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Accepting
the Invitations to Life
October
9, 2005
Matthew
22:1-14
Rev.
George Smiga
Another
week, another difficult parable from Matthew. Like last week's
parable of the tenant farmers in the vineyard, this week's
parable of the wedding feast includes parts that are not only
violent, but difficult to understand. Why would you kill someone
who is inviting you to a wedding banquet? Why would the king
send his troops to destroy the city of those who refused to
attend?
Let's
start with what is clear and work from there. This parable
is obviously about invitations: invitations to the banquet
of life, invitations to the feast in the Kingdom of God .
Invitations are significantly different from general knowledge.
Many people possess general knowledge, but an invitation is
personal and concrete and it demands a response. I am sure
that in the world of the parable, every person knew that the
king was holding a wedding banquet for his son. But that general
knowledge was quite different from a personal invitation to
attend.
God
sends us personal invitations. We call those invitations the
promptings of the Holy Spirit, and those invitations arrive
in the concrete circumstances of our lives. Every person here
who is a regular smoker has the general knowledge that tobacco
is harmful and should not be used. But every once in a while,
you receive a personal invitation from God to stop smoking.
It can happen as you are watching a medical program on television,
or when you receive the news of a friend that died altogether
too young. Perhaps some here this morning have the general
knowledge that something is going wrong in your marriage,
that something is dying. But every so often, perhaps when
you are looking at old photographs or watching your children
play, God sends you a personal invitation to do something
about it.
Many
of you here have the general knowledge that you should make
contact with an old friend, spend more time with your children,
let a person know the truth of what I believe, find another
job, or reach out and make peace with someone who has hurt
you. Those ideas are in your heads. But every so often God
puts in your mind a thought, or you catch something in the
glance of another person, or you turn a corner and suddenly
realize that God is personally asking you, “Why not do something
about that now? I am inviting you to act.”
Now
God keeps sending these personal invitations because God loves
us and desires that we have a deeper and richer life. But
no matter how many times the invitation is sent, we retain
the freedom to choose, the freedom to refuse the invitation.
We often take it. We tell ourselves, “Yes, that would be a
very good thing to do, and I'll get around to it. Yes, that
is something that would be important for me in my life, but
not today.”
Here
is where the violence comes in. If we took a very literal
reading of today's parable, we could interpret that the king
who sent his troops to destroy the murderer's city stands
for God punishing those who refuse to accept the invitations
which are sent. But such an interpretation would be certainly
wrong. There are simply too many passages in the scriptures
that describe God as loving and forgiving, slow to anger and
of great compassion. So we know that the violence in the parable
is not describing God. It is, however, telling us something
very important about the choices that we make.
When
we choose to refuse a personal invitation of God, there are
consequences. Those consequences can sometimes be quite violent
and destructive. In short, there is a price to pay for saying,
“no.” When over and over again you refuse the personal invitation
to stop smoking, God is not going to punish you, but you might
be facing a future that includes a violent and painful death
from cancer. When you refuse the invitation to take some action
to heal your marriage, God is not going to attack you, but
your choice might well lead to a life that is empty or to
the upheaval of divorce. When we choose to put aside to some
other day the opportunity to make contact with someone that
we love, spend more time with our children, tell the truth,
reexamine our job, or reach out in reconciliation to someone
else, God does not become angry. But we have no guarantee
that the same invitation will be offered to us tomorrow. If
such opportunities slip through our hands, we have to deal
with the consequences.
God
will not punish us, but life will. There is no more bitter
pain than the realization that things could have been different
if I would have chosen better, if I would have said yes to
the invitation that was offered to me. This is why God keeps
sending invitations, day after day, time after time. This
is why the Spirit keeps personally prompting us in ways that
we expect and in ways that surprise us.
You
know the things to which God is calling you. You can remember
all the personal invitations that have been sent to you time
after time in the past. This liturgy might be another invitation
to add to the list. Do not set those personal invitations
aside. Do not imagine that there will be time for another
chance tomorrow. Accept the invitation that has been sent.
Respond to life today.
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