Good Morning Friends,
Today we have the parable of the wedding and its implied vows and the promise of a new heart that God will give to those he has chosen. The stories are not easy reads. In fact, they should trouble us and therein is the lesson. Both stories are full of people whose hearts were not changed. In the passage from Judges, 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 as it happened was his only daughter. One of the blunders humans made at that stage of Holy History is remaking God into a lower-case god and following what they thought was the Spirit of God when it is indeed something else. Instead of people being in the image of the loving God, people 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 If We Do Not Follow The True Spirit Of God?
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)
I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36:23-28 (NRSV)
Message: The parable of the Wedding Feast in today’s scripture in Matthew leans towards a Jewish audience and not a Gentile one. There is a companion parable in Luke that offers a dinner to the Gentiles without the judgement. But the Matthew story is directed at the Jews and presents the story as the reason why Jesus went to the irreligious with the Good News and perhaps as a token of joy for those who suffer. 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 might even be 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 the Christian thing to do, in every circumstance, then and only then would we know whether Christianity was a good idea. Chesterton was giving a sideways insult towards the religious of his day. Somewhat like the stories we read in the scripture today. And this should guide our invitation to the table of grace in Christ.
And So, don’t be so quick to make a vow regarding another’s salvation. We are to live by the Spirit but unfortunately have a corrupted operating system. We no longer need signs, wonders, and miracles to convince us as believers. But we do need to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, not dead ones. Those who want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit will find time for spiritual practices. We are to be actively engaged in reading the Bible, prayer, solitude, and reflection. And we need to be part of a group of believers too in order to hear God speak through others. Here we will hopefully discover that God can open doors though sacrifice but really wants our love instead. 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 and 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 God 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 and praying about what troubles us in the experience. We live in an interactive world. So, tune out the corrupted inputs that make for an environment that prompts a dissatisfaction with what God gives. Know the Holy Spirit. Obey the Holy Spirit, not the pride of the flesh. Then you will be able to respond more effectively to those who challenge Christ.
Pray we take the Gospel seriously. Pray we really are aware 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. Pray we follow Jesus in a love that lasts.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 