October 9, 2011 – “Party ’til the Cows Come Home”

“Party ‘til the Cows Come Home”

Matthew 22:1-14

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

October 9, 2011

The confirmation class is just barely dipping its toes in the water as are the mentors who will be walking with them in this process.  Through the confirmation process, we’ll all be following the lead set by one of my favorite preachers, William Willimon, who has written a confirmation plan entitled “Making Disciples.”  The title is not only appropriate for a group of youth, their mentors, youth director, and pastor, but for all of us, I think.  Disciples are “made.”  We’re molded, shaped, created.  Rather like piece of clay.  Now you and I and all these young people know what happens to a piece of clay or Play-Dough that gets left out on the table without a tight cover.  Right.  It gets hard.  And, more often than not, when the clay gets hard, it is almost impossible to shape it into anything but the little round ball it has hardened into.

That’s the way with disciples, followers of Christ.  We get hardened to what it means to be a disciple.  We may have made our commitment to Christ years and years ago, much as some of this confirmation class will do.  It may have happened when we were away at church camp – whether it was a long time ago or just last summer.  But somewhere along the road, we have forgotten what it is like to be a new Christian, to have a mountaintop experience with Christ, to know what it feels like to have a “holy whew” where we recognize God’s continuing presence with us, surprising us at the moment.  And some of us can honestly say that we have never had one of those experiences, but we are disciples of Christ just the same.

The parable of the wedding banquet is all about you and me.  God has called all of us, has invited all of us, to this sumptuous banquet.  It certainly isn’t that we deserve to be invited.  In fact, if we really think about it, it’s more like we get the invitation to a great party in a beautiful European cathedral and we are awestruck by what we see, but we also are secretly thinking to ourselves, “Oh, gee, I don’t deserve to be here.  This is too beautiful.  If anyone finds out what I’m really like inside, what a fraud I am, I’m going to get exposed and be embarrassed and kicked out for sure.”

But that’s the absolute beauty of accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  It isn’t how good we are that earns us the invitation to the party.  Jesus invites both the good and the bad.  Everyone is welcomed.

Before I got around to entering training to be a pastor, I was at a bible study with a number of women from our church.  The pastor’s wife was there too.  I still had some fear about it all because I had forgotten by that time almost everything I ever knew about the bible, and I didn’t want to be exposed for what I didn’t know and be embarrassed by that.  But the women were very kind and nurturing (now, understand, I was past 40 when all this was taking place).  The more we read and the more we studied, the more I understood that nobody has a right to claim more knowledge of scripture than another person.  The scriptures speak to each of us and to all of us.  We study together so that we can learn from one another.

Well, part of a bible study, of course, is praying out loud.  Now this was something I was even more uncomfortable with than discussing the Bible.  I was downright scared to pray out loud.  And it was made worse when I would hear one of the women in the group pray with words that must have come directly from the Holy Spirit.  Her prayers were flowery and full of adjectives and sounded like poetry.  And she hadn’t written any of them out!  She just closed her eyes and opened her mouth and the words poured out!  Her prayers were beautiful and moved me.  But they didn’t move me to pray because I knew I couldn’t pray like that.  And I was afraid of being judged.

One week, one of the women described in some detail some problems her husband was having at work.  It was the sort of thing that made you want to just stop right then and there and offer a prayer for him.  And, of course, she must have felt that way too, because she said, “I would really like it if we could pray for him.”  And then, my heart stopped, because she turned to me and said, “Gretchen, would you do that please?”

Well, what was I going to say?  No?  Later?  Tonight?  None of that was going to work. The group was ready to pray right at that moment.  So we bowed our heads and I tentatively, slowly found some words that I was hoping and praying would be the right ones for the moment.

And as soon as I said, “Amen,” and before any of us had lifted our heads from the bowed position, the pastor’s wife pronounced (and not in a soothing tone), “That’s not good enough.”  And then she started all over and prayed the prayer the way it should have been done.

I was embarrassed.  I was called out for my insufficiency.  I was wishing I had been thrown out of the banquet because continuing to sit there for our remaining time together was demoralizing.  I can’t remember exactly what happened next, but knowing me, I probably acted like it didn’t bother me a bit and I probably forced myself right back into the bible discussion.

What the pastor’s wife did was what most of us fear the most when we are called upon to pray out loud:  she judged me.  But she didn’t keep it to herself.  She just said it out loud:  “that’s not good enough.”  I wasn’t good enough.  I didn’t make the cut that day.  I got benched.

What I also remember about that pastor’s wife (and I say this with all good Christian love in my heart…) is how sure she was that she was going to heaven.  On several occasions, in our study and outside of it, she just pronounced, “I have no doubt I’m going to heaven.”  Her premise, of course, is that all it takes to go to heaven is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  And she was right.  That’s what the Bible says.

And I never doubted that she would go to heaven (after all, that isn’t my judgment to make – although I might have been tempted to ask God to let me be the judge – just that one time), but I have wrestled with that over the years.  If we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and God doesn’t attach any strings to that, is that all there is to it?  Can we go around telling people they don’t “pray good enough?”  If we are disciples of Christ, can we gossip about people behind their backs?  Can we be bullies and throw our weight around at church or school or at work or in the nursing home?  If we are truly disciples of Christ, does it mean we will still go to heaven if we are abusive or hurtful or violent?

In this parable, the king invites both good and bad people to the banquet.  Many decide on their own that they want no part of it.  Some of them even go so far as to beat up and kill the king’s messengers who came to invite them (those of you who are afraid of inviting people to church or afraid to share your faith must feel like those messengers – afraid you’ll get beat up or killed for issuing the invitation).  But the king invites everyone – good people and bad people – and they all find themselves mingling together in the great banquet hall over this sumptuous feast.

And then, of course, there is that man who does not come properly attired for the event (thus insulting the host), and right then and there he is embarrassed in front of everyone else when the king demands, “. . . how did you get in here without dressing appropriately?”  And what’s key here is not really the question the king asks or even that the man is thrown out “into the outer darkness,” but the fact that the man had absolutely no response to the king’s question.

It’s as though Jesus is standing there in heaven and we all show up at the gate expecting to get in because we are, after all, church members, and he says to us, “Why aren’t you prepared for this?  When did you take care of the poor and the hungry and the homeless?  If you were my disciple, why didn’t you study God’s word more often?  Why didn’t you help out at church when your help was needed?”

Or Jesus could ask us as we stand there at the gate looking around him imagining how wonderful it will be when we can get around him and get in, “If you were my disciple, why did you stab that person in the back?  Why did you speak ill of others in the church?  Why did you walk all over somebody to get that promotion?  Why did you lie and say the dog ate your homework?”

What many of us prefer is what some might call the “safe, soft side of discipleship.”[1]  What we prefer are blessings from God but without sharing in ministry or studying God’s word, or judging others who don’t measure up to our estimation of what’s right and wrong.  And don’t you dare think I’m talking about somebody else.  Don’t you dare look around the room or have someone’s face pictured in your head and think I’m talking about them.  Don’t you dare think – whether it’s right now or later – that you have a greater in with God than someone else or have a corner on knowledge and wisdom about God that someone else does not.  Don’t you dare.  I’m talking directly to you.

And, folks, that’s what it must have felt like to the man who showed up unprepared for that wedding banquet.  That’s what it felt like to me when that pastor’s wife told me my prayer wasn’t good enough.  Don’t you dare think that you have the right to pass judgment on anyone else.  Jesus is going to take care of that job quiet handily at heaven’s gate.

All it takes to get into heaven, to have eternal life, is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  There are no strings attached to that.  BUT if we are going to be disciples, we have to allow ourselves to be made into disciples.  It is a life-long process.  If you’re going to judge somebody, judge them for what a wonderful job they’re doing in the midst of all kinds of setbacks and challenges.  Judge them with admiration, not with condescension.

Jesus said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

There is a judgment day and it will be for both those who call ourselves disciples and those who don’t.  It’s not our judgment to make.  But if we allow ourselves to be molded, shaped, made into disciples as the confirmation class is studying, then we can expect that we will be invited in and not kicked out of that party.  Then we can party ‘til the cows come home.

Amen.