Happy New Year – and may what we suffered in 2020 bear the fruit of maturity in 2021—the fruit of gratitude, the fruit of focus on what is truly important. I’m glad to have you join us again. My name is Rusty and I enjoy being in God’s word, and sharing it as best as I can. It might not be apparent to you, but every time I share from God’s word, it is my great hope that we can see something beautiful from God. The reality is, God wants to display the beauty of His character and His gospel through each one of us and He has designed His church to be His expression. God takes the threads and shards of our lives and makes a tapestry or a stain glass window that tells His story. You see, what ever our lives may be, or may express, it says more about God than it says about us. So let’s see what this new year will be in God’s will.

I want to start with the story of a song written by Audrey Assad. In February 2015 a group of Egyptian Christians were taken to the shores of the Mediterranean and executed by the Muslim extremist group ISIS. After watching that, Audrey Assad wrote this song titled “Even Unto Death”. To save their own lives all they had to do to was renounce their faith in Christ. Audrey wrote:

You must remember that night, months ago, when I saw the video of those 21 precious Egyptian men kneeling on a Mediterranean beach. I stared at the procession… I knew that I was looking into the sickening, quaking black hole that is death. The captives prayed, their lips moving silently, their eyes closed or raised to the heavens. What were they whispering, in those last, fast-fading moments of their lives? Were they afraid? What would I pray, if it were me kneeling on that beach?

Her answer was not a call for retaliation; it was a prayer to the “lover of our soul.”

Jesus
The very thought of You
It fills my heart with love
Jesus
You burn like wildfire
And I am overcome
Lover of my soul
Even unto death

(For more click here)

I say this as introduction as we continue in our series “Matthew: An Invitation to the Kingdom. We may notice a shift in Jesus’ words and actions to focus His Disciples and to focus us as Disciples. We see Jesus’ increasing urgency as we have been going through the Gospel of Matthew. If you listened to Ingrid’s talk last week, you heard a parable with some gravity: the owner of the vineyard sends his servants to His fields – but they were all poorly treated, and finally the Master sends his son who is killed by the farmhands – and we see the Master’s reaction. Jesus is no longer telling stories of soil and seeds. He’s running out of time, and His parables display a seriousness we cannot miss.

In Matthew 22, the passage we will look at today, Jesus gives us another Parable about what the Invitation to the Kingdom is all about. I want us to pay special attention to what Jesus is calling His Disciples to. Why should You care? There are many different things we can learn from Jesus in this passage but I think there’s something here we cannot ignore about what Jesus is calling us to, and that’s really what I’m after—that we would feel the urgency, the gravity, the
seriousness of Jesus’ call to us. The importance of Jesus’ call is summarized in the last verse in this section, verse 14. Jesus says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” This reality should not produce in us a smug sense of entitlement it should produce in us a holy fear and a humble desire to do God’s will; to invite as many as we can to the King of the Kingdom. Jesus has been calling many, as many people as He can.

We’ve seen this in virtually every chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. He invites all sorts of people to the Kingdom. You might remember in the previous chapter (Matthew 21:31), Jesus tells the Chief Priests and Elders “I tell you the truth, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” His hospitality is wide open. And yet, even though many are called, few are chosen. “What!”, you might ask? “I thought everyone who is called is chosen.”

Because many are called and few are chosen, Jesus is increasingly presenting an urgent call to action. Let’s pick up what Jesus says at verse 2 of Matthew 22.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.

Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, ‘See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.'”

But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.
The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.” And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.

I would not fault you for having an allergic reaction to how this parable ends, but I would challenge you if you’re tempted to dismiss these words of our Lord just because you can’t handle them. Jesus lets the story just linger. He gives no clarifying comments. We are left to contemplate what this is all about.

So what can we say for sure? Jesus gives us Parable about an Invitation. Let’s just walk through this, with special
attention to what Disciples are to do with this.

We find that “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” Have you ever heard of a kingdom compared to a wedding feast? Not the Roman Empire; not the Mongolian Empire; not the Soviet Union at its height; not the United States at its most influential. Jesus is continually baffling us with images of a Kingdom that has more to do with the relationship with the King.

Jesus goes on to say this King “sends his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come”. Who are the servants that the Lord sends? We might say the servants were the prophets that went ahead of Jesus, using this kind of metaphor of the invitation to the wedding banquet. As the parable continues we might say the servants now are followers of Jesus, disciples of Jesus who are ready to do His will. Clearly people were invited, and clearly they would not come—as in, they chose not to come—but notice the King’s expectation of the servants: “Go and do my will: call those who have been invited to the wedding feast.” In other words, God does not say “invite only those who will come; just be faithful in sharing the invitation as best you can.” The king sends more servants who go with a more compelling message: “Tell those who are invited, ‘See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.'”

We should get the sense that disciples of Christ should be prepared with understanding what is being offered in this invitation. As disciples of Jesus, let me encourage you to become reacquainted with the Gospel and all the goodness of it. Let 2021 be a year when you learned again the goodness of the Good News of Jesus Christ. You can do that. You don’t have to wait for someone to tell you; you don’t need to take a course; you need only read for yourself – the Gospels.

Christmas conference 1977, “the gospel will become your best contemplation”. At the time all I knew were the four Spiritual Laws. I have found more and more goodness in the good news of Jesus Christ – because I have found more and more life in the person of Jesus. But, it says: “[the people who were invited] paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.” Let me suggest that Disciples of Jesus should be ready to be treated shamefully, even unto death. This isn’t the first time Jesus has hinted at this.

Jesus said as much in His earlier “Sermon on the Mount” near the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 5), “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” The prophets who were before you were these servants, just like us, who were to call people to the great banquet of the Son’s wedding. But, really? Is suffering and persecution what we signed up for?

We are called to go to a people who may pay no attention to the invitation of the Kingdom, people who go minding their own business and want us to mind our own business. We are called to go to people—as we are seeing increasingly in these days—people who might “seize his servants, treat them shamefully, and kill them.” We may not feel that as keenly in the West, but around the world it is a different story. After a massacre of Christians in Sri Lanka in April 2019 one reporter wrote

The death and destruction in Sri Lanka was particularly shocking given that it took place on Easter Sunday. However, it was also horribly familiar, for we are now living through an unprecedented era of Christian persecution.

Most people associate persecution of Christians with the Roman empire and martyrs facing the lions. Others may recall the Soviet regime and the repression of believers during the time of Stalin. But this century is fast becoming a rival to both of these eras.

According to the Pew Research Center, Christians are the most targeted body of believers in 144 countries, up from 128 in 2015. And there is barely a country from Saharan Africa to Pakistan where Christians worship freely without intimidation.

(Catherine Pepinster,The Telegraph. For more click here.)

While Christianity descends in the West, persecution ascends around the world; we appear to be living out Jesus’ very words, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” It is my hope that if we are to be reviled and persecuted that it would be for actually representing Christ the King and His Kingdom and not for infidelity, hypocrisy, greed, or power mongering.

Jesus continues with the parable, “The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” Who are the King’s troops? To be clear we are not God’s troops sent to destroy anybody. We do not carry out God’s justice. When will the King send His troops to carry out judgement? Jesus doesn’t elaborate. I know from other passages that there will come a day when God will take care of business; that He, in His Holy Righteousness, will exercise justice and no one will be able to bring a charge against the Holy One. No one will be able to say, “God you were unfair.”

We are not to retaliate, and, in fact, most Christians around the world live as a minority in their country, as we find ourselves now. They are not forming militias, they are not retaliating (for the most part because they’re outnumbered and would be wiped out). They are, as best as they can, living for Jesus where they are.

Some churches in North America protest wearing masks during this pandemic under the guise of religious freedom and individual rights. What a huge distraction from the what the King and the Kingdom is all about. Surely being able to protest wearing a protective mask is the privilege of the first world because most of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world live under exclusion, the threat of death, or with little to no rights to assemble to worship; and, yet, countries like China have some 130 million underground Christians; and yet, there are Christians left as remnants in the 10-30 window in countries like Egypt, Iran, or Pakistan.

As I said, these Brothers and Sisters in Christ are—as best as they can—living for the King, who tells His servants something we will take to heart as His Disciples: “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

This is our job. We go to the highways and the byways, as the old english put it, to invite as many as we can find; to gather “both bad and good” to the wedding feast of the Son! This is an echo of Psalm 65:8

“Those living far away are in worshipful awe of your wonders;
where morning dawns and evening fades
You call forth songs of joy.”

I believe Calvary has been as welcoming a place as we have intended, because everyone is invited but not everyone is chosen (as we find in the next few verses):

But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.

As I said, I would not fault you for having an allergic reaction to how this parable ends. But I would challenge you for being tempted to dismiss these words of our Lord just because you can’t handle them. Jesus lets the story just linger. He gives no clarifying comments. We are left to contemplate what this is all about.

What are we going to do with this parable? Our vision statement is “At Calvary we want more of Jesus”, and what we have been learning through 2020 is that we can add “At Calvary, Jesus wants more of us.”

I want to add a cautionary note to encourage you to read With by Skye Jethani because I am not saying that Jesus wants more of us so that we can enter His Kingdom. Jesus wants more of us because we are Kingdom people; we are His Disciples compelled by His love and His Spirit.

In what way does Jesus want more of us? In a way, through 2021 we as a Church will discover and clarify what that means. We will need each other to understand the way in which Jesus wants more of us. I believe God is calling us to be the kind of servants, the kind of disciples, that are far more interested in doing His will; as Jesus prayed “…Your kingdom come, Your will be done…”

We saw this in the parable – disciples inviting as many to the wedding feast of the Son. Remember how this parable began? “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” Jesus is continually revealing a Kingdom that has more to do with the relationship with the King and He sends us out with this invitation to the Kingdom.

This is what we do: we welcome, we invite as many as we can into the Kingdom of God, and we do this mostly as Jesus did; by friendship, being available to people, and by hospitality.

A few weeks ago I read an article written by Helen Tang, a senior medical student conducting initial contact-tracing phone calls and investigations. Listen to what she predicts: “I would not be surprised if in a few months or years, we swapped the COVID-19 pandemic for a mental health one without being creative about ways to think upstream and prevent this.”

This pandemic offers us an unprecedented opportunity to be available to people in our bubbles, and spheres of influence, and I am asking you to be ready to be hospitable to others when we can see each other again. Be ready to invite others to the wedding feast of the Son. For more click here.

By way of review:
Characteristics of a Disciple: (Based on the Parable of Matthew 22:1-14)

• Disciples are sent to call people to the wedding feast; therefore
• Disciples go and do the will of the King.
• Disciples understand what is being offered in this invitation. Become reacquainted with the Gospel and all the goodness of it.
• Disciples should be ready to be treated shamefully even unto death. (Remember Matthew 5:11, 12).
• Disciples go far and wide—to the highways and the byways—to invite as many as we can find; to gather “both bad and good” to the wedding feast of the Son.
• Disciples want more of Jesus and understand that Jesus wants more of us. Because everyone is invited, but not everyone is chosen. You don’t decide who’s in or out. That’s not our job. Our job is share, preach, or in whatever way we can, display the goodness of the good news of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, the kingdom of God is like a King who gave a wedding feast for his son

Let us pray.

Lord, may you find us ready to do your will: to invite, to welcome, to practice hospitality, to befriend, and fellowship. Lord protect us from fearing the worst of society when we already have the best of You; remind us that our lives are in You, lived through You and with You. You are the beginning and the end of our lives. You are the centre and
circumference of our faith. Lord, move in us by Your own Spirit to do your will.