way he is living. Matthew is saying that Christians also will be judged. Have they changed how they live? Have they put on a Christian identity and lived a Christian morality? Have they borne fruit? The man at the table has done none of these and so he is thrown out.
There are three things I hope you will take home with you today:
1. In times of anxiety and stress, it is easy to seek security in idols of all sorts – things that we make, that we set up, that we think will keep us safe. But the only true security is in God.
2. Throughout history, God has invited people into relationship, but many have rejected the invitation. Yet, God’s grace and generosity continue to offer the invitation and make it available to us today and every day, and it is not determined by our worth, but by God’s.
3. In Christ we are offered new life, and we are welcomed into the Kingdom of God through God’s grace. But grace is not cheap. It requires that we lead lives that are centered in God, that we reach out to others, and that our lives be characterized by trust and obedience.
And that brings us back around to the Exodus lesson because what the Israelites lacked was trust and obedience, and what the parable in Matthew urges us, are those two things. How will we act when things get tough? Amen.
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