I did not drink beer when I was young. No big deal either way. I was serious about classes and music and sports.
And yes, I spent only four years in high school, where I really was in the National Honor Society, betraying my scholastic demonstration in college.
I just didn’t drink beer. I had already decided I didn’t like it.
I didn’t have my first beer until I was nineteen years old. With great anticipation of the rite of passage into adulthood, my buddy Gail took me to Cochi House, a favorite pizzeria in Wooster and we ordered a pitcher between us. I took my first taste. I was right. It tasted nasty. I nearly spit it out. Gail drank the rest of the pitcher, and the rest of my glass of beer. He still reminds me of that outing.
But here’s the strange thing. I was actually wrong. As Gail told me at the time, it’s an acquired taste.
Since then, I have grown to appreciate a good beer, especially a proper lager, and turn my nose up to the bitter taste of IPAs. My appreciation for Sam Adam’s Octoberfest is well-known – can I get an Amen for that beer?
Some things are easy to appreciate at first taste. Like Dr. Pepper. Others require time, patience, and a willingness to sit with complexity. Like a good lager. I still don’t drink coffee.
Jesus’ parables have different profiles as well. Some are easy to understand, while others are more complex. (You were wondering how I was going to compare drinking a first beer into listening to a parable, didn’t you?)
What if we don’t like it? What if we say, “Jesus, this story you’re telling us? We don’t get it. And we don’t like what we do understand. Can we just pay attention to the part we get, the part we like?”
His parables seem to me to be getting more complex the further we get into his ministry. Today’s parable is as complex as a stout malt. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.
Today’s reading from Matthew is the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. There is a version of it in Luke as well as in the Gospel of Thomas, the seemingly lost gospel found in 1945. Luke has a similar banquet parable, but Matthew’s version takes a distinctly darker turn—and then adds the strange story about the wedding robe, almost a second parable within the first.
Now before we go any further, realize that Jesus is using ‘story’ structure to make a point, not giving us a literal description of God’s behavior. We know that. Still, this parable takes allegory to an extreme. There’s a lot of this story not to like. It’s more than an acquired taste. It doesn’t stop Jesus though, from telling the parable to the religious leaders outside the temple, those leaders who are challenging his authority.
The king in the parable is the God-character, like the father in the Two Sons parable and the landowner in the Wicked Tenants parable. The son is Jesus Christ, but he’s only mentioned as part of the setting of the parable, and only in Matthew’s telling. And the slaves, like the slaves in the Wicked Tenants parable, represent the prophets who continued to get mistreated by the religious leaders both in the parables and in their actual history.
The guests in the story seem to run the gamut from the religious elite to the Gentiles, from the rich to the poor, from the grateful to the unthankful.
And on that point, here’s the question I want us to wrestle with today: What kind of guest will you be?
We’ve had weddings in this church family recently. Izy and Drew a few months ago. Chris and Mary Jo’s daughter just got married two weeks ago. My son, Erich, and his fiancé, Julia, will be getting married in a year. These are all reasons to celebrate, to have a wedding banquet.
The king is celebrating his son’s wedding, also with a banquet. The king, as the God-character in this parable, graciously invites specific people to this feast. You could even say “Chosen People.” He kindly calls them to the banquet when the time is right, but they decline his call.
I don’t know about you, but growing up, when Mom called us to the dinner table, we didn’t ask for five more minutes. When she said, “Come here,” we ‘come hered.’// We didn’t expect or hope for a second call. When she called, “Come, dinner is ready!”, we came. We washed our hands, poured our milk, and sat down.
Mom had already done the work. The food was prepared. The table was set. Dinner was waiting for us.
The king shows even more patience than my mom. He sends messenger after messenger, telling his invited guests – his chosen people – that the table is set and the feast is ready.
“Come! The banquet is ready!”
But they don’t come. He tells them again, “Come! The banquet is ready!” They still don’t come.
They don’t ignore the king. What they do is much worse. They make light of it, or they take care of their own business, or worse: commit violence on the messengers.
This is where the parable gets difficult.
Jesus starts talking about judgment. Matthew’s Jesus is not afraid to talk about judgment. In Matthew 11, Jesus rebukes cities because they rejected his miracles. Remember the parable of the weeds, separating the wicked from the righteous on Judgement Day.
The invitation to the banquet is an invitation of grace—but rejecting the invitation has consequences.
And perhaps that’s part of what makes this parable so uncomfortable. It puts God’s generosity and God’s judgment in the same story—and refuses to let us have one without wrestling with the other.
Here’s where we need to slow down.
After the king’s wrath, after his judgement, after his reaction to the disobedience from his chosen people, after all of that, the king does something astonishing.
The banquet is still ready!
The table is still set!
The king still wants guests! He wants someone, anyone, everyone to join in his joy and celebration!
He invites people indiscriminately, the good and the bad, Matthew says. In Luke, the servants invite the “poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” In Thomas, the servant is told to “bring back those you happen to meet.” This reminds us of the tradition of Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners.
Our God is inviting everybody to His banquet, saying, “Come! The table is ready!”
The banquet where we will be seated and fed and love and be loved. Where all are welcome and all are invited to God’s table. We just have to respond to his invitation.
Remember my first beer? One taste and I nearly spit it out.
Maybe that’s our temptation with this parable. We hear about the king’s judgement, and we want to spit the whole thing out.
But don’t spit it out because it doesn’t taste the way you expected. Accept that it’s an acquired taste. Let it challenge you. Let it reveal something you might not have seen at first taste.
Then ask yourself, What kind of guest will I be at God’s banquet?
· Am I the person who is too busy to come?
· Am I the person who thinks I belong because I’m one of the religious insiders?
· Am I the person who is surprised that those people were invited?
· Am I the person who came to the banquet but didn’t understand what it meant to be there?
· Or am I the person who is grateful for God’s grace, who willingly accepts his invitation?
We are guests at God’s table. We don’t have to prove that we belong—and we don’t have to decide who else belongs. How liberating is that?!
We are guests. We just have to respond to his invitation.
Not every sermon needs an action item. Sometimes it’s enough to reflect on what Scripture is telling us about God, to absorb who Jesus is, and to allow the Holy Spirit to slow us down, to show us where we need to change.
So this week, don’t worry about checking something off a list. Instead, reflect on this question:
What kind of guest will I be at God’s banquet?
Maybe this parable doesn’t go down easily at first taste.
Maybe it isn’t supposed to.
Sit with it. Let it challenge you. Let it change you.
The invitation has been given.
Don’t wait for Mom to call you a second time.
The table is set.
What kind of guest will you be?
To the Lord our God, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, be all glory and honor forever.
