Come and Enjoy the Feast
Belgic Confession • Sermon • Submitted
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And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” ’ But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14
Belgic Confession: Articles 33, 35
Message: Come and Enjoy the Feast
In the bulletin, you can find Articles 33 and 35. I won’t have us read through these because of their length, but I do encourage you to read them on your own. I also want to draw attention especially to some of the underlined texts. If someone were to ask one of us, “Why do you practice the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper? Why did God give them to the church?” A formal textbook answer from the Reformed tradition would be in the opening sentences of Article 33, “to seal his promises in us, to pledge good will and grace toward us, and to nourish and sustain our faith. God has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what God enables us to understand by the Word and what he does inwardly in our hearts, confirming in us the salvation he imparts to us.” How can we sum that up? They teach us about salvation in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our participation in them can be part of experiencing the promise of salvation, and they are communicated from Jesus by the Holy Spirit through our faith.
Through the sacraments, God does something for us, he helps us remember what has already been done and what we are looking forward to. In our understanding of that and specifically in the Lord’s Supper, there’s 2 things I want to draw our attention to in Article 35. About halfway through, there is a paragraph that starts, “In that way…” go to the underlined portion following and we find this, “This banquet is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates himself to us with all his benefits. At that table he makes us enjoy himself as much as the merits of his suffering and death, as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of his flesh, and relieves and renews them by the drinking of his blood.” I want to highlight that word “enjoy” and we’ll look more at that in our message.
The second piece I want to draw our attention to is the last line I’ve underlined, “In short, by the use of this holy sacrament we are moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbors.” What are the 2 greatest commandments from God to his people? It’s nothing less than that, and the Lord’s Supper is to move us to better practice. We’ll try to explore that as well in our message.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, when I first started thinking about this parable in preparation for this message, I thought the initial invitees were really strange. Who doesn’t like attending banquets, feasts, or parties? When you go to a wedding reception today, in just about every case, you can plan on a free meal and usually a pretty good one at that. Typically there’s at least one other person, if not many others, that you know and can socialize with. You can look around the room or the reception hall, and you see smiles and hear laughter and lots of conversation. If wedding banquets back in Jesus’ day were anything like they are today, and it seems the provisions of food and social atmosphere were similar, if not greater, than how could anyone really say no?
But thinking about it a little longer, I realized that people can often come up with plenty of reasons, at least before celebrations, that we’d rather not attend. We have to get dressed up a little or a lot more than normal. There’s a big sporting event that we’ll have to miss. Maybe we resonate with what’s said in verse 5, this event is cutting into work that really needs to get done. Maybe we’re someone who doesn’t like groups or big social settings. Sure, whatever we’ve been invited to is a big deal, but is it really that bad if we don’t show up?
Notice who these excuses focus on—it’s on ourselves, the person invited to attend. Though possible, rarely do we try to get out of something based on what and who is being celebrated. We tend to base our attendance on whether or not it will be more enjoyable or enjoyable enough compared to our other options.
For believers, the general themes we take from our reading in Matthew 22 aren’t all that difficult to interpret. “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.” The king sends servants out once to tell the invited people to come, but they refused. He sends out some more, and they are to explain how fully ready everything is—the food is on the table, come! They are not only ignored, but seized, mistreated, and killed. What is the most complete expression of stopping someone who is bothering you? That’s it.
Again, we’re talking about the kingdom of heaven, about salvation. It’s possible that Jesus is telling this audience about the nation of Israel or in general about previous generations—they had been invited. God had sent servants—leaders, prophets, priests, judges, kings. There had been no shortage of warnings and invitations to come and return to him, and yet repeatedly, they turned away from him and his commands. “We’ve got better stuff to do,” and “they paid no attention.”
The testimony of the Old Testament is a people who focused on themselves, their wants, their pleasures, not their covenant God or his calling for their lives. They sought other gods and religions because it seemed good to them. They also failed to care for the poor and the oppressed. In their selfishness, they became an unjust society. How does the king deal with that in the parable? Verse 7, “He was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” Israel and Judah were taken captive and their city walls and temple were broken down.
Yet, the same wedding banquet is still on. The story, the covenant of salvation continues. Even though Israel, the Jews had received the message, they were God’s special people, and many put it aside, God is still looking for guests for his banquet, for eternal life with him. Servants are sent out a third time, “‘Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad.” The call of the gospel to Gentiles and to generations of the church going out into all the world. The list of invited people is opened, “anyone you find…good and bad.” And we’ll pull in the final part of the story here, too. Those who were brought in must be wearing wedding clothes. The commentators I regularly use all pointed to these clothes being the righteousness of Jesus.
“For many are invited, but few are chosen.” Many hear the call of the gospel, they hear about the Christian God and about Jesus and the cross. They get the invitation, but they never respond, or they have a false response, they don’t accept the wedding clothes. Some, many continue to want nothing to do with the gospel in our world today—that is true. Some say they have believed, and they participate in Christian things, but they may not actually be in. They don’t take what is offered to them in full in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
What the righteousness of Christ is that knowledge and assurance that Jesus lived the perfect life, and he offers that to us. To put on the righteousness of Christ is not all about that we act morally good and perfect, and because I don’t do too many bad things, I must have that. No, it is to believe and to find in him our all in all. Let it be clear though that there are many who suffer the same consequence of not being allowed into this banquet, into the redeemed kingdom of God. One commentator pointed to the beautiful picture we find in Revelation 7 of a great multitude in white robes, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” By receiving Jesus, that is what we must do and what we put our trust in.
It is with hope that we look not only to the future kingdom, to this banquet when Christ gathers the chosen to himself, but we have a foretaste now, even in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or communion. If we can turn again to that middle section of Article 35, we find this proclamation, “At that table he [that is, Christ] makes us enjoy himself as much as the merits of his suffering and death, as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of his flesh, and relieves and renews them by the drinking of his blood.”
What is our status in our mortal life? We are poor and desolate, things seem bleak, we are weak. Even if we are people of faith, there may be times when God feels distant, when we feel distracted, when we feel alone. But by participating in the eating of the bread and drinking of the wine, and not just doing those things like we might eat any meal or snack, but meditating on what Jesus went through and accomplished, there is real hope. With faith, we can actually be nourished, strengthened, comforted, relieved, and renewed by the Holy Spirit. We have God’s word as a constant teaching and convicting and encouraging lamp in our lives. Yet God proclaims, when we do this in remembrance of his Son, we can be assured of what he did for us.
Having been invited to the wedding banquet in Jesus’ parable, all these people came, and they got these clothes, and they got to dine and socialize right there alongside the king’s family. If it were a real-life banquet, we’d have to wonder, what happened next? Do they go back to the streets? Are the king and his son impacted in such a way that policies change? Is there a renewed support for this monarchy? The good news is that what the parable points to is a feast and a community that has no end. And when we consider what takes place in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, there is no end to the overflowing grace of Jesus Christ for true believers through his death.
So, we can enjoy Jesus when we eat the bread and drink of the vine. We’re not hoping for him to do something; he’s already done it. And when he returns, we will experience the impact of his merits in full. But we don’t have to wait to rejoice, we can have that now. We celebrate this together, in community, and we do hope that those we participate with in our sanctuaries here and around the world are joined with us in eternity.
We enjoy it for the moments we participate, but the impact, the participation is not finished when the service ends. “By this…we are moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbors.” Having received bread and juice, we aren’t to walk away and tell God, “Thanks again, see ya next time.” No. To go back to the beginning of my message, it’s self-centered thinking that can tangle us up with excuses to avoid celebrations that we have been invited to. So too, it was selfishness manifested in disregard for God and neighbor that led Israel away, and the devil continues to use it to lead people away, from God’s great banquet feast. Yet for those who are chosen, for those who put on the wedding clothes, again the righteousness of Jesus, we can’t help but be drawn into greater love. The sacrifice, the atonement, the victory is still there, it’s still for us who believe! God has not ripped the clothes from our hands. He has not run out of his blood for our souls. He loves us, and in turn we must respond with love.
Next time you participate in communion, I encourage you to spend just a moment and to look around. To see those who are participating and who before and, in this action, should be professing faith in Jesus. As you do so, to remember how in the parable both good and bad were welcomed to the banquet. It was only the king who could turn away. But then as you remember what this is really about, eating the body, drinking the blood of Jesus, we meditate on what he has done for you, he has done it for many others who are also chosen. You are called to love them, to love others, as a true expression of thanks. Christ’s righteousness should be impacting you to good deeds. Let us never forget what he has done, and let us never give up on doing good. Amen.