GQ for Christians

There is a story that is told of a new family that moved into town and a little country church that decided to reach out to that family. When some of the members of the church arrived on the family’s doorstep, they were surprised to find that the family had twelve children and were very poor, just getting barely getting by. The church members introduced themselves and invited the family to worship services on Sunday. Considering the family’s circumstances, the church members got together and prepared a package they thought might help the family.  They delivered the package to the family and said, "We want you to know that you and your entire family are welcome at our church anytime. We have bought you these gifts and we want you to feel comfortable and at ease in our congregation. We hope you can use these gifts."  After the church members left, the family opened the package to find fourteen suits of clothing…beautiful clothes for every member of the family.  Sunday came and the congregation waited for the family… and they waited. The family never showed up. Wondering what could possibly have happened, the members of the church went to the family’s home and found the family just getting back to their house… all dressed in their new clothes. ”We don’t mean to be nosey but we would like to know what happened,” one of the church members said.  “We had hoped to see you this morning in church.” At that, the father of the new family spoke up. He said, “We really did appreciate your invitation and we got up this morning intending to come to your church. But after we showered and dressed, we all looked so good that we decided to go to the Episcopal Church instead.”

            Eloise, maybe that’s what happened to all the people we invited to worship two Sundays ago!   It may be a funny story, but the truth is that invitations are given to many people to come to church but so few people respond. It's frustrating.  Many of you have reached out to neighbors or friends, asking them to come to church and you know all too well the disappointment of how few respond.  This is an issue that our Outreach Committee has struggled with for years.   But we know that a person’s refusal of the invitation to come is not unusual. Not only did the privileged guests refuse to come to God’s wedding banquet in today’s text, but the book of Revelation (chapter 22) also that tells us that “the Spirit and the Bride… and in this case, the bride is the church… the Spirit and the Bride say “come,” but that not all who are given the invitation come.   Fortunately, our God does not stop with that first invitation… or even the second one. The story continues.

Most of us love the story of God’s wedding banquet… for it tells of a God who invites ordinary people to come to the wedding feast after those privileged persons who were first invited to the banquet failed to show up.  Most of us can grasp the concept of a God whose love is so deep and so inclusive that everyone would be invited to sit at his table.  Even though God’s first invitation may have been to the Jews, the New Testament makes it very clear that the Gentiles are included in the invitation… and the book of Revelation tells us that all peoples and nations will gather around the throne of the Lamb.

But, back to our story today: We love to put ourselves into the role of those unsuspecting bystanders who, on their way to Wal-Mart or HEB on a Saturday afternoon, get caught up in this dragnet of humanity. What a joy it is to know that we could… and are… invited into God’s own home… to this wonderful feast that has been prepared!  It’s an invitation that I issue each time we come to the Table here.   What is a little less comfortable to us is the thought that we could go from the high of being in the crowd that appears in God’s great banquet hall to share this feast… to the definite low of being bound and thrown into the “outer darkness.” That is why Luke’s version of the wedding feast is quoted much more often than Matthew’s version… because it is the one with the “happy ending.”

For most of us, our sympathy lies with the poor guy who was minding his own business that day, but happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  He is unwittingly swept up into this glorious event… and he comes to the feast… which seems to be what God desires… and then he is thrown out for not wearing the right clothes.  What’s with that?   God seems to be imposing a double standard here… first, opening the doors up to everyone… then, throwing out those who don’t meet his standards… those who aren’t dressed like the men on the pages of the men’s fashion magazine GQ, for example.  And God doesn’t just say, “Go back to what you were doing before my people invited you here.”  This guy gets thrown into hell itself!  Is this our God… a God of love and mercy… a God who welcomes us home with open arms… as the father in the story of the Prodigal Son?  Seemingly not.  Who is this God?   And what did this guy do that was so bad?

What is wonderful about the fashion magazine GQ… and now the website devoted to men’s fashion… is that it will tell you exactly what to wear… what stores to shop in… the best menswear designers… how to buy a suit… and how to build a professional wardrobe.  It will give you twenty-five style tips… secrets… and shortcuts guaranteed to improve your style. And, on top of all that, it will answer your most pressing sartorial questions.  What more could you ask for?   Perhaps this man’s problem was that the magazine GQ and the worldwide web did not exist in his day… but I don’t think so.   You know, beyond a very cryptic, “many are called, but few are chosen,” Jesus actually does not explain this parable. There are, however, a couple of different ways that we can look at this parable if we draw in what we know of Jewish traditions and what we read in other parts of the Bible.

First century Jewish wedding customs held that the father of the groom was in charge of the event and bore all the expense associated with the wedding and reception. In case of royalty or the very wealthy,  this often included providing a specially-made garment to be worn over a guest’s regular clothing. This wedding garment was presented to the guest upon arrival and put on immediately. Wearing it wasn’t mandatory, but it was considered a great insult to the father of the groom if it was refused and refusal could get a guest ejected from the festivities. In case of large gatherings, it also served as identification to discourage uninvited guests from crashing the party.   If God is the father of the groom in this story and responsible for the event and the invitations that are issued, then this wedding garment is something that God confers upon us when we come to him.

There are many places in both the Old and New Testaments that refer to the righteousness of God as clothing.  Isaiah described our righteousness as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) and God’s righteousness as “garments of salvation” or “robes of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10) that is like clothing given us at a wedding.  In Revelation, (chapter 19) the church is seen prepared as a bride clothed in white linen, again representing righteousness. In both cases, the righteousness symbolized by the clothing is given to us by God… and not something we previously owned or earned through our own merit.  Galatians (Galatians 3:27) tells us that all who are baptized into Christ are then clothed with Christ for, as we read in Second Corinthians (chapter 5, verse 21) God made Him who had no sin to become sin for us, that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. The fact that this one guest is thrown out may have more to do with his refusal to wear the robe he was given… symbolizing a rejection of God’s gift… than being blindsided for simply showing up.

But that might not be the only way of looking at this passage.  Keith Wagner, in his article “Is Your Faith on the Sidelines?,” tells the story of officiating at a wedding in Ohio on the day of the Ohio State–Michigan football game.  In Ohio, that is one of the major sporting events of the year… equivalent, I am sure, to the Texas–OSU game that was played yesterday. This particular wedding started about thirty minutes after the start of the game. All of the groomsmen were gathered around a television set in the lounge watching the game and, unfortunately, Keith had to interrupt them and hurry them into the sanctuary for the ceremony. There were a large number of people at this wedding and, during the ceremony, Keith says that he did not notice a man in the congregation with a device in his ear. He learned later that the man was listening to the game during the entire wedding ceremony, using a tiny earphone that was attached to a small radio.  That man may have been in the sanctuary during this sacred ceremony, but was he truly present?   Was his heart in the right place?

When the Prophet Samuel goes to look for the next king of Israel, God cautions him not to judge the person he is looking at on his outward appearance.  “I have rejected him,” God says, “for the Lord does not see as mortals see.  They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  Perhaps the reason that this man was thrown into the outer darkness had more to do with the fact that his heart was in the wrong place… than that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We might be sitting in our pews on Sunday morning, but that does not necessarily mean that our hearts… minds… and souls are engaged in the worship of God.  We may be going through the motions without any commitment to the process.  God is the only one who can judge the man at the wedding banquet, for God is the only one who knows why the man is really there and whether he has genuinely accepted the invitation to share God’s feast.  Romans (Romans 13:14) tells us that, as people who have given our lives to Christ, we are to clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ rather than to stay with our own sinful nature.  If we do that, then our clothing will be acceptable to God our Father and we will be welcomed at the wedding banquet.  After all, it is God himself who has given us this clothing to wear… and it is God’s gift of Jesus Christ that makes us righteous in his eyes.

What clothing are you wearing today?   Would that clothing be acceptable at God’s wedding banquet?   GQ for Christians says that there is no reason… none at all… for us to reject God’s gracious invitation to come to the wedding feast and enjoy all the good things that God offers. The only reason that we might be rejected is that we have not truly accepted the gift that God has given us in the person of Jesus Christ and clothed ourselves in the righteousness that is given to us through the boundless grace of God. To reject God’s gift is to choose death… and to reject God’s offer of grace is to reject God’s only provision for eternal life.  So, I say to you as Joshua said to the children of Israel, “Choose this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."   If we accept God’s wonderful gift of life in Christ, then, when the elders ask, as they do in Revelation 7, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?"… we will hear the answer, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.  They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  Then, we will know the “Ten Commandments of Style” for the God’s wedding banquet without ever visiting GQ’s website… and every day, we will live in such a way that we are welcomed into God’s home.  Amen.

Matthew 22:1-14