Take, Eat, Be Filled With God's Grace.

Sermon 9OCT11

"Take, Eat, be filled with God's Grace."

Matthew 22:1-14

The symbol or image of the "heavenly banquet" is found in both the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament it seems to be talking about some future bliss when God's Kingdom would be revealed and realized, but when we get to the New Testament it's more of what we would call "realized eschatology". That has to do with somehow the future being present to us, and this is what Jesus is presenting to us in today's parable about the wedding banquet that's been prepared. There are those who find excuses, don't they, not to come. Benjamin Franklin once observed that those who are good at excuses are usually good for nothing else. So, these people were not worthy according to Jesus to come to the wedding banquet because they had refused the invitation, they had refused to come. So it's a judgement, as the parables we've heard the last few weeks have been, against the religious establishment of Jesus' day who refuse to receive the Christ; they refuse to come to the banquet. We find now the invitation is extended to the good and the bad by grace, it's a free gift. "You! Come and join in the wedding banquet". This is a parable of justice, but also a parable of grace. 

There was a gourmand who had heard through the gourmet food "grape vine" that there was being served in a New York City restaurant a dish that he had been wanting very badly to try. The problem was that he lived in France, but this wasn't going to stop him from getting to this wonderful dish that he had been longing to try. So, he called the airport to book a flight, but there were no flights. All the flights to New York were full. Even this couldn't stop him though; he arranged flight on a private jet and scheduled a driver to meet him at the airport in New York. So he boards his chartered jet, flies to New York, meets the driver who drops him off right in front of the restaurant, he rushes from the car to the door and pulls on the door. The door won't open! He can see people inside dining and says to himself "I guess they've served their last meal of the day. I've missed out". So he left very cast down, crying because he wasn't going to get to try this wonderful dish that he had gone to so much trouble to locate. The problem is he didn't see that on the door was a sign that read "Please Push". That's how we are so often with God's Grace, the free gift that he offers us. Somehow we find it unbelievable, it's beyond our imagination. Somehow we refuse the invitation that is clearly before us, "Please Push, come on in!" God's Grace is freely extended to us, but somehow we have a way of refusing it and we miss out on the feast. 

There was a missionary in Japan during the second world war who had been captured and was being marched to a new prison. As he went along, being elderly, he realized his mission in Japan was almost over anyway and he begged the guard who was marching along beside him to "Please let me fall into the ditch and die in peace". The guard says "MARCH ON!" Going a ways further he asks again to be allowed to fall by the side of the path to die, and again the guard says "MARCH!" Again a third time he pleads with the guard. This time the guard leans over to him and tells him, "We are almost to my grandmothers house, MARCH ON!" The missionary was quite perplexed by this and wondering what was going on here. When they neared the grandmothers house they stopped to take a break and the guard leaves and comes back with a hot potato I his hand. He reaches out and pushes it toward the missionary and says "Take, Eat". Then the guard says again "MARCH ON!" You may not think of a hot potato being a banquet or anything like that, but when I heard this legend I thought of the movie "Dr. Shavargo" and how on the train the peasants were boiling potatoes, after the movie I went home and had a baked potato because it sounded so good. The point being that the Grace that God puts before us in the time of our need may not seem like a "future heavenly banquet" or anything quite like that at all, but God's Grace is always available to us. We just have to reach out and accept it. Take, Eat, be filled with God's Grace.

There is a legend about a fisherman whose name was Aaron. He lived on a river, and labored very hard at his fishing. He was heading home one day really worn out, but Aaron was a dreamer. He dreamed about being wealthy. As he was walking along the way he stumbled upon a leather pouch that was kicked up by his foot, so he reached down picked it up and opened it. It appeared to be full of pebbles. He begins to daydream while casting these "pebbles" into the river. He said to himself "If I were rich my wife and I could have a big house", and he cast another stone. "If we were rich we could have servants", and cast another stone. "If we were rich we could dine sumptuously everyday on wonderful rich foods and vintage wine. We could live so well IF I were ONLY rich". He reaches into the pouch and pulls out the last stone as the sun comes out from behind a cloud and casts a sparkle out of the "pebble" and he realizes he has a valuable gemstone in his hand. In the bag were all these valuable gems which could have made him wealthy, but he's cast them into the river! How often in our dreams of wealth or success or whatever it is do we miss the fact that God's Grace is there for our needs? It's God's Grace that can fulfill us and make us joyous in the faith that we have. 

There was a rather questionable "mystic" that lived in Oregon who got deported and left behind 90 Rolls Royces. That's a lot isn't it? He could probably compete with Jay Leno! He did leave one interesting saying: "Before, we are wise. After, we are wise. In between, we are otherwise". I think he had to mean that before we approach some day or some event in our lives we are rehearsing what we're going to do or say that day or at that event. Then we get to the event and do "otherwise". After the event is over we can be wise about it again, and think about what we could have said or done. The fact is though we didn't do it! That "in between" time is a problem time, isn't it? 

Let me get a little personal. We had a cousin's gathering Saturday at our home. We decided we ought to get together before the next funeral, so we did. My family, by the way, is very religious; on one side Methodist and on the other side Baptist and they're there every time the Church doors are open, they're very observant of their faith. There were a couple of the cousins there I was a little concerned about in this regard. One of the cousins had married the son of a General from a Latin American country and had gone off and lived a pretty full life possession wise and so on. I performed the wedding between their daughter and new son-in-law in Dallas, before then they were in California getting their PHD's in mathematics when they asked me to perform the ceremony. I asked them to go to a Church there in California to get pre-marital counseling and so forth and see what happens. Well, they chose to go to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. They LOVED it! Anyway, he called me up a few years ago to tell me he was going into seminary to become an Episcopal Priest. He's a Deacon right now, and in January I believe he'll be ordained a Priest. Maurice and Barbara (his father and mother in law) are both just confused by all this, they don't understand what's going on. 

The other cousin who was there who I had been worried about was Jay. He had never been in the habit of going to Church, although his parents were going all the time. But this last Saturday he started talking to me about the Bible and it caught me off guard, I was wondering what was going on. He told me he had been reading a lot (about 27 books about religion, faith, and the Bible), and I told him how wonderful I thought that was. I asked him what had happened, and he told me that he had been without a job, he was in-between and didn't have anything else to do... "So I read the Bible and found out there were some wonderful things in there!" Then he started reading other books and he's going to a Bible study. WONDERFUL! In between he did something with the in between and hopefully Maurice and Barbara will find themselves in the in between and discover their faith as well. So, in the beginning we're wise. In the end we're wise. In between so often we're other wise.