Called - And Chosen

 Matthew 22:1-14

And Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son.  And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come.  

"Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast."'  But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them.  But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire.

"Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.'  And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

"But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw there a man not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?'  And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

Sermon for Twentieth Sunday After Trinity                                    10/17/21

Called – and Chosen

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Many are called, but few are chosen.  What a difficult saying.  We like to think that if we hear the call of God and join His people, we are "the chosen ones".  This passage puts that in doubt.  We feel called, and yet this seems to suggest that we may be among "The Called" without being among "The Chosen".  Look at the man in the Gospel lesson this morning.  He was invited, he came, and then he was thrown out.  He wasn't one of those who stoned the prophets.  He didn't rebel.  He just wore the wrong outfit, and, whammo!, he is cast out into that outer darkness.  What could this mean to us?  Let us take a look – our theme is Called – and Chosen.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son.  This is a parable.  We have to assume that every detail is not significant, but we can align some of the images Jesus uses in this parable to what the Old Testament used, and see what Jesus was saying.  The King, for example, represents God – the first King of Israel, and the only true King.  Until the people rejected God and demanded Saul, God was King, it is called "a theocracy."

The Son is the Son of God.  Pretty easy stuff, so far.  The wedding feast is the fulfilment of the Kingdom and the outpouring of salvation which we see as the Church.  We even talk about heaven as the wedding feast of the Lamb with His bride , the Church, even today.  God was all set to fulfill the Messianic promises, and to send His Son and to work our salvation, and when He sent out word through His slaves, the Prophets, to the people of Israel, those who, according to the story Jesus was telling, had been invited but were unwilling to come.  They ignored the summons of the Prophets.  They ignored the call to repent.  They were all so busy with their lives and the blessings which God had poured out on them that they had no time for – and no real interest in – the God who had blessed them and made them a people.  Too many choices, too much wealth, too much to do to pay much mind to God.

Was the King to be deterred?  No.  He sent even more slaves.  Still, the people would not listen.  Their farms, their businesses, their pleasures, and their families were just more important.  In fact, they found the crying of the prophets growing more irritating by the day until they could bear it no longer and they began to punish and finally to kill the messengers.  "How dare they tell me I am sinful?!"  "How dare they tell me that my priorities are out of place?!"  "How dare they preach repentance to me?!"  "But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them."

Many are called, but few are chosen.  It is interesting to note that the Jewish presence in the Christian Church died out about one hundred years into the life of the Church after the death of Christ.  The whole nation had been called, and so few ever believed and received eternal life.  In fact, the destruction of which this story speaks was Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and destroying of the independent kingdom of the Jews which happened in 70 A.D.  "But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire."

"Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  ‘Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.'  And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests."  Ahh!  Here we are.  These three verses cover the whole of the next two thousand years of history.  This is the Christian Church.  God has sent out His servants to invite everyone we can find to the wedding feast.  That means the preaching of the Gospel.  Anyone and everyone who would accept the invitation and come to the feast is welcomed.  But keep in mind how many - who call themselves Christians today - believe something other than the Gospel we proclaim, the Gospel that the Scriptures teach.

Remember the call that went out in the parable.  It is the same call today.  "Again he sent out other slaves saying, 'Tell those who have been invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast."' The dinner is prepared.  Jesus has taken our sins to the cross, and paid for them and met the justice of God in our place with His death on the cross.  Our sins have been forgiven, and God is pouring out eternal life to all who hear the invitation to the feast of salvation, the wedding feast of the Lamb to His bride, the Church.  All is ready, or as Jesus put in from the cross, "It is Finished!"  The cry of the prophet is the same message as the proclamation of the pastor, "Repent and believe."

Now – this second part of the parable takes us forward to the final day, what many call Judgment Day.  The King comes in to look over the guests.  The guests are all of those who have come into the church – but not the holy Church as the assembly of all those who believe, and only those who believe.  This is the church as we see her on earth, with believers and hypocrites mingled together.  There are those who are truly Christ's, and then there are those who are represented by that one man without the wedding garment.

In ancient times, the kings provided the wedding garment to everyone who came to the wedding.  These clothes were festival clothes, sometimes brightly colored, always brand-new.  One of the benefits of being invited to such a wedding was that you got a new outfit.  This was in a world where people generally wore their entire wardrobe everyday.  New clothes was almost better than money – and often served in the place of money, for those who could afford it.

God has clothed each one of us who believes with the wedding garment of holiness, the robe of Christ's righteousness which is ours in the forgiveness of sins.  In other words, you are both called – and chosen.  To keep this image clear, remember Adam and Eve in the Garden.  When they sinned, they were naked.  Sin is nakedness, and God's forgiveness, and the gift of righteousness which is ours in Jesus Christ, is true clothing.  The wedding garment, then, is the forgiveness of sins, and salvation, and the righteousness which is the gift of grace to all who take God at His Word and trust Him – in other words, to those who believe.  That is what tells me that this man was the hypocrite among us.  He was in the wedding hall and among the wedding guests, but he was not wearing the wedding clothes.  This is not just any unbeliever.  They did not enter the wedding hall.  They are already outside in the darkness throughout the story.

The question was simple.   "Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?"  If you are in the church, you are expected to be wearing the righteousness of Christ.  Can some in the Church not wear the garment?  Sadly, yes.  They are in the vicinity of the Church, and look to be part of the Church, but they are not, they are merely part of the visible church - the local congregation.  Some belong to churches that claim to be Christian, but teach dependence on one's own works - or on one's own preparation for salvation –  or on one's own decision and prayer for salvation.  They think they have heard and accepted the invitation to the banquet, but they came in without the garment of the grace of God in the Gospel because they never really heard it - but they were told they were just as Christian as anyone else - more Christian, even.

On the other hand, how can anyone who actually hears the Gospel regularly not wear the wedding garment?  Answer:  They do not believe.  One group of this sort does not believe that they are all that bad – you know, sinners.  So they do not really ever repent, and therefore they never have forgiveness as their own, because they don't see any point in it.  The Gospel has no value to them, and they don't bother with actually believing.  There are people like that in the church.  They think everyone else is just like them.  They come for the music, or how it makes them feel to come to church, or they come for the social interaction.  They never understand that they are different – except for being not like those religious fanatics who make them feel uncomfortable with all their God-talk and exaggerated (to them) piety and stuff.

Others don't wear the garment because they don't believe, period.  They don't trust God.  They want to earn it all for themselves.  They don't understand this forgiveness stuff – after all, they know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Some of these people believe some of our doctrines, but they know that they can't accept all of that nonsense that the pastor preaches.  They say, He has his opinions and they have theirs.  It is a matter of interpretation, right!?  They like the crowd, they feel comfortable in the congregation, and, so what if they don't believe all of that stuff the pastor preaches?  They look around themselves and see that it is obvious many in the Missouri Synod don't believe it either.  They tell everyone they meet that they are just as good a Christian as any of them, and they pretend that they belong as much as the next man, and they are hypocrites.

Still others just can't stop moving long enough for the Gospel.  They have their riches.  They have their pleasures.  They have their sins.  Surely God isn't going to hold them accountable for that.  They don't repent because they don't need to.  They have a "right" to their sins, their unfaithfulness, their lukewarm-ness to the Gospel.  They don't need to be in church every Sunday.  They don't need to go to Bible Study to get into heaven.  They give God that one hour out of the 168 He gives them, and they are sure that they have done what they need to do.  They never look back.  They never examine themselves.  They never give God another thought as they do that Old Testament thing of getting lost in the blessings and forgetting the One who blessed them.

The important point is that however they make it to the wedding – that Last Day – without every really wearing the wedding garment they have been given.  They may have even worn it for a while, but it got too hot, too restricting, too old-fashioned, and they took it off and never looked back.  When the King enters, He will know the difference.  He can see what we cannot.  He can see who is wearing the wedding garment and who is not, who is real and who is just faking it.  The result, the outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, is hell.  It is eternal misery and torment, augmented by the knowledge that they are cast out into it because they did not take care to wear the garments of salvation which Christ has won and God has freely given to everyone to wear.  And notice that there is no excuse for not wearing the wedding clothes.  He was in the hall, he clearly had been given the garment.  Not wearing the gift is a deliberate act of rebellion, just as unbelief in the church is never an "OOOPs, I didn't realize" but always a cold-hearted and wicked rejection of God, of His grace, of His love.  Jesus said, And he was speechless.

Many are called, but only those few who place their hope and their confidence in Jesus and what He has done will enter the wedding feast of eternal life in glory with Christ.  Those who trust in Him are also called "the Chosen".  The number of the saved will not be small, it will just be few in comparison to those to whom the invitation has been given.  The hypocrites will be separated from the people of God by the only Person who can see the difference, the person of the Son of God, who sees into your heart and knows what you believe and who you trust.

The feast is ready.  You are all seated in the banquet hall.  We have the foretaste of the feast here at the altar today.  Today we invite you once again.  Everyone who enters this church and hears the Word of salvation is invited - called.  Each of you has been presented the wedding garment, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.

Take care to wear the garment of salvation.  Examine yourselves daily, whether you are in the faith, and cling to Christ in His Word and in the Sacrament.  For many are called – all of humanity, in fact, – but few are chosen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)