Do you remember hearing the parable about the wedding banquet that the king threw? If not, here’s the story in a nutshell: A king prepares an elaborate wedding feast for his son and invites all the dignitaries, but no one comes. They all offer different excuses, but in the end the king is left with a banquet and no guests. So, he sends his servants out with astonishing instructions: invite everyone you find—“both good and bad.” People start arriving we reach the lovely conclusion about God’s radically open table.
There is something remarkably contemporary about those first invited guests. They do not all reject the king angrily; some simply can’t be bothered. Anyone who has planned a wedding, party, church dinner, or community event lately may recognize this phenomenon. The RSVP has become an endangered species.
Today, people receive an invitation and sometimes simply do not answer or they wait until the last possible moment. Sometimes, if we are truthful, we hesitate because we want to see what else might come along. We don't want to commit too soon in case a better invitation appears. And underneath that seemingly small cultural change may be something worth noticing.
An invitation is not simply information about an event…it is a gesture of relationship. Someone thought of you and wanted you there. To accept an invitation is, in some small way, to say, “This relationship matters enough for me to make room for it.” Perhaps that is what makes the indifference of the invited guests so striking. The banquet is ready, yet ordinary life has become more important than relationship.
That may be one of the quieter spiritual dangers Jesus names. Most of us do not wake up and decide to reject God, we simply become busy. There are appointments, errands, emails, work, family obligations, and endless possibilities competing for our attention, so we keep our options open. But perhaps the kingdom sometimes arrives as an invitation that requires us to choose it before we know what other invitations might come along.
Then, this parable takes an extraordinary turn. If the expected guests will not come, the servants are sent to the crossroads to invite everybody. Apparently, the kingdom of heaven has a remarkably indiscriminate guest list!
The servants are told to go out and invite – NOT evaluate. Seems to me that the church has sometimes behaved as though our assignment were to stand at the door checking credentials, but Jesus seems much more interested in sending us into the streets carrying invitations.
We often say, beautifully and truthfully, “Come as you are.” Jesus does exactly that, but Christianity becomes thin if we stop there. Come as you are, but don't expect to remain entirely as you were. That brings us to the deeper question hidden inside this difficult parable. What mattered enough for me to say, “yes” to this invitation and what has saying “yes” changed?
In a world increasingly reluctant to RSVP, perhaps faith begins by recognizing that some invitations are worth committing to before something better comes along...particularly because when God invites us to the table, the invitation is not merely to attend an event, it is into a relationship. There IS a place prepared for us and perhaps discipleship begins when we stop keeping our options open and simply say: Yes. I’ll be there.
Journeying together in faith and love,
Rev. Candi
