You’ve heard the story of the preacher who reported this humbling conversation with his wife. It took place on the way home from church after what he considered to be the delivery of a rather magnificent sermon: “Tell me, dear,” he asked, “how many truly great preachers do you think there are today?” She replied, “I don’t know, but I am quite sure it is one less than you think there are.”
Cody and Madeline and I did this little skit about phylacteries this morning to point out something Jesus saw with His very own eyes, and felt the need to comment upon – to His disciples, and the crowd that was gathered outside the temple. He saw the religions leaders of the day exalting themselves over those they instructed, and then not really practicing what they preached. Jesus told the crowd that day to listen to and heed their teaching, but not to follow their example – and then at the end of our gospel lesson for the day, He turned things toward His point when He said, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
I think this main point of this discourse was His favorite sermon. We see it often in the scriptures – it’s the great paradox – what seems to be isn’t necessarily so. In fact, usually the opposite of what you hope to attain is actually attained by your actions. So, if you want greatness, practice humility. If you actually try to find greatness, humility will be what you find instead.
The trouble with this teaching, of course, is the paradox of it – that, and the fact that everything within our beings, most of what surrounds us, most visual images in our daily paths, most teaching that we receive from the time that we are small children – nearly everything that we know, think and are – all works against living our lives the way that Jesus instructs us in this passage.
Friday week ago, we had to go to a meeting about Travis. It seems that once again, his living situation will have to change. I’m not all that surprised this time around – last year when we placed him in this particular group home, I was concerned at the age of most of the men in the house. They are older than Travis, and Travis requires more interaction than they are willing to give, and slightly more activity. So I was not surprised that the people who care for him think a smaller, more intimate situation would actually work to give him greater opportunity and fewer hindrances toward personal growth.
Anyway, in that meeting, one of the observations was Travis’ rather intense competitive streak. I had to admit familial guilt on this one – Travis comes by this competitive nature honestly – everyone on my side of the family is highly competitive, and he has certainly picked it up as well. It will be virtually impossible for him to unlearn that personality trait at this point. About the best we can hope for is that he’ll get older, fatter, and sleepier as the years progress.
We are certainly a by-product of our environments!! We live in a “boot-strap” society that expects the best from us – always. We are encouraged to excel – from our first steps and our first words. We start out our schooling, and if it hasn’t already, the competition begins. Grades, peer pressure, social progress – all depend on our ability and willingness to advance – at all costs. We are a competitive society, and we value excellence, attainment, and outstanding progress. In our homes, our families, our schools, our jobs, and our recreation – we value most highly the person who can excel and get ahead. We encourage it, we applaud it, and in some cases, we require it.
Eventually, the very thing we value most begins to rule us. And we not only don’t think anything about it – we look askew at the ones who don’t live for the goal of exaltation.
Jesus messes everything up for us when He announces that the greatest in the kingdom will be the least among us. And His teaching begs the question – “How do we practice humility, especially in a world that constantly requires us to move toward greatness?”
The secret may just be in the middle verses of our passage for today. Look back, starting at verse 8. “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, you have one instructor, the Messiah.” Notice here that Jesus calls us to take our eyes off those around us, and focus our attention squarely on God and His Son. God is our Teacher, God is our Father, and Christ is our Instructor.
We are to follow the example of Jesus. “Well, Pastor – didn’t Jesus do all things well? Wasn’t that the example He set for us? I seem to remember there’s an old hymn that even uses that phrase – Jesus doeth all things well. Isn’t that our example?”
The answer is the paradox. We are to do all things well. We are to excel, as best we can. We are to do our best – every day of the world. We are to strive, to stretch, to question, to glean, to learn. We are to do all those things. But the attitude with which we do them is key. We are to do all of those things with the attitude of Christ, who did all those things as an example to us.
You know, Gary Shields has been trying to teach me something over the last couple of years when we go fishing. You know that competitive streak that I have – well, when we get in the boat over there on Canton Lake, it really kicks in. I can be pretty gracious about it – I can cheer for the guy in the other end of the boat when he catches the first fish, or the first seven fish, or the biggest fish. But what is on my face, and what is in my heart are often two different things. I love to win – and on the boat, that means catching most of the fish, or the biggest fish. Now, Gary has been trying to teach me that the next level of joy comes when I cease being so much the competitor, and start being more the teacher – when I take the opportunity to teach a youngster how to do what I already know how to do. I had opportunity to do just that this summer. A couple of times, I took some young men with me when I went out – and spent much of my time instructing them, helping them, encouraging them. It was actually fun. For me, the competition never really goes away, but it is learning to be restrained to some degree.
Now, I want to talk about the corollary application to this teaching. I have noticed in the church – and I don’t just mean this church, although we struggle with this to some degree – we sometimes practice a false humility in the church. Let me illustrate with a preposterous suggestion. Let’s say, somewhere back in Matthew, that the disciples had said to Jesus, “Lord, show us how to pray.” And Jesus had responded to them by saying, “Oh, boys – I always do the praying around here. I’m just one of you, and not more important. Why don’t one of you bless the dinner this evening?”
Here’s my point on this one. While we practice humility of position within the church, we never shirk a duty or an opportunity to be of service for the sake of false humility.
Now, I don’t want us all to get self-conscious down in the basement in a little while, but when we line up to eat, someone is going to have to be first, and someone will have to go through the line last. If someone isn’t first, then we’ll never get to the food. And if someone isn’t last, we’ll never go home. The two things we don’t want to do down there. We don’t want anyone going to the front of the line because they perceive that they are more important than anyone else, nor do we want anyone practicing the false humility of standing back, urging others to “go ahead of them” as an act of overt humility.
That’s kind of a silly example for us, because we really don’t have any of those kind of problems here. But you get my point. We never hesitate to serve because “there are those who are more qualified” or because “I’m sure that there are those who haven’t had the opportunity yet.”
Most often, humility doesn’t look like humility. I have a phrase that I use sometimes when I describe most of the men who are a part of our church. It’s a phrase that we don’t use as often in this day and time – churchmen. I will speak rather proudly (of course, with due humility) about one of our men, and I will describe them as a true “churchman.” For me, a “churchman” looks something like this. He’s the man who, when he’s asked to serve, willingly responds – and then begins to plan how he might best serve in the capacity for which he has been asked. In most settings, he’s the man who is so busy serving that his own temporary needs might seem to go unmet. But they never do go unmet – for the church is always about the business of meeting everyone’s needs, even those who serve the most. And the Spirit of God is always about the business of meeting the needs of everyone in the church, even those who serve the most.
I have one other example from the scriptures this morning. Jesus talks about the practice of fasting. I actually read a pretty good article about fasting this week. Not that I want to practice fasting. And I don’t know anyone who enjoys fasting. You know, Jesus commented on the practice of the Pharisees when they fasted – they would actually put on makeup so as to make themselves look emaciated – thus presenting the appearance that they were truly pious. Instead, Jesus instructed us, not if, but when we fast, to put on a pleasant expression, and to go about our business as though we are not fasting. I suspect that in Jesus’ case, most often He was so busy doing something else – praying, serving, teaching – that He simply forgot to eat.
I close with an illustration from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his book The Cost of Discipleship, He writes: “Our activity must be visible, but never be done for the sake of making it visible. ‘Let your light so shine before [others]’ . . . and yet: Take care that you hide it! . . . That which is visible must also be hidden. The awareness on which Jesus insists is intended to prevent us from reflecting on our extraordinary position. We have to take heed that we do not take heed of our own righteousness. Otherwise the ‘extraordinary’ which we achieve will not be that which comes from following Christ, but that which springs from our own will and desire.”[1] “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 157.
Sean Connery won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the 1987 classic, The Untouchables. It was the story of the struggle between lawman Eliot Ness and the gangster, Al Capone. Early in the movie, Ness has had a bad day, and is contemplating his choice to pursue Capone while looking down into the Chicago river. Connery (beat cop Jim Malone in the movie) sees him, and talks to him about what has happened. He tells him that he did his duty that day, and that’s all that he can ask of himself, and that he should go home to his family. Then Connery says, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
It was a statement from experience to inexperience – from an old cop to a rookie. It was sage advice from one who was quite long of tooth. And his words ended the conversation that day with a sense of finality that completes far too few conversations in this old world.
When Jesus was interrogated by the Pharisees and Sadducees in the event that Matthew records in the last verses of chapter 22 of his gospel, Jesus trumps them one last time, and Matthew says, “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” And I could hear Sean Connery in the background saying, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
Matthew told us a story. We’ve been listening to it for most of this year, and it was a good story. Let me remind us of a couple of things. This story was told from Matthew’s vantage point. And it was a pretty good vantage point. Matthew was the tax collector that Jesus called into service as a disciple, and he walked and talked with Jesus for a period of nearly three years. They were roommates, in a manner of speaking. They got to know the good, the bad, and the ugly about one another, and Matthew tells us that with Jesus, there was only the good. So, when Matthew started putting down his recollections on paper, he had something that he wanted to prove – a point that he wanted to make. Jesus was the long awaited Messiah – the One the Jews had been waiting for since old Abraham was first called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Jesus was the One who had been promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the promised Savior spoken of by all the prophets, and He had come to redeem us.
In the process of coming to redeem us, He showed us how to live. And one of the things He showed us is that we have a place in God’s lineage that is a place of prominence. When people question our authority to act as children of God, we respond with the same kind of gentle audacity that Jesus used when He responded to the religious leaders of that day. Jesus proved His point, even while proving that He had the right and position to make the final point. They knew it, and no one asked Him anything after that. Game, set, match. Thus endeth the lesson!
Now, that’s the context of our scripture lesson for today. Jesus finally steps way out there on the limb and basically says, in His response to the Pharisees and Sadducees, that all authority had been given to Him. That’s more or less the point of the day. It’s a good point for us to make note of – Jesus is the final authority – in our lives, in the lives of really everyone who has or will ever walk the face of this planet – whether they admit it this side of heaven, or not.
That having been said, we must notice something else – this authority is relational. Let’s back up to the original question. “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” It’s really a good question – well, sort of. It supposes that as in most things, there is a point of supremacy, and that must be true for the law. There must be an apex to the law – one law which overshadows every other law. It’s a logical conclusion to reach. Except, we live in a spiritual realm where human logic does not always apply.
Now, here’s the fun of Jesus’ response. He answers them, and then, He gives them the real answer. In His first response, Jesus says, “Hey, nothing to this one, guys. Love God. Love God more than you love anything else. Love God more than you love yourself, frankly, and love God with every aspect of your being. Because Law is relational. Like they’ll say in the Nike commercial some day, ‘Just do it.’ Well, just love God. Period.”
“But you’re wrong when you assume that you can stop right there, boys. There’s a second commandment that is equally important. Remember I said that law is relational? Well, the second, equally important command is ‘love everyone else as much as you love yourself.’ That means that first you have to love yourself, and then you take all that love that you have for God and yourself, and you turn it outward toward everyone else. Love is the thing, man. Love is the point. Relational love. Get it?”
Wow. What an answer. They had trouble with the relational aspect of the law. The religious kooks of that day thought that they could run a check list of the things that they did and didn’t do every day of the world, and make a place for themselves in religious history by simply being better at, well, being better. They read the law that said “don’t have any idols,” and they took it literally. Took all the “idol-like” objects off the bookshelf, swept the house clean of “other than Yahweh” artifacts, and pronounced themselves “good.” They read the law that said, “Keep the Sabbath holy,” and they said, “well, that obviously means that you can’t travel more than 3/5ths of a mile from your home, and that you can’t do any of your day to day work on Saturday, and unless your ox gets stuck in the ditch, you’d better be in synagogue – and remember to write a check to the temple.” They learned how to keep the law while ignoring the relational aspect of the law.
Funny. We still have trouble with that sort of thing, don’t we. We do the very same thing – we make our own set of laws to support the “Big Ten,” and then we ignore how our keeping of the law might otherwise affect our families, our neighbors, our communities. We do the very same thing.
So, Jesus pointed out the relational aspect of the law, but He also pointed out that relationships are with God and people, and that all of them are important. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with that relationship with God, and the last six deal with our relationships with one another. “On these two,” Jesus said, “hinge all the law, and the prophets.” “Boys, all these laws you’re out there writing – they all boil down to the ‘Ten,’ and those all boil down to the ‘Two.’ But those two boil down to relationship, and you’re completely missing that part of it.” Yeah, it’s funny. We’re still doing the same thing.
Well, that was the answer He gave them. But it wasn’t the real answer. I’d like to have been there to watch the faces of everyone. I’d like to have seen the little hint of a smile on Jesus’ face as he watched them huddle in the corner to consider how they were going to respond. I’d like to have watched their faces as he interrupts their quick deliberations to pose a question to them. I’d like to have watched their eyes as they realized that He asked them a “no win” question. And I’d like to have watched their countenances droop when they had to admit that they didn’t know how to answer Him. I’d like to have seen all of that. Now, watch what He does. “Hey, boys. While your pondering over there, let me ask you a question. Ya’ll believe in the Messiah, don’t you? Whose Son would he be?” The question was direct – they would have understood. From whose lineage would the Messiah come? They knew the answer to this one – David. They had nearly exalted David to the point of divinity in their religious culture. David was the point man – he was the man to whom they would all point when talk turned to the Messiah. The Messiah would come out of the house of David!!
He had set the trap, and they stepped right into it. “Well, then – How is it then that David refers to the Messiah as Lord? How is it that David submits to the authority of the Messiah? And how is it that you boys won’t submit to the relational authority of the Messiah?” Okay, that last part is my interpolation, but it sort of moves to the point of the lesson. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus to test His authenticity, and He talks to them about authority. The root of both of those words comes from the word which we also use to develop the word author. They ask a question about the law, and He answers by speaking about authority, which, by the way, comes from the author of the law.
Do you remember a couple of years ago when Southern Baptists rewrote their statement of faith. I always found that to be a wasteful exercise – because the only two directions you could really go with something like that is to (1) say that on any given day, this seems to be what many of us believe, or (2) say that since those of us who have gained religious power think a certain way, we are going to try to force the rest of you to think the way we do. I violently opposed the latter direction, and couldn’t figure out the point of the former direction. Anyway, one of the main talking points for those of us who were amazed at the changes in the Faith and Message statement from the one that had worked just fine for 37 years was the not-so-subtle elevation of the scriptures over Christ in terms of primacy. Many of us felt that in that particular document, the scriptures were elevated – almost to a position of deity – while Christ was demoted. We argued the point, and they basically agreed that was what they had done. Their argument was steeped in a legalistic tradition that failed to adequately acknowledge the authorship of the scriptures. They couldn’t see the nature of the relationship. Over and again, I would enter into conversation with someone who would say, “How can we possibly know anything of Jesus without first encountering the scriptures?”
Now, I’m not going to go so far this morning as to say that their way of seeing things is wrong. But I will go so far as to say that their way of seeing things is not the way that I see things, and they don’t get to tell me that I’m wrong, either. When I encounter the scriptures – the law of God – I ultimately discover interpretation based on the relationship I have with the author of the scriptures. I don’t know how someone can really understand the scriptures without knowing the One Who wrote them.
Matthew has been telling us a story this year. We have been listening, and our hearts have been quickened by the truth that we see presented in his story. But our hearts have been more quickened whenever the principle Character in the story begins to speak – to offer words of truth and law that are tempered and explained by the glint in His eye as He speaks, and the authority He commands as the “Word which was in the beginning,” and Who first spoke these holy scriptures.
We ask a question about authenticity, and we get an answer on authority from the Author – Who wants to have a relationship with His readers.
Friday morning our postal carrier knocked on my office door. That’s a bit unusual – he usually just puts the mail in the mailbox out front – but Friday he knocked, which nearly always means he has a package. I jumped up to open the door – I keep it locked to keep the riff-raff out, you know – and sure enough, there he was holding a package. I looked, and then it dawned on me – I had new books. And not just any new books – new Capon books. I know what I’ll be reading until Christmas.
I didn’t dig in – too much to do on Friday afternoon and all of that. But I did crack one of them open to the table of contents, and a big smile came over my face – I could feel it growing. The titles of the chapters were soooooo Capon. I knew immediately that I had struck the Mother Lode on this one. Not one, but two books from my favorite theologian.
You see, when you read Capon, you are transported into an entirely new way of thinking. Several years ago, he nearly single-handedly changed the way I view the parables. His approach to Christian thinking stretches my thinking way beyond what I’ve always been taught – to the point that he makes me start to think for myself again, and my heart literally beats more rapidly when I read his stuff.
We all have authors who are like that to us – or actors, or perhaps idols of some other sort. So, when we hear Jesus indirectly asking us this question, we understand immediately what He is asking. But we’re not sure how to answer. It’s a tough question. Whose icon is coined on our hearts? Yeah, it’s a tough question.
Pastor, my version doesn’t say that. It says, “Whose likeness.” Well, the greek word is eikon, and it means “image.” Kind of a double meaning with that one, isn’t there?
Isn’t it just like Jesus to answer a question this way? To be sure, the Pharisees were trying to trap him. That’s exactly the word Matthew uses – trap. They thought if they could trap Him into using a little theological double talk, and maybe get Him to twist and squirm around His words the way political candidates do when they’re not sure how to answer without getting into hot water – then they thought they could start to get the people to turn against Him, and perhaps they might not have to use such a heavy hand to get Him out of their misery. But his response was sooooo Jesus. He accomplishes the dual purpose of sidestepping their direct question and at the same time reframing the question so as to teach a principle of living that is so utterly beyond the way that most of us think most of the time. “Jesus, should we pay taxes.” “Yeah, give Caesar what belongs to him, and be sure at the same time to give to God all that belongs to God.” Batted that one out of the park and made it look easy.
Boy, this sermon could go so many ways. You know, this is one of those passages that is often used around Stewardship Sunday. We could go that way with it, and would be justified in doing so. We could comment about the stewardship which is ours as citizens of two kingdoms, and that we are expected to do our part, little though it may be, for both kingdoms of which we serve. In our case, we actually serve several kingdoms – local government (city and county), state entities, and then the federal government. We are bound to service of all three of those levels of government, even before Jesus reminds us in the same breath that we are also members of a heavenly kingdom, and that we have responsibilities there as well. We could go that way, for sure.
We could go the way of talking about both questions that are then posed for us as a natural outflow of Jesus’ statement. We could talk about our responsibilities to Caesar. We could talk about the myriad of ways that we are obligated to local, state and federal governments, and the fact that we should count it a privilege to contribute cheerfully to each of those levels of government. And then we could talk about the obligation that each of us has to vote when opportunity comes our way, and we could talk about the wide array of ways in which we can serve our fellow citizens by getting involved in government at all levels. We could talk about our privilege to not only support and encourage, but to question and hold accountable people who serve us at every level of government. And we certainly could talk about the gift of God that is government – the gift that comes out of our seeming inability to govern ourselves fairly, honestly, and systematically without the aid of outside influences. We could talk about all of those things.
Or the other question. What are our responsibilities to the kingdom of God? We could talk about that. We could talk about the great price that has been paid for our redemption, and then we could recall some adage like “freedom isn’t free – it cost Jesus everything.” We could do that. And we could talk about the way in which God has chosen to involve us – each and every one of us – in the building of His kingdom. We could talk about the fact that none of us are to sit on the sidelines when it comes to building the kingdom of God – that God indeed expects each of us to take care for our own souls, and then to involve ourselves in the lives of others through prayer and support and even direct witnessing from time to time. We could talk about all of that, and we’d be justified. But this question that Jesus asks haunts me. “Whose icon is on the coin?” That question, and the suggested question that comes as an extrapolation of His teaching – “whose icon is coined on your heart?”
I suppose that question haunts me, because deep down, I know the answer – and the answer is lacking – lacking in depth, lacking in fervor, lacking in consistency, lacking in truthfulness, and lacking in focus. I squirm. We squirm, just like that politician who isn’t quite sure how to answer. We want to answer well, but we know that we must be truthful. We want to answer. “Just look at my life, Jesus. Don’t you know that it is Your image that is coined on my heart?” But we know better than to brandish that kind of brashness. We know the answer, and it haunts us.
“Well, Jesus, you see – You’ve already identified our problem. The problem is that we live in these multiple kingdoms. Lots of folks have expectations of us. Certainly our families have expectations, and that’s just the way You’d want it, right, Jesus? And then we all work for a living, and our bosses all have expectations of us. We coach Little League, and we serve in Junior Welfare League. Those are good community service things, aren’t they, Jesus? And then there’s the church. We do all kinds of things at the church. We mow the lawn and we go to Ladies Bible Study and we collect shoeboxes for that Operation Christmas Child thing, and we sing in the choir and teach in Bible School, and You know we give our money. Doesn’t all that prove to you where our loyalties are? Doesn’t that prove to You that it is Your icon that is coined on our hearts? Tell us, Jesus. Please tell us . . .”
I think the thing that haunts us is that when we answer the question that way – when we recount all the things that we do to prove our loyalty to God - at the very same time we know in our heart of hearts that He is asking another question – or that He’s asking this same question at a deeper level – a level that is so deep that we’re not sure how to respond. It’s not this simple, but it’s more like He’s asking a “who are you?” question, rather than a “what are you doing for us?” question. And again, it’s not this simple, but it’s more like He’s asking a question about identity – “Whose image is coined, stamped, tattooed, ingrained on your heart?” That level of identity is about the only way that personally I can approach this question and feel like I’m starting to get a handle on it.
I tell you what I feel like when I hear this question. I feel like the times I have been out of the country, and have had to use the coin of the realm of wherever I was to purchase anything I wanted to purchase. In my lifetime, I’ve been in five different countries – England, Wales, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. They have different money in those places. They had paper money for things that I was used to having coin, and they had coin where I was used to having paper. When I was there, I wasn’t sure how much things cost in their money, and I was always just sure that I was being ripped off when I paid for something. I didn’t know how to easily calculate the exchange rate, and then when I did, I didn’t know the value of something over there as compared to here. I felt as though I was at the mercy of the vendors in those countries whenever they would take my money.
I’ll tell you, I have a suspicion about something. I have a suspicion about how to translate this question into something that we can all understand. Maybe it will help. In our physical, temporal world – the world that you and I would describe as Caesar’s world – you and I know how much stuff costs. We know how much it costs, and we know, more or less, how to work the system to get what we want, either by working harder and longer, or by being diligent enough to save for something, or by inheriting tons of cash so that we can render unto Caesar, or by taking a loan out at the bank or on our credit cards. We know how much stuff costs, and we know how to get what we want.
But in God’s realm, we’re not sure how much stuff costs. “Just how much to repay a kindness offered to me in the name of Christ?” “What is the value of that Sunday School lesson that John or Jan or Gary or Debby taught this morning?” “What do I really owe God for the scriptures that I hold in my hand this morning?” We don’t know how much stuff costs, and we’re not sure how to begin to repay our debt. And then Sunday’s roll around, and the preacher stands up there in the pulpit and reminds us that Jesus died for us. Or we go to the movie and see Jesus hanging on that cross in “The Passion,” and we think we hear the answer. “Here’s how much it cost.” And we look at the outstretched arms of Jesus, and we know that we don’t have enough to even start to repay – and we’re trumped – because we’re used to living in a different world.
Jesus hung there on that cross – arms outstretched – but when they took Him down, He wrapped those arms around us, and said, “These are mine – I bought them.”
“. . . and to God the things that are God's."
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
1. I was inspired to this title by my friend Keith Herron, in his sermon three years ago entitled "Coined in God's Image."
I was reading an e-mail that Dr. Vineyard sent through sometime this week. That e-mail offered some commentary on how things have changed in the last 100 years. Listen to some of them.
In 1905 –
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.
Well, you get the idea. Things have changed quite a bit in the last 100 years. Things have changed since I was a child, and even from when I was a young adult. You know that as a profession, I have always served on some church staff, originally in associate positions, and now as your pastor. During those years, when I was invited to a wedding, I usually attended, and I always wore a suit. It was expected, and that’s just the way things were. Boy, have things changed. Now days, people show up at weddings wearing just about anything. Expectations have changed. I’ll have to admit, while I find it rather easy to wear more casual clothing for our worship services here, I still will generally wear a suit to weddings and funerals. It’s just the way I am – and at this point, I’m not likely to change.
You and I have some pre-conceived notions about this parable this morning. We have ideas about the four classes of people who are mentioned – we think we know who they are, and we are surprised just how they respond to an invitation as gracious as this one from the king. Obviously, this is a king who loves his son, and intends to show his kingdom just how much he loves his son. And since it is Jesus telling the story, and since He begins this parable by saying “the kingdom of Heaven may be compared to . . .,” we recognize immediately that at its core, this is a story about how much God loves Jesus. You know, we don’t talk about that kind of thing very much. We believers spend most of our theological energies talking about how God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit love us, or expect things of us, or how Christ died for us, but we don’t spend much time contemplating the relationship that the three Eternal Expressions of God had with each other before the beginning of what we know as “time existent.”
So, the king loves the son, and wants everyone to know. He throws a feast. A wedding banquet to best the best of wedding banquets. All the best people are invited, they get the invitations in the mail, and the big day comes for the feast. As was the custom in the time of the parable, the king sends servants out to fetch the wedding guests. Were we to be watching this on our big screen TV’s, we would expect in the next scene to see limos show up at the front entrance to the king’s palace. Fine furs, men in tuxedos, servants running around making a fuss about pretty much everything. Instead, we get the awful news. All of the invited guests were unwilling to come. Wow!! We’re shocked. We can’t believe it. Not that they can’t come – unavoidably detained and all of that. No, this is a flat refusal – they are unwilling. They R.S.V.P.d, but now – now they have simply chosen not to come – and the word from the lips of the servants is this word – unwilling. What a haunting word.
I think about people who are unwilling to attend the grace banquet that God has thrown for His Son. We don’t know why they are unwilling. But we think about them. Maybe they can’t be bothered with such trivialities. Maybe they have other occupations. Perhaps they don’t really see the point of it, really, and so they are just unwilling. We don’t know why – but we think about them.
Here’s where the story gets a little iffy in my mind. In verse 4, we are told that in response to this initial refusal, the king sends out other slaves, this time with a little speech from the king himself. “Tell those who have been invited, ‘Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.” In my mind, I’m not sure to whom this invitation is extended. I’m not sure if the king sends different servants, this time with a message, to the same invited guests, or if these servants are sent to other invited guests. I really can’t tell. You may have an opinion, and I’d like to hear it this week. I’m not sure. And in my opinion, it’s really a moot point. This time the thing that is impressive is the response of the invitees – again. This time, things are a little more clear in their minds. They don’t have time for this sort of interruption. They have other pursuits. One has a farm to attend to, and another a business. They have things to do, and this wedding invitation, and this pestering king are starting to get on their nerves. So, they seize the slaves, mistreat some of them, and outright kill some of them.
Jesus may be making reference here to the history of God’s dealings with people. The history outlined for us in the Old Testament presents a story very similar to this one. God invites people to be a part of what He is intending to do in His created world, and some don’t respond to Him, and others have other things to do, and turn around and mistreat his slaves. We might take that as reference to the patriarchs and prophets who were the lead characters in the Old Testament drama of the unfolding of God’s work in this world. That makes a lot of sense when you look at the transition in the story at this point. Let me show you what I mean.
Here, the tenor of the story changes. After first radically destroying the first group of people, and their cities, the king stops messing with the likes of the first group of people – the originally invited guests – those who were presumably deserving of such an invitation, and instead, offers an invitation to those we would least expect to be invited to such a grand event - the least, the lost, the last. Jesus puts it this way in his story – “Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast. And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.” We get the impression that not only were the people in this second group not worthy of an invitation – we get the impression that they were precisely the kind of folk you don’t invite to such events. You know how we sometimes say to one another when we get all dressed up for some grand event, “Say, you sure clean up well.” Well, we get the impression that these were the kind of people who were hard to clean up. Rabble rousers, junkies, prostitutes, degenerates of every walk of life – we don’t see them showing up at this kind of event, no matter what the circumstances.
I default to my friend, Robert Capon. He notes that this parable is told in both Luke and here in Matthew. In Luke, he sees it as a parable of Grace, but here more a parable of Judgment. But even in this version of the story, the grace element is not lost. Capon says, “The point is that none of the people who had a right to be at a proper party came, and that all the people who came had no right whatsoever to be there. Which means, therefore, that the one thing that has nothing to do with anything is rights. This parable says that we are going to be dealt with in spite of our deservings, not according to them. Grace as portrayed here works only on the untouchable, the unpardonable, and the unacceptable. It works, in short, by raising the dead, not by rewarding the living.” And then he goes on to say, “They establish that the reason for dragging the refuse of humanity into the party is not pity for its plight or admiration for its lowliness but simply the fact that this idiot of a host has decided he has to have a full house. Grace, accordingly, is not depicted here as a response; above all, it is not depicted as a fair response, or an equitable response, or a proportionate response. Rather it is shown as a crazy initiative, a radical discontinuity – because God has decided, apparently, that history cannot be salvaged even by its best continuities. The world is by now so firmly set on the wrong course – so certain, late or soon, to run headlong into disaster – that God will have no truck with responding to anything inherently its own, whether good or evil. The ship of fools is doomed: if its villains do not wreck it, its heroes will. Therefore there is no point in any continuance, whether of punishment of the wicked or reward of the righteous – no point, that is, in further attempts to redeem the world by relevancy. And therefore in the parable, Jesus has the host make no relevant response at all to the shipwreck of his party; he has him, instead, throw a shipwreck of a party.”[i] So, in the end, this is not only a parable about how the Father loves the Son, but this is as well a parable about God’s grace. Grace that is extended to those who do not deserve it, which is, of course, the very definition of the concept of “grace.”
There’s one more element to the story. After the party is in full swing, the king enters to observe the festivities, and spies one of the guests “not wearing wedding clothes.” In the custom of the day, it is probable that appropriate wedding clothes would have consisted of at least an outer garment that indicated the festive nature of the event. In other words, every one was expected to wear their best – you didn’t just walk in off the street. And if you didn’t have any best, well, the host would often supply you with something appropriate. Like going to a fine restaurant and being provided a coat and tie by management – that sort of thing. This guy did neither. Rather, he showed up at the wedding feast, in the vernacular of the sixties – “doing his own thing.”
Cornerstone, I think this is the point where this parable might speak more to us than anywhere else. We have responded to the grace that is ours in Jesus Christ. We have responded – gladly – to the gracious invitation of God to attend the wedding feast of His Son. But we must take care to attend appropriately. We can reject God’s grace by not showing up, and we can reject God’s grace by showing up as though we’re doing God a favor by showing up. Either way, we reject the grace of God. Always, when we gather at the table of our God, we must gather with the appropriate humility – recognizing that we are responding to God’s grace as the lost, the last.
Richard W. Dunn, Ph.D.
[i] Robert Farrar Capon, Parables of Grace, Eerdmans, 1988, pp. 133-134.
