A sermon shared with congregants at First Presbyterian
Church, spring city, TN
Philippians 4:1-13
The parable in the above verses of the gospel of Matthew is a
very difficult challenge. It is a “hard reading” for modern Christians that
draws heavily on the nature of wedding and marriage. For the priests who
confronted Jesus in the days leading to his crucifixion, it spared no prisoners
concerning their negligence of duty. I suggest it spares none today for us.
For the
last few
weeks we have followed Jesus in his final days in Jerusalem. From his entry,
the priests and scribes have attacked him and challenged his authority. Jesus’
reaction is to tell his several parables. Pretty quickly the
priests realize he is talking about them. We know this from the closing 2 verses
of Chapter 21, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables,
they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but
they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.” Why are they
mad?
Jesus accuses
the religious leaders of not exercising the authority given them by God for the
care for the faith of the people, and for ignoring the signs that tell them his
authority rests on being God’s only son.
Today, Jesus
continues this confrontation with another parable about the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is a strange parable about a wedding feast.
A little
exploration of the historical context of Matthew explains the strangeness. Many
biblical scholars (for example, see the
Anchor Bible Commentary by Albright and Mann) believe Matthew wrote from a
Jewish perspective. He uses legal and interpretive strategies characteristic of
a well-educated Levite and shows extensive knowledge of Hebrew scripture and
history. We know also the earliest Christian believers in Palestine worshipped
in the synagogue with their fellow Jews.
It did
not take long for friction to arise between the Jews who embraced Christianity
and traditional Jews. Jesus had already accused the Priests and scribes of religious
negligence and hypocrisy. The Pharisees, who were lay believers that rooted out
heresy mostly distrusted Christians. Rome persecuted them all as Jews.
The gospel
of Matthew fits into the situation of a Jewish Christian in a world of conflict
outside and within the synagogue between traditional and Christian Jews. They
may have already been ousted from the synagogue and were worshipping in a nearby
house church.
The priests' knowledge
of scripture shaped how they receive this parable. Throughout the Old
Testament God and Israel are described in a wedding or marriage context, one is
the bride or groom who has been insulted or stood up at the altar. The parable
is a metaphor of the culpability of the priestly class for the fall of Israel and Judah and Jesus, and the Son of God bringing salvation
to the Hebrews (that Isaiah foretells) as this image of a great king who spares no extravagance on the wedding
feast for his favored son and the favored invited Jewish guests.
These priests
made the connection quickly that Jesus is using the wedding language to talk
about the Old Testament relationship between Jews and God, because he has
already extended that relationship to all people in the previous parable I
shared with you. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven through Jesus is open to all
humanity.
When
Jesus gets to the line in the parable (v6-8) “while the rest (of the invited guests) 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,” and then tells his servants “to go out into the
streets and invite everyone who will come,” the priests hear offensive
words that recall their role in the fall
of Israel and Judah. I am guessing they are pretty mad.
They know this parable goes straight to the theological crisis of
Jewish heritage. The
priests know their history is wrapped up in the words of the prophets such as
Isaiah and Jeremiah who foretold a complete destruction of the land, the nation
and temple because the priests failed the people who turned from God and the
Law. That is exactly why God sent the Assyrians and Babylonians did to Israel,
Judah and Jerusalem killing almost all the priests and king’s court.
I’m sure
the priests think it is outrageously wrong to say all the favored guests
decline or ignore the invitation. What person would decline an invitation by
the King, especially if it was King Herod?
But
rather than try to offer historical explanations, let’s do what parables make
us do. Hear them and understand them in the context of our own experience
tempered by the experience of the original listeners.
The
value of knowing the historical context of the conflict between early
Christians and Jews is that we see how Jesus makes sure the religious leaders
know the Old Testament scriptures offend and indict them. We get our meaning
from the parable by exploring the gospel and New Testament scriptures in our
own context. The wedding in the parable describes the relationship of each
member of the congregation with God, with each other. We have to decide whether the NT scripture
offends or indicts us in our own life context. Should we be offended, or
worried?
It is
clear the wedding and marriage symbolize the relationship between God and people
that rests on God’s permanent love for us. Like the greatest two commandments,
this parable is about the relationship that ought to exist between believers
who love God, and by extension about the love relationship that ought to exist
between every member of the congregation of believers. The relationship within
the congregation of believers of the early Church persisted for many years but
is not very common these days. Is this where we should look for meaning?
The Philippians text emphasizes
this point. Paul tells the members of the Philippian congregation (who are
arguing and fighting) that the congregation of believers share a relationship
with God and each other that is as powerful as the relationship of a marriage
between two persons. He pleads with them to practice what they say they believe
and to be a model of God’s love as a marriage.
I seldom preach a sermon that
spends so much time reading scripture but I’m not sure I can effectively
communicate the sense of this wedding image of the parable without doing it.
What are
some qualities of an ideal Christian marriage?
Here are some qualities heard often in wedding ceremonies:
“In
marriage we belong to each other, sharing affection, tenderness and freely give
themselves to each other. Just as Christ is one with the church, in marriage, the
couple are called to a new way of life that is created, ordered, and blessed by
God. It is a relationship that must
become a way of life, not be entered into carelessly, or from selfish motives, but
responsibly, and prayerfully.”
Paul
describes the relationship between spouses and between members of the
congregation this way in Romans
12:9-18: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is
good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing
honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in
hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of
the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 13:1–13: “If I
speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I
hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love
is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It
does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes
all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
“Love never ends. But as
for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as
for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only inn part, and we
prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an
end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways…And
now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
We find
similar advice in the first 17
verses of chapter 15 of John’s gospel:
I am the true vine, and
my Father is the vine grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no
fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You
have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me
as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it
abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you
are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because
apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in like a discarded
branch that withers…
“My
Father is glorified (by my sacrifice for you), that you bear much fruit and
become my disciples (obeying) my commandment, that you love one another as I
have loved you.... I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant
does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because
I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did
not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit
that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my
name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
So, the wedding feast is
the heart of the parable. If say you have faith, if you say buy into the
Christian life that marries you to God, you cannot ignore the fact that you are at an
extraordinary feast. We owe it to our Lord to take our relationship with God
and with each other as a serious marriage of love.
Divorce is so common today that
these words on marriage I read do not always have the power they used to have. But
this sermon isn’t about
divorce. I think most any of us who have experienced divorce can understand why
Jesus draws on the time-honored qualities of marriage that God had already used
describe the love relationship between God and Israel. This sermon is not a condemnation of all of us
who have experienced broken marriages but maybe it is a sobering lesson about how
seriously we should take our vows of faith to God and within our congregation to
each other so that we act not out of our own self-interest, or even act as one
faithful and righteous island. This parable means we must embrace love the way
Paul described it. Love means promoting the better interest of each other
rather than of our own self. This is the way we can grow our congregation to do
the Lord’s work – together not as islands.
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