I thought it was kind of ironic and funny that our stewardship season starts with this reading in Exodus where the first priest of Israel, Aaron, goes through the assembly and asks all the people for their gold rings to be given for worship! And you may have in mind the scene from the movie “The Ten commandments” where we see all the Israelites rushing to offer not only their rings but also bracelets, necklaces and all their precious belongings they have been brought with them from Egypt. Well, this is not what’s going to happen today! Stewardship season is certainly this season where we talk about money, and the Bible has a lot to say about money, Stewardship season is also a time where we also invite your gifts but it’s mainly a time where we want to think about how we want to use our money, what is our purpose as a church, what is our mission in this community. If anything, the story known as the “Golden Calf” could be used as another cautionary tale, one teaching us that it is not enough to be generous with our money if we only end up with shiny things that lead us to turn away from God. Certainly it’s not always in the wealthiest sanctuaries where we find the most faithfulness. Even if beauty can enhance our worship, the church is not meant to be a museum! Rather the Church as well as any Temple should be treated as the house of the living God, filled with people who grow in the service of God and love of neighbors. This is what the Israelites will learn the hard way throughout their journey to the promised land and then well into the time of their Kings. God didn’t beg for a Temple, and the Temple won’t stand when the people start chasing their own interests rather than God’s commandments.
So how are we to think about stewardship, knowing it’s about pledge cards and offering plates – but also and mainly about the meaning of our gifts?
This year the Episcopal Church invites us to reflect and pray on the theme of “Plenty Good Room”, a line from a traditional Afro American spiritual that we will have many occasions to listen to and to sing during this season. The lyrics are inspired from Jesus’s famous last discourse (John 14:2-3), when he assures his disciples that, although he has to leave them on earth for the time being, he is going to prepare for them a place in his Kingdom. This is an image we see many, many times in the Gospels and even before that in the Hebrew Scriptures where the prophets talk about how God is inviting us to God’s house and even more specifically to God’s table. This is quite evidently the same image we have in this passage from Matthew’s that we have just heard. God is compared to a King throwing a wedding party for his son and he sends his servants to call everyone to attend. For those of us who like to explore the Bible, it may certainly remind us of the Proverbs 1:20 “Out in the open wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the public square” and also Isaiah 25:6 “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the finest of wines.” And when people listened to Jesus, they immediately knew what it was about.
God’s invitation to all was certainly one of Jesus’s core teaching based on the Hebrew Scriptures. If you remember last week, we talked about the parable of the Wicked Tenants and how it was built upon God’s generous planting of a vineyard for the benefit of all people, and we talked also about that when we studied Genesis: God created a good world for everyone to enjoy. For this reason, it is very wrong to teach that there is a limited number of seats at God’s table, like when some say there will be only 144 000 elected based on a false interpretation of the Book of Revelation. It is also wrong to teach that God favors certain people, the wealthy, the educated or even the hard working and the well behaved. In fact, if God were to show any preference at all, that would have to be for the poor, for the weak and also for the sinners and those who have lost their way. Jesus taught us God’s love by keeping on reaching out to the less fortunate and those who were despised by the good religious ones. If anything, actually, Jesus taught respectable people to not rely too much on their status for the advantages it could give them in the kingdom of God.
Now this is where we go back to today’s parable, because the thing is as much as we want to focus on the good news, it would be naive to ignore the stern warning contained in Jesus’s teaching as well, especially in the parables he taught at the end of his ministry, when the time was getting short and the religious leaders’ assassination plot was closing in on him. As much as Jesus insists that all people are welcome in God’s kingdom, he also wants to make sure people know the cost of rejecting the invitation. We cannot miss the violence of certain of Jesus’s stories and if it scares us, well that’s because they are meant to be scary! Now we also need to learn how to listen to a parable. For example, in today’s passage, Jesus does not say that God is like the King in every aspect, otherwise he wouldn’t put in the effort of telling a story, he would just say it plainly. What he does though is that he invites people to reflect on who God is so they can question their own behavior. Often Jesus starts his parables saying: “What do you think?”, and indeed if we think about our story, a king inviting people to his Son’s wedding banquet certainly deserves an answer! Actually, people would be fools to refuse such an honor and joyful occasion, and that would be a terrible offense to reject and kill the messengers inviting them to such a party. And yet, Jesus wants us to understand: Isn’t it what people do, and wouldn’t God be right to be angry and entitled to get his revenge? And also: How stupid it would be to refuse to come to the King’s Table for motives as futile as business as usual? Jesus’s story cuts to the heart because we know it’s true. Some people have no interest in coming to church, learning about God, growing in their faith, receiving the Eucharist This past week I even read some comments on line from people, including a former priest, saying that they weren’t interested in eternal life. They assumed it would be too long and too boring, and they said that when they die, they hope that nothingness will be all there is.
And so, for one, this is very sad. This is sad for God, this is sad for God’s servants and this is sad for those who reject the invitation. Most people don’t understand what they would lose if they don’t receive the Gospel, if they don’t want to say yes to God. Most people reject God just because they don’t know God, but it is our job to make God known and loved and this is actually the whole purpose of our churches! We are to be the servants carrying the invitation, not only to the well to do and the inside people, but also calling out to those on the streets, on the outside, our friends and neighbors and even people we don’t like that much.
Jesus’s parable does not end with the King’s revenge for those who don’t listen, rather it continues with the call of all’s people. And that’s the first thing we need to be reminded during Stewardship season: Everything we bring to the church has to be used for the spreading of the Gospel. This is our mission, this is the main reason why we are here.
Secondly, there is in the story also a call for us, the ones invited, the one who have showed up, to take a good look at ourselves. Jesus says there is this man who’s there but he does not wear the wedding garment and he is thrown out of the feast. Again, the cruelty of the King Jesus describes does not mean that God is like the king, rather Jesus wants us to think again: If you were a beggar on the street, and that’s what you all are, and yet you had the unbelievable chance to be invited to this royal wedding, what do you think the King could do if he’d see that you didn’t even bother to make yourself presentable? And this is the risk we’re taking by becoming too comfortable at God’s table. Our invitation is to participate, to be involved, to be actors, it’s not an invitation to juts hang out or be spectators. In fact, Jesus’s listeners would have know what the garment was about: Not some superficial fashion statement, but rather the clothing in virtues we receive from God and this is again a reference to Isaiah (61:10):
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
And so, during Stewardship season, this is the question we have to ask ourselves: How do we honor our host, how do we honor the invitation we have received, how do we give back to God? Is it really enough to just show up? How do we want to get involved in the life of the Kingdom? Yes, we’re going to talk about money, because our church like any household needs money to function and also because money makes things real, don’t when we say “Put your money where your mouth is”? Yet we also know that there are plenty of people who give out money to charities without being willing to change their behaviors! If we truly want to answer God’s invitation with our hearts and with our lives, we have to think about how we bring our gifts, talents, our experience, and if we don’t think we have any we can still bring our good will! If we don’t know we can learn, if we’re scared we still can try! We are now studying this book by Mittelberg and he says something that is kind of shocking. He says he has heard Christians who have been going to church all their life saying that they didn’t know they were supposed to answer God’s invitation, to ask Jesus to come into their lives and to make changes in their lives, to offer themselves back to God in the same way God offers himself to us in Jesus-Christ! And yet, we also know it is easy to forget when we go about our business or when church becomes business as usual, and as Jesus showed us it is also true for religious leaders and all those serving in the Temple.
Please, let’s take the time to consider how we want to show up to the king’s table.