You can get busy and sing “Lord, Lord” while swaying to the strains of “Kumbaya”…but that doesn’t get you into the marriage feast. You can run around piling up good works faster than celebrities change spouses…but that doesn’t get you into the feast either.
It’s the Bridegroom who gets you in. The crucial Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. Crucial. Which means…there is a cross to bear, there is time that must pass before the Easter feast…before the Bridegroom’s big day. And foolish are the bridesmaids…foolish are we…who underestimate the weight of that cross…who misjudge the length of the waiting.
Sermons
So…to change the metaphor…Jesus Christ is like a skydiving instructor who hands us the parachute, tells us to hang on to it, and then tosses us out the door of the plane! “If you hold to My teaching…you will be free.” Sure, we can, in freedom, toss aside that chute. No one needs a parachute to go skydiving, if…you don’t plan to do it a second time. But for those who hold tight to that chute, oh, they speak of a freedom unlike any other. “Lord, keep us…captive…in Your Word.”
Jesus’ commentary on the Law sounds so appealingly simple…and yet it is complicated. It’s great that Jesus quotes from Leviticus and Deuteronomy to establish the greatest commandment…but that doesn’t exactly clear things up. What is our Christian relationship to the Law of the Old Testament? Are we not free from the Law by the death of Jesus on the cross? Isn’t that what St. Paul is always going on and on about? Romans 10: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
Or is it true, as many Christians teach, that we still have to obey the Law. “Yes, Jesus is your Savior, but now you have to make Him your Lord!” And so, what Christ has set us free from, the Church slips in by the back door? And if so, what parts of the Law do we have to obey? The bits about food? The laws about crime and punishment? Or the ones that really get pushed a lot these days: laws about money? Or just the 10 Commandments?
There are, after all, all kinds of commandments. In fact, the rabbinic tradition numbers 613 of them! And what does all that Law say about God? I read a critic’s snarky comment just this week. He asked, “What sort of God can say love your neighbor and at the same time command that anyone who picks up sticks on the Sabbath be executed?” And what about the Gospel? All that Jesus business? The cross, grace, forgiveness, love? I mean, I’ve never seen anyone hold up a sign at a football game with the reference “Matthew 22:37-39” written on it!
Growing up in Iowa, we had a saying—although I suspect it’s a Midwestern kind of saying—“If you’re gonna wrestle with a hog, you should expect to get dirty.” You don’t stay clean because you wrestle the hog better than the hog can wrestle you. You stay clean by staying clean away from the hog! And yet…when you live on a hog farm, there are days when it is important that those hogs get wrestled—from weaning the little ones to sorting and loading the big ones for market, to all sorts of chores in between—ya just gotta get in there and wrestle those hogs, regardless of how long it takes to clean up afterwards.
So…is it the menu? Or is it the one who invites? The answer, for good and for ill, is “yes.” In this parable the dinner is a reflection of the King who has set the table. And the King’s nature is revealed in the sort of feast he has set. To accept the one is to accept the other. To reject the one is to reject the other.