Love First

Scriptures:       Deuteronomy 34:1-12,  Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17

                        I Thessalonians 2:1-8,  Matthew 22:34-46

In our reading today, we conclude what has been a series of arguments between Jesus and the religious leaders in Jerusalem.   In responding to a trap question about the legality of paying taxes, Jesus held up a mirror to the religious leaders’ own divided loyalties.   And now, the religious leaders have one more trick question.  “Which commandment in the law is the greatest.”  Which commandment in the law is the greatest.

Of course, this wasn’t a neutral question.  With these religious leaders, there were no neutral questions – when it came to Jesus, any question they asked was a “gotcha” question.  When we hear the word “commandment”, we think of the Ten Commandments – but that’s not what these leaders had in mind.  For them, there were more commandments.  Many more.  If you read through Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, there are lots of other commands.  In fact, to the present day, according to the Talmud, Jews recognize not 10 commandments, but 613 commandments, or mitzvot.  248 of them are positive – “Do this”.  365 are negative – “Don’t do that”.    These 613 commandments run the gamut from mitzvot #1, “To know there is a God”, to mitzvot #33, “To burn a city that has turned to idol worship” to mitzvot #68, “Men shall not shave the hair off the sides of their head”, from #201, “Not to eat diverse seeds planted in a vineyard, to “#610, “Not to panic and retreat during battle” to #613, “Not to retain a captive woman for servitude after having had relations with her.”  And that’s according to one enumeration, according to the 12^th century teacher Maimonides.[1]    We don’t know whether the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had fully recognized this system of 613 commandments…but we know they recognized many more than the ten we think of.  But wait, there’s more!  At least some religious leaders of Jesus’ day taught that all the commandments were equally important, for to say otherwise was to presume to know that mind of God.  So, according to this teaching, theoretically, a commandment such as “Men shall not shave the hair off the sides of their head” could be held to be of equal weight to the commandment “To know there is a God.”  To be fair, some religious leaders were willing to set priorities; Rabbi Hillel, who lived and taught not many years before the time of Jesus, famously summarized the law by saying, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn it.”

So Jesus was asked, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest.”  And Jesus responded with Deuteronomy 6:5:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”   And then he went to say one more thing that I want to underscore:  “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments – love of God, and love of neighbor.

So in response to a “gotcha” question, Jesus is saying that all of the teaching of his faith hung on love.  Love was the basis.  Love was the lens through which all other legal and ethical teaching was to be understood.   Jesus cut through centuries of commentary and legal opinions to make things very basic, but also very challenging.  Rabbi Hillel, whom I mentioned earlier, summarized the Torah as teaching us not to hurt others.  Jesus went beyond this.  It wasn’t just enough not to harm, not to do evil. For Jesus, it was necessary to do good out of love.

It’s easy for us to lose focus, to get so lost in the details of a project that we forget why we started it in the first place.  We can lose the forest for the trees.  And life throws situations at us for which there are no rules that fit the situation perfectly.  And so we need some guiding principles.  Different faiths have had different principles.  For example, some faiths emphasize purity – don’t touch or taste anything deemed impure.  “Don’t drink, smoke, or chew, or date girls who do.”  The Judaism of Jesus’ day tended to emphasize purity as a guiding principle, teaching that one should avoid non-kosher foods and non-kosher people.  Jesus emphasized love as a guiding principle, and thus made very different decisions, and taught his followers to make very different decisions.  He would interact with people that many Jews of Jesus’ day deemed unclean – and thus the constant complaints from religious leaders about Jesus eating with Gentiles and sinners.   An example on how decisions based on love might work out differently from decisions based on purity:  A bar patron is heavily intoxicated – bombed out of their mind. This person wants to drive home.   Do I, instead of letting the person drive, offer this person a ride home?  If purity is my guiding concept, I probably don’t – I don’t want to be seen in the company of drunks – if others see me near a bar with someone who is falling-down drunk, my reputation might take a hit - and besides they might throw up in my car.  And so if the person drives and totals their car and hurts or kills themselves or someone else, well, that’s their problem.  My hands are clean.  But if love is my guiding concept, of course I offer this person a ride home.   If they toss their cookies in my car, well, barf washes off….but the guilt if I let the person drive drunk and they hurt or kill themselves or others doesn’t wash so easily.  Concern for purity will lead me not to get involved.  Love leads to involvement….I can’t just stand idly by.

We as individuals sometimes lose focus and need to be reminded of our basic priorities.  Religious institutions have the same problem.  Of course, on this Reformation Sunday, we are reminded of reformers such as Martin Luther, who felt that the Roman Catholic church of its day had lost its focus, obsessing about selling indulgences to raise money to build St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome while neglecting the heart of the faith.  The Reformers felt that the Catholic teaching of its time put too much power in the hands of the clergy, from the Pope right down to the local parish priest, and that these clergy did more to block the way to salvation than to lead the flock on the path.  This Tuesday, October 31, marks 500 years to the day from Martin Luther’s fateful trip to nail his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral, and a copy of them in English translation is in your bulletin.    

But I think it’s too easy to say that the Catholics had it wrong and we Protestants have it right.  The Reformers emphasized five principles – salvation by faith alone, by Scripture alone, through Christ alone, by grace alone, to God’s glory alone.  But this teaching was often distorted into a very heady faith in which salvation came by believing the right things, by being able to quote the right Bible verses, by being able to recite the right creeds.  And so it’s important to ask, in Tina Turner’s words, “What’s love got to do with it?”  Remember that St Paul famously wrote that “Faith, hope, love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is – what? – love!  Not faith.  Not hope.  Love.  Faith and hope are important, but love comes first. For those of us raised in the Protestant tradition, it may startle us to realize that the main thing Jesus taught – love – isn’t among these five principles taught by the Reformers.   During the time of the Reformation, love certainly had very little to do with the religious wars fought between Protestants and Catholics, and between different flavors of Protestants. 

Christian author Phyllis Tickle observed that every 500 years or so, the structures of institutionalized Christianity become so rigid and so brittle that they have to be shattered so that growth can resume – perhaps somewhat like crustaceans and other organisms that shed their exoskeletons periodically after they’ve become too tight,  so that they can resume the growth process.   Or to use another of Phyllis Tickle’s images, every 500 years, the church holds a giant rummage sale, going through all of the theologies and practices and organizational structures it has accumulated over the centuries, holding them up to the light, seeing which ones are still useful in their original form for their original purposes, which may be able to be repurposed for new uses, and which should be discarded and kicked to the curb.  500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door.  Roughly 500 years before that, the Great Schism or split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches happened.  500 years before that – well, actually, more like 600 or 700 – the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, and for the next few  hundred years, numerous creeds would be written summarizing the beliefs of the church. 

As our Conference Minister, the Rev Bill Worley, writes in his message in this Sunday’s Communitas – also in your bulletin – at this very moment, we are going through a new reformation.   It would appear that the church has once again outgrown its shell – outgrown many of its institutional structures – and is shedding them.  And much of our society seems to think it has outgrown the church.   On Facebook, there’s a running theme about all the things that millennials, the current generation of late teens and 20-somethings, are “killing” because they don’t use them or can’t afford them – everything from paper napkins (because paper towels work just as well) to the 9 to 5 work week (more likely to be stringing together multiple part-time gigs) to dinner dates (who needs to shell out dollars for dinner when you can meet someone for free on OKCupid) to golf (these days the now 40-something Tiger Woods is known more for DUI arrests than trophies) to department stores (because who needs to go to Sears or J C Penney when  you can order it on Amazon.com) to the Applebees restaurant chain (just because....).  And organized religion would certainly be on the millennials’ hit list.  Among millennials, the religious affiliation showing the greatest rate of increase is “none of the above.”  But here in Bridesburg, it’s all ages that are staying home.  We have a population of around 8600, where the one remaining Catholic church gets maybe 700 people out each weekend, the two  remaining mainline churches including us get maybe 40 or so combined, and Real Life and Grace Baptist get maybe 250 between them – that’s around 1,000 out of 8,600 folks in Bridesburg who attend church regularly.  And of course we’ve seen the closure of All Saints, Bridesburg Baptist, and Bridesburg Presbyterian, and our congregation and Bridesburg Methodist are struggling. 

So we are going through a time of transition, a time of reformation.  Old ways of being church are dying.  Many churches are dying.  Even many of the things that made church cool 20 years ago –praise bands and such – have become passe, have become old news. But as Christians, we believe that on the other side of death is resurrection.  That’s the core of our faith – that death is not the end.  So while we lament the death of the church we’ve known, we need to be attentive to what is being born.

In his Communitas message, Rev. Worley writes, “I want our Reformation to be shaped by the belief in, and the experience of, the transformative power of the resurrected Spirit of Jesus Christ.  I need that and I suspect you do too.  I know the world does and it is our call as disciples of Christ to make sure the world has it.”

I’d like to add a bit to Rev Worley’s message.  I believe that the way the world will experience the transformative power of Christ is through love.   Millenials are looking for love, just as everyone is looking for love.  The need to love and be loved is a big part of what makes us human.  I believe people have left the church because they couldn’t find love there, couldn’t feel love there.  People came to church and perhaps heard words about love.  But they saw actions that were judgmental, hateful, excluding, anything but loving.      

Our Reformation needs to be grounded in love, rooted in love, love of God, love of neighbor.  Church needs to be a place where all sorts and conditions of people can come and experience – not just hear about, but actually experience, see and touch and smell and taste as well as hear, the love of God.  Love – love of God, love of neighbor - needs to be at the heart of everything we say and do here.  Not just make-believe love – people can smell phonies a mile away – but genuine caring. If we can’t connect what we do to love, we may need to ask why we’re still doing it.

And let’s be clear what kind of love we’re talking about, when Jesus speaks of love of neighbor.  Remember my earlier example of driving the drunk person home, out of love.  It doesn’t mean that I suddenly have warm fuzzy feelings for the person.  Doesn’t mean I want to ask them out on a date – in fact, with the other person in that condition, that’s the last thing I want, or the other person needs.  The love of which Jesus speaks is about caring for the other person’s well-being, wanting them to be safe and healthy, wanting the best for them in the same way I want the best for myself, and being willing to do what’s necessary to make that happen.  The love of which Jesus speaks is a recognition that our lives are connected, and so what happens to one affects all – as St Paul described it – if one member suffers, all suffer; if one rejoices, all rejoice.  As I quote Paul’s words, if you’ve ever been in a union, words like “solidarity” and phrases like “an injury to one is an injury to all” may come to mind – and that may be one way to catch a glimpse of what Jesus was saying. Or maybe you prefer the Three Musketeers’ motto:  All for one and one for all.  It means we have one another’s back, and that of our neighbors. And so if you come here hungry, hopefully you won’t leave here hungry; if you come here feeling alone, hopefully you won’t leave feeling alone.  And maybe when you’re on your feet,  you can help the next person in the same way.  And honestly, who can turn down that kind of love, that kind of caring?

And this comes from love of God, the recognition that all we have and all we are comes from God, that when we turn our back on God, God doesn’t turn his back on us.  It comes from recognizing that both we and our neighbor are created in God’s image, have something of God in us, and so when we love our neighbor, we love God as well.

I’ll close with a Hezekiah Walker song:                                                                                                                

I need you; you need me, we’re all a part of God’s body 

Stand with me, agree with me, we’re all a part of God’s body

It is His will that every need shall be supplied

You are important to me; I need you to survive

You are important to me; I need you to survive.

Amen.

---

[1] http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/756399/jewish/The-613-Commandments.htm            

Whose Image?

Scriptures:     Exodus 33:12-23      Psalm 99    I Thessalonians 1:1-10     Matthew 22:15-22

In our reading from Matthew’s gospel, we’re in a series of escalating confrontations with the religious leadership in Jerusalem.  Jesus had told a series of harsh parables against the religious leaders, comparing them to guests invited to a wedding banquet who not only turned down the invitation, but attacked the messengers sent to deliver the invitations.  Today, the religious leaders come back at Jesus, trying to trap him in his own words.  Remember that Judea was under Roman occupation, so the Jews were being ruled by people who did not have their best interests at heart – in fact, by people who exploited them at every turn.  Some Jews, including the Temple leadership and many of the educated elite in Jerusalem, the Sadducees and Herodians, cooperated with Rome, hoping to grab for themselves some of the crumbs of wealth and privilege that fell from Rome’s table.  The Pharisees would have advocated as much separation from Rome as possible. The Essenes took this separation even further, living in their own separate communities and refusing to have anything to do with Rome – sort of like the Amish, only they were Jewish.  Some, calling themselves Zealots, advocated for armed revolution against Rome, and revolts against Rome broke out periodically every so often.  Rome used brutal force to put down these rebellions.  And most of the people just kept their heads down and lived their lives.   

In today’s reading, the Pharisees come to Jesus along with the Herodians, their political opponents, to try to trap Jesus.  They came to Jesus, first trying to flatter him, butter him up, saying, “We know you are a sincere teacher of truth and show no deference or partiality to anyone.”  Of course, they believed no such thing, but they are trying to get Jesus to think they’re on his side and let down his guard.  And then they asked, “Tell us, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  And Jesus could easily see the trap they’re setting for him.  If he said “yes, it’s lawful to pay the tax to Caesar”, the Pharisees could condemn Jesus as just another collaborator with Rome, a sell-out, and Jesus would lose the support of the common people.  And if Jesus said, “no, paying the tax is unlawful,” the Herodians could have him arrested on the spot for treason.

Jesus responded, “Why are you setting me up to trap me, you hypocrites.”  The word “hypocrite” literally meant “play-actor”, and so he was telling them that their play-acting as sincere students of the truth wasn’t fooling anyone.  Jesus was on to them; they were busted.  Nice try, FBI.  Then Jesus asked them, “Show me the coin used for the tax.”   There was a special silver coin used for the tax, that was worth a day’s wages.  The coin would have had the emperor’s head and name stamped all over it, with the title Lord.  Clearly this would have been seen as blasphemy for observant Jews, as it violated both the commandment against other gods and the commandment against graven images.  One of Jesus’ questioners pulled out the coin – the fact that they had such a coin on them exposed whose side they were on, that of the emperor, no matter what they told themselves.  Jesus said, “Whose image is that, and whose title”.  And of course they said, “the emperor’s”.  And Jesus responded “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   With those words, he left them – and us – with a question that is still debated to this day.  On one hand, clearly the coin was the emperor’s – it had his name and image all over it – so give him back his silly coin.  But Jesus left them with the question of what are the things that are God’s – and since God is creator of all, “the things that are God’s” pretty much include everything, including both the coin and the emperor himself. 

This passage has been the launching point for many sermons on relations between church and state – but today I’d like to save that sermon for another time and take this sermon in a different direction.  I’d like to go back to Jesus’ question, regarding the coin, “Whose image is this?”  Of course, Caesar’s coin had the image of Caesar, just as our coins have images of Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson and so forth.   Ultimately, it’s a flat, lifeless image.  It doesn’t do anything.  It just sits there.

Our society would like to stamp us into the same flat, lifeless image.  Our society would like us to believe that we are made for nothing more than to serve the system – work, pay our taxes, buy stuff, consume stuff, and die.  Our society would like us to march to its beat of “Obey! Buy! Consume! Die!”, to spend our lives marching to that drummer.  If we listen, we’ll march to our grave, having died without having ever really lived.

Caesar created coins in his image, and our society would like to mold us into its image.  But Genesis tells us that we’re created in God’s image.  Throughout the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis, God creates each thing – light, the sky, the sea, dry land, plants, the sun and moon, sea creatures, animals – and each time the section includes the words, “And God saw that it was good.”  But only of humans does Scripture say, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”  Twice we read the words, “in his image”.  So human beings are said to be made so as to resemble God, to have something of the divine in us – to use a Quaker phrase, there is “that of God” within each of us.  Unlike the flat, lifeless image of Caesar on Roman coinage, we are living images of a living God.  Our Old Testament reading, in which Moses asks to see God in his full glory, refers to a glory that’s so overwhelming that no person can see it in its fullness and live.  And yet we are said to resemble God, to have some tiny spark of that same glory within us.

We are created in the image of God, of infinite worth.  It’s comforting to stop there.  We can bask in the thought of the spark of God’s glory within us.  But where it gets challenging is when we remember that it’s true, not only of us, but of our neighbors – the ones we like, and the ones we don’t.   It’s true of our neighbors regardless of race or ethnicity – as the old children’s song says, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.”  It’s true regardless of gender – male and female  God created humankind in his image.  Young and old, straight and gay, indigenous or immigrant, American or foreign, all created in God’s image, each created in some way to reflect God’s glory.  Certainly our sin distorts this image, diminishes it – like graffiti spraypainted on the wall of a beautiful building.  But while we can deface God’s image within us or others, we cannot erase it.  We can deface, but we cannot erase.

The German philosopher Martin Buber spoke of the difference between an “I-Thou” relationship and an “I-It” relationship – the difference between relating to others as fully human beings, on the same level as us, or as objects, to be experienced, used up, discarded.  Put another way, God calls us to love people and use things – but we often get confused, loving things and using people.  

What difference does it make, to treat ourselves and others as being created in God’s image.  For ourselves, it might help us to realize our own worth, and not give so much power in our lives over to other people or other things.  We’re so quick to say that we can’t be happy unless we have (fill in the blank) – another person in our life, or some kind of property or expensive toy.  If we’re at peace with ourselves and with God, we can find happiness regardless – and if we’re not, we won’t find happiness regardless.  This awareness might motivate us to avoid self-destructive behavior, to avoid suicide, along with the slow suicide of the addictions and attachments that numb us and block out the pain and angst of living, but also render us less than the persons God created us to be.  At this point, I’ll put in a plug for the fundraiser for suicide prevention that Joey R is heading up for Saturday, November 18, right here at Emanuel Church.  And I’ll also mention the phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255.  I’ll try to remember to get it in the bulletin next Sunday.  If you need it, use it; if you know someone who needs the phone number, please pass it on.

The past week provided opportunities to recognize the importance of seeing others in God’s image.  On Thursday, the 3^rd Thursday in October, some high schools observed Spirit Day, which was created in 2010 in response to a series of suicides by LGBTQ junior high, high school and college students who were bullied by homophobic classmates…you might remember names like Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi…lives ended when they were just beginning.  Might these tragedies have been avoided – might these kids still be alive - if these teens and young adults had more supportive adults in their lives, if they’d been connected to faith communities that would affirm them as they are, as young persons of sacred worth, and not designated them as punching bags, not labeled them as freaks and abominations?  It’s also notable that of homeless teens, 40% are said to be LGBTQ – teens kicked to the curb by their families – throwaways, not runaways.   We throw out trash.  We shouldn’t throw out kids.  Many of these teens would still have homes if their parents had been taught by their churches to see these children as created in God’s image, as much as any other children.

Also this past week, on Facebook, a number of Facebook friends, not people I know personally, mostly women, though some men, posted a cryptic message.   Two words:  “Me too”.   In response to the revelations of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment or abuse of countless women, a number of people, mostly women, some men,  posted the words “Me too” to indicate that they had experienced sexual harassment or abuse – not by Weinstein, of course, but by others in their lives.    “Me too” – acknowledging the pain, revealing the scope of the problem.  And, no, I didn’t post such a message.  It’s not a pain I’ve experienced, or at least not a pain of which I’m conscious of having experienced.  But what would it mean in our relationships to relate to one another as beings created in God’s image, as persons of sacred worth, and not just as pieces of meat to be leered at, or worse?   How might this awareness transform the way we relate to others?  How might this awareness transform the way we relate to ourselves?

 May we come to see ourselves and those around us as God sees us, as persons created in his image, as reflections of God’s love.  May that awareness transform our thoughts and actions, our relationships and our shared ministry here at Emanuel Church. Amen.

Welcome Table

Scriptures:     Exodus 32:1-14         Psalm 23        Philippians 4:1-9                    Matthew 22:1-14

What would you do if you threw a party and nobody came?  It sounds like something out of a  nightmare, perhaps one of those recurring nightmares, like the common recurring nightmare about being back in school and having to take a test for a subject you’d never studied, and needing to pass it in order to graduate.  But seriously, how would you feel if you threw a party and nobody came? Or if it did happen to you, how did you feel?  Hurt?  Angry?  Needing to sit in a corner and cry?  Feeling a sudden need to re-evaluate your list of friends?  Maybe tempted to break into a verse or two of “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…..you would cry too if it happened to you.”

In our Gospel reading, Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem.  He’s having one clash after another with the religious leaders there, the Sadducees, who were in charge of the Temple and its rituals and in cahoots with Rome, and the Pharisees, who sincerely loved God but were obsessed with making up rules – about appropriate foods to eat, about how often to fast, about what and how to sacrifice – lots of rules for themselves and everybody else to follow – we might say the Pharisees had a serious case of religious OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder.   The Pharisees looked down on those who didn’t follow all their rules, whom they deemed less worthy of God’s love than themselves..  Jesus’ message, among other things, was that God was more concerned with right relationship with God and neighbor than with the rituals of the Sadducees or the rules of the Pharisees – quoting from the Old Testament, he told these leaders that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.  And the religious establishment not only didn’t want to listen, but looked out for opportunities to entrap Jesus and arrest him – and we know their efforts ultimately led Jesus to the cross.

And so Jesus told a parable, a story that was intended to say something about God.   But Jesus’ parables in Jerusalem were also intended to hold up a mirror to the religious leaders, showing them areas in which they needed to grow and change.  And so Jesus compares God’s reign to the scenario with which I started my sermon – somebody threw a party and couldn’t get anyone to show up.  A king’s son – not just anybody, but a king’s son, a prince – was to be married, and his father, the king wanted to throw him a wedding banquet.  He invited all his friends, allies, supporters.  But he got no RSVP’s.  So he sent his messengers to peoples’ homes, saying: “ I know you got the king’s invitation.  Maybe you just hadn’t gotten around to responding.  Please come to the wedding banquet.”  But all the messengers heard in response were excuses – really lame excuses, on the order of “ I can’t come….because I have to stay home and wash my hair.”  And those were the polite responses! We’re told some of the invitees attacked and killed the king’s messengers.  Harsh!   With friends like that, who needed enemies.

So the king blew his top, and ordered his servants to kill those who had attacked and killed his messengers, and to burn their city.  Pastor’s note:  If you throw a party and nobody shows up, don’t try this at home.  This is just a story.  Anyway…the king got the satisfaction of vengeance, but still had no guests for his sons’ wedding banquet.  So he told his servants to go out and round up anyone they could find to show up at the banquet.  So the son had a full house for his wedding banquet, even though it was a room full of odd, random folks, all strangers to the king, his son, and one another.  Perhaps it’s a bit like stories we read of companies you can pay to hire actors to pretend to be your friends. In Jesus’ story, free food and drink were payment enough to get people to show up. What could go wrong?

But one guy still managed to mess it up.  Evidently it was the custom in those days for the host to hand out wedding robes to those who came to a wedding banquet – we might think of party hats at a children’s party – and one of the guests apparently refused to wear it.  The host noticed and had the guy kicked to the curb.  May seem a little extreme to us – different customs, different times.  But we might think of other ways in which someone might misbehave at a wedding party – drinking too much and getting obnoxious, hitting on the bridesmaids, vomiting on the carpet, fighting with the other guests, so that the host ends up calling the bouncers over to do their thing.

What are we to make of this story.  Jesus was inviting the religious leaders into a different kind of relationship with God, one based on love, justice, mercy, not rituals and rules – and they weren’t having any.  It was a message that the prophets had spoken for centuries – God cares about right relationship more than religious rituals – to quote one of them, God was calling them to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.  The prophets had been persecuted in their time, some of them killed. Jesus came with much the same message, and would be rejected in the same way.  These religious leaders, the so-called “good people” - had refused Jesus’ invitation.

By contrast, the people who were considered not so good – prostitutes and other folks that the good people looked down on, and especially  non-Jews  - loved Jesus’ message.  They followed him everywhere he went.  They responded.  And so, in Jesus’ parable, they were the ones who accepted the invitations made at the last minute, when the king was desperate to find people to attend his son’s wedding.  And so they were welcomed.  But they still had to abide by the rules of the house.  In the parable, they might have been dragged in at the last minute in their cutoff jeans and sweaty t-shirts, gnats buzzing around their heads, but the king was  kind enough to provide a robe for them to wear so that they could look presentable. We might say that the wedding robe represented love, which they received from God and were expected to show to the other guests.

Remember that Jesus was a Jew, as were his disciples, as were the religious leaders who opposed him.  As non-Jews, as Gentiles, we are the folks in Jesus’ parable who were invited at the last minute.  We have experienced God’s love, mercy and grace, totally undeserved.  And even though we hear the message in church, Jesus compared God’s love to a banquet.  We might think of our once a month dinner churches – First Wednesday, remember – where we eat and drink and enjoy one another’s company, celebrate communion, hear a story from the Bible.   That’s a faint, faint reflection of what God wants for us.  Jesus’ phrase “the kingdom of heaven” makes us think of the afterlife – pie in the sky by and by when we die -  but really Jesus is talking about living in right relationship with God and one another right here, right now – as St Catherine of Sienna put it, “all the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way.’”  So God has invited us.  But God’s invitation does not include the phrase “Anything goes”.  To attend the banquet, we need to be clothed in God’s love, to experience God’s love ourselves and extend it to others.  Most of all, we need to remember that it’s God’s banquet, not ours…..something we in the church forget sometimes, when church leaders get high and mighty and act as if we’re in charge and not God.  We’re just folks who’ve received party invitations, who are asked to invite still others to the party – as it has been said, “Evangelism is one beggar telling another where to find bread.”

I’ll end with a quote from, of all characters, Aunty Mame – “Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”  So come to the banquet!  As we sing at our Wednesday night service sometimes, “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table.”  So come, sit at the welcome table…and be amazed at all the different kinds of people who might be sitting next to you and across from you.  Know that God loves you!  Know that God wants you to love others.  Show that love through words of kindness and deeds of love.  Amen.