Mt 22:1-14 It’s My Party!

Mt 22:1-14  It’s My Party!

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Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people in parables saying, “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.  He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feasts, but they refused to come… The king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come.  Go out…and invite to the feast whomever you find.’  …The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good, a like.  But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment…The king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, cast him into the darkness outside’…Many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Knowing teens means knowing parties.  I don’t attend any of them, but I do end up hearing a lot about them.  Far too often the parties that end up bad are the parties whose guests go crazy.  When the owner of the house and patron of the party loses control of his/her guests, they end up feeling used.   I invited MY friends to MY party and they trashed MY place and MY party!

The meaning of this parable should be pretty obvious to all who read it:  The Jews are the first to be invited to the Lord’s wedding feast.  After all, they are the chosen people of God.  They are the rightful guests of the feast.  But the Pharisees, the scribes, the elders and the chief priests are doing their very best to (1) Ignore the invitation (and not attend); (2) to get others not to attend; (3) and to get others to trash the party and host as well.  So, the Lord does what anyone would do:  he extends the invitation to all.  The wedding feast will go on, regardless of who is and isn't there.

When I write a meditation, I do not base my reflections solely or strictly on the particular Gospel passage of the day.  I can’t!  I must always keep in the back of my mind the entire Gospels.  Otherwise, I will end up belonging to a different religion after every single meditation!  I find this to be a big problem with far too many Christians.  No wonder why we have over 40,000 different Christian denominations (including the denomination “Non-Denominational”) in our country. 

Wow, for a people who think they know the Bible; they seem to have a hard time knowing Christ.

Our problem with the Bible and Church may very well be the same as that of teens and parties:  We want to crash Christ’s party and make it our own just like teens wants to crash a friend’s party and make it their own!  Or better yet, we want to crash Christ’s Church and make it our own!   

How?  By barging in and creating mass hysteria by taking verses out of context; sliding passages out from under us; taking one word of His and running with it; picking His brain and assuming His thoughts; legitimizing the Lord by modernizing Him; and adding my thoughts to some of His words.

Let’s take, for example, the gospel verse:  “You must be born again…”  Obviously, someone took this in the late 1970’s and ran with it!  Suddenly, everyone was asking you:  “Are you born again?”  And then we have the “born-again” movement…that died an unceremonious death not too long ago.  You don’t hear that one too often, do you? 

Instead of crashing Christ’s Church, we end up defaulting on our own!

There are many more examples out there but let’s put it all to rest for now. 

What’s important to know is that when Christ invites us to his party, we should arrive spiritually and physically cleansed; with an open heart and mind; with proper attire; and open to thanksgiving more than to just complaining.