What Can We Say To Those Who Challenge Christ?
Good Morning Friends,
Today we have the parable of the wedding and its implied vows compared to a vow taken by Jephthah, a Gileadite warrior, a judge, who delivered Israel from the Ammonites and sacrificed his daughter in fulfilment of the vow. The stories are not easy reads. In fact, they should trouble us and therein is the lesson. Both stories are full of blood and gore–mutilations, treachery, and repeated violation of the Law by the people God chose. We see Jephthah vowing to sacrifice the first thing that emerged from his home after victory. He knew it would be a servant or family member, and it was his only daughter. One of the blunders humans made at that stage of Holy History is remaking God into a lower-case god. Instead of man being in the image of the loving God, he had remade god into his own image–selfish, venal, obsessed with power and pleasure. So, today we consider Christ on the cross putting an end to sacrifices and all those who through history who have imagined that bloody sacrifice would please and appease the anger of the gods. In the story of the rash vow, the saddest words are “What might have been” and related to that… in the parable of the wedding, that “many are called, but few are chosen.” You see we all have the offer of a new heart and spirit. We all have an invitation to join in the celebration, but not all choose wisely. The problem is made worse today because Christianity has been tried and found wanting or so some claim. People have lived under the influence of Christianity for centuries. Many say our God is impotent. Perhaps our culture likes the idea of vows with the devil more so than vows of commitment to love. How people fashion a relationship with God can be a problem. So, What Can We Say To Those Who Challenge Christ?
Scripture: Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” She said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” “Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
Judges 11:29-40 (NRSV)
Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Matthew 22:1-14 (NRSV)
One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.'”
Luke 14:15-24 (NRSV)
Message: The parable of the Wedding Feast in today’s scripture in Matthew should really be read with the offering in Luke to compare how the scriptures were written. Matthew leans towards a Jewish audience and Luke to a Gentile one. But it is more complex than that. Let’s dive into a little of the ways they are different. For example, an undisclosed man in Luke becomes a king in Matthew. The reference is to God. Luke’s great dinner becomes in Matthew a marriage feast for the king’s son. The reference is to Jesus. Matthew presents the story as reason why Jesus went to the irreligious with the Good News and perhaps as a token of joy for those who suffer. Luke takes a different approach in the story and leads us to believe that we should show kindness, not only to those who can return the favor, but to the poor, crippled, blind and lame who may not. The judgement in the Matthew story is against those who refused to attend because they were caught up in other priorities instead of God’s. The thing is that the conventional religion of the Sadducees and Pharisees was not harmless but an invitation to a dark tragedy… the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus though all of this is concerned with life. Jesus sees the whole story from beginning to end. Of course, we do not know the full scope of history as God does. And indeed, God’s purpose may not be complete and therefore it is inappropriate to judge before we see the end results. So, when we hear people claim that God is impotent, we can argue that what lies behind the situation is God’s righteousness and mercy. Power is sometimes best played out with great patience. Friends, if redemption is the purpose, then a whole host of momentary unpleasantness may be necessary for such an end to be fulfilled. The ways of God will always seem odd if you do not see it through to the end. A cake half-baked is not much of a cake. When Chesterton said,
“The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting but that it has not been tried”, I think what he meant is that the things that go on in the name of Christianity are not really Christianity in some sense. Organized religion is different than living a Christ-like life. I think what he was suggesting was that if people consciously lived each day in awareness of what “the Christian thing to do” in every circumstance, then and only then would we know whether Christianity was a good idea. It was a sideways insult towards the “Religious” of the day.
Somewhat like the stories we read in the scripture today.
And So, don’t be so quick to make a vow regarding another’s salvation.
We no longer need signs, wonders and miracles to convince us as believers, and we need to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, not dead ones. Indeed, God can open doors though sacrifice but really wants our love instead.Top of Form Sometimes Christians may feel that they must drag people scratching and screaming and fighting into the banquet of life and provide them a wedding garment in addition. But God tells us to witness our own faith to draw people to decide for Christ and love freely.Bottom of Form ‘We are not asked to be flawless, but to keep growing and wanting to grow as we advance along the path of the Gospel. We are to rely on the Holy Spirit to open our hearts through scripture allowing it to enlighten and renew us. The Holy Spirit will put the right words on our lips if we are in the habit of studying God’s word.
Be prepared to witness to others, by regularly engaging in the practice of reading the Bible and praying about what troubles us in the experience.
Pray we take the Gospel seriously. Pray we really live in awareness of what the Christian thing to do really is.
Pray we celebrate with joy by savoring the life that we have, cultivating an attitude of gratitude. Pray we share the love and grace of God with others by our words and actions. Pray we realize that every day God invites us to be guests at the party. Pray we discover the special part we must play. Pray we have a revolutionary way of thinking because God turns the world upside down anyway. Pray we find joy in God’s changing history and through God’s unchanging love. Pray we dress the part for the wedding feast. Pray our joy brings resilience commitment and comfort to those situations that trouble us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 