Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 4, 2024

Grace Expectations

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Colossians 3:12–17
Matthew 22:1–14

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I was officiating a wedding in Florida. I walked in with the groom and the groomsmen. The bridesmaids processed in, all eleven of them. Then the bride walked in. It was beautiful.

It was then that I noticed a couple trying to exit. They were seated in the middle of the pew, so they shuffled to the center aisle and left. It’s unusual to attend a wedding procession and skip the rest of the wedding, but I didn’t think any more about it until lunch with Rick. He was the pastor of the Methodist church right next door.

I told him I had a couple walk out of my wedding on Saturday. He smiled. He said, “Yes, they arrived for the vows with us.”

The Methodists were having a wedding at the same time, and this couple got the Presbyterian church and the Methodist church confused.

It was only when the bride came in that they realized “We are at the wrong wedding.”

There’s not much protocol to weddings these days. They cost a lot more than they used to. Well, the weddings are cheap; it’s the receptions that require a home equity loan. But there is not as much protocol. But it’s still good to know whose wedding you are attending.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a wedding banquet for the king’s son. You know whose son we are talking about, right? Well, it was supposed to be a simple wedding. The reception was extravagant. It was a party for royalty!

It is important to remember this is a story, not a news account. Jesus is the storyteller, with an extra dose of hyperbole thrown in by his editor, Matthew. Matthew loves hyperbole.

To talk about this wedding banquet is to talk about the promised day of God. And to talk about the promised day is to talk about God’s work of grace in the world, God’s invitation to God’s people to be at God’s party.

The guests received a gracious invitation. You would think that they would be over the moon to be included, but one by one they made excuses. The text says, “They made light of it.” Out of persistence, the king fills the banquet hall anyway. If those he invited first refuse to come, he will invite (and that’s a kind way of putting it) others. His messengers went out into the streets and brought in anybody they could find.

It was a great party.

But then the king notices a guy without a wedding garment, and the king tosses him out, as Matthew says, into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew loves to talk like that.

In the summers of my childhood, family vacations usually meant a visit to our grandparents, who lived out of state. I loved to visit my grandparents. My grandmother had a way of making me feel like I was the most important human being in the world. I have told you before how she would squeal when we would exit the car. “Get over here,” she would say. “Get over here and give me a hug.” I’ve told you before how she talked like that. She could convince me that there was no one more important than I this side of Saturn.

But that same grandmother, if she saw me thwack my younger brother (because he was annoying and deserved it) she would say, “Tom, you do that again and I will hang you by your thumbs!” Really? My thumbs? I can testify that it is hard to fall asleep with that image in your mind.

Would she ever, ever actually do such a thing? Not in a million years. It was just grandmother-talk to say “This is important.“

Don’t hit people. Be kind because kindness is important.

I think Matthew was a grandmother — he talks like one.

Weeping and gnashing of teeth … He’s saying, “The king’s banquet is important. Don’t make light of it. Nothing matters more than the promised day of God and the way of life there. This is what you are for.”

All is going well, until he sees a guy without a wedding garment.

What’s with this wedding garment? I mean the guy got picked up off the street. Probably didn’t think that morning, well I better throw a wedding garment in my lunch box just in case the king calls (Thomas G. Long, Matthew). This king, who insists they all be invited, now tosses him out because he didn’t follow the dress code? What’s that about?

I got invited to a Christmas party. I wrote down the time and the date. Then tossed the invitation. That was a mistake. I’m sure the dress code was mentioned on the invitation.

I showed up and everyone was dressed to the nines. Black ties. Dresses that glittered. I don’t even own a tux. There I was in my Christmas sweater. I stepped into the foyer — I should say fwayay — I took one look around and decided I should leave. But I was too slow. Like our vigilant king, the host spotted me. “Tom, so glad you could make it. Come here, let me introduce you to everyone.” It was an awkward fifteen minutes — me and my Christmas sweater. I would have grabbed a tray and started serving beverages, but those guys were much better dressed than I was.

But here’s the thing: the host didn’t throw me out. I can imagine the fun conversation he had at breakfast the next morning, but he didn’t throw me out.

What’s so important about a wedding garment?

I was by the Hancock building. They play music there on Thursday noon. A man I stood next to heard the chime ring at 12:30. He said, “I don’t think I have noticed those bells before. You?” “Oh, yeah. Every day.” “You live near?” “Yes, but more than that, I work at that church.” “Really?” “Yeah.” “It looks fancy.” “Well, that wouldn’t be our first choice of adjectives.” I said, “You should come sometime. I think you would love the people there.” “Maybe I will.” Then he said, “What should I wear? I mean, do you have a dress code?” I said, “Yes. Wear clothes. We are big on clothes, but other than that, if you come, I don’t care what you wear.”

Why does this poor guy get tossed out into outer darkness? Well, it’s not because he didn’t change his clothes. It’s because he didn’t change his heart. Clothing is a metaphor.

In the early church, when new converts were baptized, they put on a new baptismal garment. The old was cast aside; the new garment was worn. It was a symbol of claiming a new life in Christ, of becoming a new person, or at least being on the journey to become the person Christ calls you to be. The love of God loves us enough to come to us as we are, but God loves us too much to leave us as we are.

It is this journey of faith that Ephesians has in mind when it reads “Clothe yourselves with the new self” (Ephesians 4:24). In Galatians, Paul says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Colossians reads, “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12).

These are the clothes we wear at the king’s banquet.

We have been invited. That’s grace. But don’t make light of grace. Don’t be casual about the love of God in your life. You don’t get invited to the king’s banquet and just continue business as usual. You don’t if you remember whose banquet it is.

This is a story about the gracious love of God that calls you by name and says, “I want you at my party.” But this is a story that reveals that grace has expectations. We should not make light of God’s love in our lives.

Billy Collins wrote a poem that speaks this truth. It’s called “The Lanyard.”

May I read you a few lines?

“I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

…

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

…

And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift — not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”

(Billy Collins, “The Lanyard,” The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems)

Another way to say it is this is a guy at the banquet of the son wearing flip flops and a Jimmy Buffet T-shirt.

Am I making sense to you?

Grace is unconditional, but it is not without expectation.

We are invited to the banquet, but it’s not our banquet. It’s not our kingdom. It belongs to the son. So, we are to clothe ourselves like him: wearing grace, justice, kindness, love. That’s what you wear in the promised day of God. And the first step is to not take the love of God for granted.

I was visiting with Jean more than a year after the death of her husband. We sat in her kitchen drinking coffee. She said, “Tom, Bud and I were married for fifty-three years. I can’t remember not being married. He sat right there where you are sitting to read his paper. He played the radio while he was shaving every morning, played it too loudly. I told him to turn it down. After the news we would turn off the TV and he would ask about my day, even if neither one of us had left the house.” “He really loved you,” I said. With amazement in her voice, she said, “He did, didn’t he! I can think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t have loved me, but he did. That’s amazing.”

I said, “Jean, you have been married for fifty-three years. You can’t be surprised that he loved you.”

She put her coffee down. “Tom, it seems to me that if anyone knows you as well as you can be known and still can’t help but love you, well, you should never take that for granted.”

We come to worship and hear again that the God who knows your every moment, the good, the shameful, the beautiful, and broken — this God still can’t help but love you. We shouldn’t take that for granted.

Jesus declares that you are loved and the party won’t be the same without you. God’s love comes to us where we are, but love, real love, never leaves us as we are.

There are grace expectations.

That’s why we strive to clothe ourselves as Christ would. After all, it’s not our banquet. When we remember whose party it is, we will want to pay attention to what we are wearing.

And besides, you don’t want the host to catch you underdressed and cast you out into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and maybe even my grandmother is waiting to hang you up by your thumbs.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church