Parable of the Marriage Feast

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.  And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘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.”‘ But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ 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.

But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

I sometimes refer to flannel graph Jesus. This is the Jesus who is introduced to children in Sunday School. On a board with a scenic backdrop flannel-graph Jesus is stuck into various scenes where he is portrayed as being fond of sheep and strolls in the countryside with close friends. When he stops, the children crawl up on his lap. He is kind to everyone. This Jesus is soft and a kind of fuzzy.

I confess, this is mostly just an impression left on me from my irregular Sunday School attendance. On Sunday’s, I mostly recall watching cartoons and westerns in my parents bed room as they smoked and read the Sunday paper. I am curious, if I had become a regular attender would I have eventually been introduced to flannel graph images with the fuzz all wore off Jesus and his friends with the teacher reading;

If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.

A pastor recently told me with the utmost confidence that he no longer had any fear and trembling as he thought of God and how his kingdom was playing out. Wow! (I was a bit jealous.) I think I knew where he was coming from and I appreciated his view because it was born of his understanding of God’s grace and sovereignty. In retrospect, I wish that we would have worked a bit harder at a common understanding of fear and trembling. That may have helped because I believe I am still working my salvation out with this duo as a part of my thought process.

This is extremely hard ground to plough and the implement is destined to hit some really hard clods in the process but here I go. I fear for us who believe we are Christians yet who have not lost our lives and (if I understand Jesus) will consequently cost us our lives. I tremble for those of us who have said “yes” to a salvation-only gospel which we believe has secured our life eternal yet has inconvenienced us very little in this temporal one. This, to me, is a byproduct of the flannel graph-gospel. It is “good news” only because denying ourselves is not required. In this gospel Jesus gets his flannel shredded and ours goes unscathed.

I believe that today’s passage was spoken (and is being spoken) by the Jesus who had real skin in the game who is endeavoring, as he always is, to rescue us from the lies we have ingested about the Father and his kingdom. In the grand scheme of things I do not believe there will turn out to be any greater delusion than thinking we are Christians when in fact, we only assented to follow Jesus if we could save our furry little hides in this life.

No, I don’t believe this parable was spoken by the flannel graph Jesus that fills churches by telling them that it is God’s will that they all be healthy wealthy and wise. This gospel could never have been sold to the early church. The life and teaching of the apostles would have protected the flock from a gospel where no cross need be carried.

If my plow just hit your clod please bear with me. I’m not a professional farmer. The path of my plow is being imperfectly made as I try and guide it by viewing my contemporary world through the lens of the kingdom of God that I saw presented in the the New Testament. This kingdom gospel, as best as I can understand it, had Jesus as Savior and Lord. The lordship aspect seemed indispensable to the fuller kingdom gospel that the real Jesus came preaching.

Many preach around Lordship as it seems to inevitably involve human effort and consequently leads to works which is anethema to grace. I am aware that there are great cans of worms opened as intentionality and obedience are considered. A salvation-only gospel is much cleaner and so much less offensive. If my sole objective were to attract numbers and dollars it would be a no brainer as to which gospel I would choose.

However, as I continue to work out my salvation with some fear and trembling [which loosely translated means an absence of certainty, which also means moving forward by faith with the ever-changing (hopefully increasing) light I am given to walk in], I am going to try and keep my eyes on the Author and Perfecter of this faith I’ve been entrusted with. I am going to acknowledge that my furrows are not all in straight lines behind me nor are they likely to become so. That is why I am going to keep my plow relationally hitched to those who disagree or see things differently than I do.  They especially, I believe, are key to my mystery laden kingdom-journey. I believe relationally yoked together our furrow will be straighter. 

Father, would you open our hearts afresh to the full-gospel, the one that set captives free. Let our kingdom conversation grow and may we generate common understanding of this world without end. Amen.