I was blessed to be a part of two weddings yesterday.  And though the styles of each reception were vastly different – one being intentionally low key, ending with a BBQ at Cousin Hugo’s and the bride and groom wearing Cardinal baseball shirts saying “game on’ and “game over”, and  the other a sit down affair with a cocktail hour and hors d’oeuvres carried by waiters and waitresses – both were wonderful banquets gathering friends and relatives together.  They were ‘pauses’ from the routine of life to remember that life is blessed and good. 

Banquets have a way of doing that, don’t they?  In the gathering of people, in the sitting down to a meal, in the sharing of food and drink and stories and lives, somehow we find ourselves just a bit more relaxed, a bit more connected to what matters, a bit more in touch with the goodness of life and God.  So, when the prophets and Jesus want to paint a picture of the kingdom, they often turn to that banquet image.  Isaiah paints that image of “rich food and choice wines, juicy rich foods and pure, choice wines.”  And in that banquet to come, God will make everything right.  Death, suffering, tears, sorrow – all will be gone, replaced with the presence of the hand of God upon all.   

Jesus takes that image of banquet, at least in Matthew’s telling of this story, in a very different direction.  He focuses in on the necessary response that ALL OF US have to make to the banquet we have been invited to.  Some, perhaps not so surprisingly, refuse to accept the invitation.  The king sends more servants – “tell them everything is ready – it will be the gala celebration of the year – not to be missed.”  And the people ignore the invitation.  The excuses are lame at best, but not so unfamiliar as we might want them to be – one went to his farm the other to his business.  They chose work over the banquet.  

So, makes sure you hear this:  The people that Jesus was addressing not only this parable to, but his ministry to, either refused or ignored the invitation.  They chose not to live ‘banquet ready’, as I would describe it.  Banquet ready means I live expecting God to show up in my world in moments of grace and surprise.  Banquet ready means that I step outside my introverted world, my sometimes comfortable small circle of friends and meet new people and have different, less predictable conversations.  Banquet ready means I come ‘dressed’ – i.e. - waiting, expecting, hoping for, yearning for the occasion of meeting God in my conversations, work and play.   

“Some ignored the invitation”, Matthew tells us.  Seems unlikely – holding an invitation from the King himself to the royal wedding banquet of his son.  Yet, I understand, because I have also ignored at times, the invitation to the banquet. 

• Sometimes it comes in the look of in a students eye that says: Things aren’t going as well as I would like in my life, and I don’t want to volunteer anything, but if you ask me questions, and I really hope that you do ask me questions, then I will open up to you and let you into the place where I really live, not just the protective mask that I show to others.  And I choose not to notice, or to be looking for that invitation; or I choose not to respond to that unspoken invitation, that unnamed need.
• Sometimes I ignore the invitation by not being attentive enough to my own inner life – choosing a kind of numbness rather than being aware of my ups and downs and responding appropriately.  All the while God is there, at my door, waiting for me to have a real conversation with him about what really matters – and I am clueless or filling my life with late night highlights on ESPN.
• But most often, I am like the people in Jesus’ story – not too busy, but too ‘caught up in my own world’ to enter someone else’s.  I let the daily routine lure me away from the sense that God is waiting to explode into my world.  I choose not to live ‘Banquet Ready.”

 

The good news of today’s readings is pretty obvious.  A banquet has been prepared for us.  The table is set here upon this altar.  The king himself invites us to the wedding feast of the lamb.  All we have to do is live life banquet ready.  All we have to do is RSVP with our hearts and minds and actions – knowing that each day, God wants to fill us with the riches of the banquet of his love.  “Come to the feast of heaven and earth, come to the table of plenty” goes the hymn.  Will you ignore the invitation?  Refuse it?  Or say yes with all your heart?  The choice is yours.  So are the consequences.