What Part of Yes Don’t You Understand?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
October 9, 2005

What Part of Yes Don’t You Understand?
Matthew 22:1-14
Philippians 4:1-9

The invitation was simple: Come to dinner.
But this was no ordinary dinner,
no pot of spaghetti to be shared with friends
around a table on a Sunday afternoon.
No: this was a wedding banquet,
a wedding banquet given by a king,
a wedding banquet given by a king in honor of his son.
Who could decline such an invitation?
Who would even think about saying no?
But yet, the excuses flowed in:
all the guests, all those the king personally invited,
declined for one reason or another.

Matthew tells us that some of the invited guests
“made light” of the invitation.
Anything was more important,
everything was more important.
Other guests were so intent on not accepting
that they killed the servants sent to fetch them!

You can understand why the king might have been a bit upset.
He decided to start all over;
But the second time, he told his servants
to go out and invite anyone, everyone.
The guest’s position in society didn’t matter,
who he or she was, where the guest lived,
Nothing mattered: everyone was invited.

Soon the hall was filled with guests.
The king walked through the teeming crowd,
happy that so many had come.
But then he noticed a guest who stood out,
stood out because of the way he looked.
The king approached the guest,and demanded,
“how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”
In other words, “why are you not dressed for the occasion?
You accepted my invitation, but you did not
think about how you should clothe yourself
in my presence and in my house.”
The guest was stunned, speechless.
He stared at the king, fumbling for response.
But it was too late: a group of the king’s servants
hustled the guest through the crowded room,
out to the back door and there
he was unceremoniously thrown out into the darkness.

What a story!
What are we to make of it? What should we do with it?
Jesus taught through parables
and he expects us to work at understanding,
so let’s do that and see what we can pull from this text.
This is one of his more difficult parables,
with lessons on different levels.

First of course, is the issue of the king’s invitation.
The king called out a selected group of people
but they all turned a deaf ear to his voice.
They didn’t say “no”; they simply said,
“I cannot accept your invitation now."
They provided an assortment of excuses,
but they all said in effect the same thing:
“I am too busy.
I would love to, but don’t you know,
that’s just when I had something else
on my calendar.”

Now, before we spend too much time pondering
who these guests were
and how they could all behave that way,
Jesus wants each of us to hold a mirror in front of ourselves
and see our own reflections,
because Jesus is talking about you and me.
God invites us again and again
to participate in the fullness of life that is Jesus Christ,
but what do we do with God’s invitations:
We say yes from time to time,
but most of the time we decline the invitation.
We don’t think we are saying “no”,
any more than the guests in the parable;
we just think we are saying,
“Now is such an impossible time.
I am so busy.”

There isn’t one among us who isn’t a busy person,
who doesn’t wish for an extra hour or two every day,
who doesn’t feel like he or she has too much to do.
And there isn’t one among us who hasn’t used our busy-ness
to turn from God’s call, God’s invitation.

Jesus is teaching us here about priorities.
about where our focus should be.
Our focus should always be on God,
on God’s will, on responding to God’s call, God’s invitation.
This is no ordinary invitation:
This is God’s invitation;
an invitation to nothing less than new life
in Jesus Christ,
through Jesus Christ.
How can we possibly plead
that we have other more important things
that we need to attend to?

Jesus teaches us again and again that our focus is often
on the wrong things in life.
That we are busy because we are focused on money matters
or buying things for the house,
to trying to improve our social status among our friends.
We think we do these things because they will make us happier;
the more things we have, the happier we will be.
But what did Jesus have?
What did the disciples have?
What did Paul have?

There was a fascinating article in the paper the other day
about how researchers are trying to measure happiness.
In this country we have equated happiness with prosperity:
having a good job and money in the bank.
Forty years ago a measurement of success was having a garage.
Twenty years ago, it was having a two-car garage;
Now it is having a three-car garage.
What Jesus wants us to learn is that we have our priorities wrong.

The second lesson that Jesus hopes we will learn from the parable
is that we have to do more than just show up,
just accept the invitation.
There is more to faithfulness and discipleship
than just saying yes.
The guest at the wedding banquet said yes,
but the question the king could well have asked him,
was “what part of yes don’t you understand?”

When we say yes, expectations come with our response.
When we accept the invitation,
like the guest at the banquest,
we are to robe ourselves appropriately;
Robe ourselves how?
In righteousness,
in mercy, in goodness,
in kindness, in charity.

All too often, when we do respond to God’s invitation,
we come to him wearing the robes we always wear:
the robes of selfishness,
of judgment,
of contempt,
of arrogance,
of indifference.
of pettiness, of worry, of apathy.
When we say yes, we must change,
shed our old robes, and put on the new robe of Christ.
When Paul writes “stand firm in the Lord in this way”
he is referring to the way of righteousness,
that we are to be robed in Christ, robed in righteousness.
If we are not robed properly, then
even if we accept the invitation,
we are not going to be a welcome guest.
We too will be hustled out the back
and tossed out the door.

Righteousness begins with our focus on the needs of others,
the concerns of others,
the feelings of others

Last Sunday following worship we heard about just one way
in which we can act in righteousness:
Candace Moose, Mary Ann Castimore’s sister, spoke
movingly about her experience as the recipient
of a heart transplant a few years ago.
Candace is a woman of powerful faith
and she feels called to share her story with others
to encourage folks like you and me to become organ donors.
She told us that there are more than 90,000 people in this country
waiting and hoping for organ donations to save their lives,
yet there are fewer than 10,000 people signed up
on the national organ donation registry.
I was struck when I went to the registry to learn
there are hundreds and hundreds of children under the age of 10
who are awaiting transplants.
When we think of patients needing transplants,
children certainly don’t come to mind.
Many of those waiting for transplants will die
before a donor organ becomes available.

When we are robed in righteousness,
we understand that accepting God’s invitation
is a call to service:
to serve others, especially the poor, the sick, the weak,
the elderly, the lonely, those we think of as different.
Luke makes this point very clear in his account of this parable:
the host tells his servants to go out
through the streets and invite not anyone and everyone,
but specifically, “the poor, the crippled,
the blind and the lame”

An article in the newspaper a few weeks back reported
that the number of men, women, and children
living in poverty in this country has gone up
every year for the past four years.
Thirty seven million men, women and children live in poverty.
Twelve percent of our population, one of every eight.
How can we think of ourselves as robed in righteousness
when we are allowing more and more people
to fall into poverty?
And this winter, with the high cost of heating for all of us,
there will be even more who will join those ranks.
I have already heard from seniors in our community,
folks living on fixed incomes,
who fear having to choose between
heating and eating this winter.

The parable is difficult, with hard lessons for all of us.
But then again, Jesus never said
that following him would be easy.
“Take up your cross” is the phrase he uses,
not, “have a seat and get comfortable.”
C.S. Lewis has written,
“The almost impossible thing
is to hand over your whole self to Christ.
But, it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead.
For what we are trying to do
is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’,…
We are all trying to let our mind and hearts go their own way –
centered on money or pleasure or ambition –
and hoping, in spite of this,
to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.”
(“Mere Christianity”)

The author Annie Lamott,
a gifted writer and a woman of deep faith,
puts it another way,
“we should try to stay on God’s good side.
It’s not hard.
God has extremely low standards.” (Plan B, p. 129).
We tend to think clothing ourselves with righteousness
is more difficult than it really is.
It begins with thinking about others first.
That’s been a theme running through our texts and sermons
the past few weeks.
When Cain asks God, “am I my brother’s keeper?”(Gen. 4:9)
The answer is yes, we are responsible for one another:
that is what is means to be wearing the robe of righteousness.
But the way we act, God would be well within his rights
to ask, “what part of “yes” don’t you understand?”

In this month's newsletter I suggested another way:
Find someone in the church and pair up with that person
to become one another’s Epaphras:
listen to each other, pray for each other,
takes an interest in each other.
Doing that clothes you in righteousness.
Not completely: we always need to do more,
but it is an excellent place to start.

Lamott puts it this way: “Pray, take care of people,
be actively grateful for your blessings,
give away your money –
[Do things like this and] you’re cool. You’re in.
Nice room in heaven, flossing no longer required.”
(Plan B, 129)
You won’t be hustled out the back door
and tossed into the darkness.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Few are chosen because few respond genuinely to the call.
Few understand what it means to say yes.
You have said yes –
but are you dressed appropriately?
Are you robed in righteousness, or
are you robed in the same outfit you’ve always worn?
Our Lord wants us to remember that we have each said yes,
but the question he has for each of us is,
what part of yes don’t you understand?
Amen