A Royal Wedding: The Preparation

Matthew 22:1-13 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ² "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. ³ He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. ⁴ "Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' ⁵ "But they paid no attention and went off-- one to his field, another to his business. ⁶ The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. ⁷ The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. ⁸ "Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹ Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' ¹⁰ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. ¹¹ "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ¹² 'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless. ¹³ "Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

It was almost impossible to miss the coverage of the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April, 2011. Even though we no longer live under a monarchy, our nation is still enthralled by royal weddings. The Scriptures use the imagery of a royal wedding to describe the relationship between Christ, our Bridegroom, and we, in the Christian Church, as His Bride. 

There are three parts to every wedding – the engagement, the preparation and the actual ceremony. Tonight we discuss the preparations that have to be made. In our culture, the preparations are a big deal – the church, reception, guest list, invitations, food, photographer, wedding party, registries, flowers, family issues and more. And for the bride, there is the dress. And it must be just right!  (That’s why you can buy replicas of Kate Middleton’s dress or why reality shows like Say Yes to the Dress are so popular among women.)

For the Royal Wedding, between Christ and His bride, the Church, there is a special wedding garment for His bride. Jesus taught this in the parable we heard tonight. A king gave a wedding feast for his son, and when the hall was filled with guests, one was found without the proper wedding garment, with the result that he was tossed out - and not just tossed out, but tossed out in chains, bound hand and foot, into the weeping and gnashing of teeth and outer darkness which is hell. The point is this: when it comes to the wedding feast of heaven, what you’re wearing must be just right.

At first, that may seem terribly judgmental. After all, that poor guy in the parable maybe didn’t have anything better to wear. Why should he be punished like that just for what he was wearing?

When Shelley and I visited Greece last year we wore comfortable clothing to see the Parthenon and the Island of Patmos and the city of Corinth. But when we visited the monasteries high up in the rocks of Meteora, modesty was required in our dress. These were holy places in the history of the Greek Orthodox Church and they deserved the honor of our dressing appropriately. Men had to wear long pants and have their arms covered. Women had to wear skirts below the knees. If we forgot and wore shorts, then we had to wear black skirts that were given to us for our tour. … Even the men had to wear black skirts.

Because a royal wedding deserved respect and honor, it was the custom in the ancient East for the host to provide each guest with a wedding garment – probably just a clean white robe. In this way the poor did not need to be ashamed of their rags, and the rich had no right to be proud of their fantastic garments. The man at the king’s feast was given a special wedding garment to wear. By not wearing it, the man was making a statement – he was being rebellious and defiant against the king. He considered what he chose to wear to be good enough … maybe even better than what the king provided. He didn’t need the king’s garment. But he was wrong. You either wear what you are given to wear or you are not welcome at the wedding feast. You have insulted the king and host!

So what does this mean for us? No matter how much we promote political correctness and social equality in our culture, we are still plagued by class structure. But not in God’s sight. God views us all the same – sinners in need of the garment of salvation.

We need a garment to wear. We don’t want to be cast out. So what are the proper clothes to wear in order to remain welcome at the wedding feast of the King’s Son? Very simply, we must wear what the King has given us to wear. What we choose to wear – what we have on our own – is not good enough. The prophet Isaiah put it this way: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).

The NIV translation tries not to offend our sensitivities by calling them filthy rags. But the original has no such concerns. The Hebrew actually reads “all our righteous acts are like menstrual rags.” No matter how nicely we try to cover up our lives with parenting skills, athletic abilities, food donations, giving blood, helping the homeless, prayers, offerings, worship or whatever – they aren’t good enough! In fact, it is not good at all! All we have to wear on our own before God are polluted, revolting rags. Because of our sin – the sin that infects our thinking, the sin that affects our speaking, the sin that directs our living – we are defiled and dirty standing before our holy King!

Maybe we become like the man in the parable who wore his own clothes to the party. He thought his best was good enough for God. And God says that it isn’t! Jesus says that God will do the same to anyone who relies on his own fancied goodness to gain entry into His Kingdom. Maybe we take pride in ourselves and our progress – how often we worship, how diligently we pray, how much we help others, etc. But if that’s what we try to wear to Christ’s wedding, we, too, will be tossed out into the darkness of hell.

But there is a wedding garment for us to wear. A garment provided by the grace of the King – a garment that is not polluted or filthy, but holy, pure and right. It is a garment that covers our filthy rags. St. Paul speaks of this garment when he writes, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). You were given your wedding garment at the font at your Baptism. You were clothed with the righteousness and perfection of Christ. His righteousness and perfection that washes away all your sins, all your pollution, all your filth, all your unworthiness and gives you a place at the Royal Wedding.

Jesus did not come in righteousness and perfection to show us how to achieve those things for ourselves, but to go to the cross to provide them for us. He gives us life by dying our death. He gives us His seat of honor at the wedding feast by being forsaken, tossed out of the Trinity, and bound hand and foot at Calvary’s cross. He washes our bloody rags clean through His shed blood.

“Jesus, your blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress” (CW: 376 v1). “Your blood my royal robe shall be, My joy beyond all measure! When I appear before your throne, Your righteousness shall be my crown; With these I need not hide me. And there, in garments richly wrought, As your own bride I shall be brought, To stand in joy beside you (CW: 219).

Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom who didn’t wait for us to clean up ourselves (because we can’t). Instead, he came and laid down His life for His bride – you and me – to cleanse us and make us His pure and holy bride. That we might have something to wear to the wedding feast.

But Jesus did not just wash us one time long ago in our Baptism. And that’s good because we keep getting our wedding garment dirty – dirty with cursing, gossip, laziness, pride, selfishness, anger, and whatever else we do on a daily basis. We keep rolling around in the sin and dirt and filth of this world. We keep making our nice, white, holy wedding dress filthy again.

Even though we were baptized only once, Jesus has provided us with a continual and constant way back to our Baptism, back to His cleansing and life, and that is repentance. That’s really what the season of Advent is about – repentance. We come to God filthy with our vile and offensive sins; we confess those sins; then He purifies us again with the words of His absolution; He makes us clean with His forgiveness; He washes us over and over again as we return to the baptismal font to have the one-time, but continual, waters of Baptism pour over us. As often as we need it. For the promises He made to us in our Baptism are not just for the past, but for the present and for the future. We repent of who we are and what we have done, and we will always be clothed with Christ and what He has done for us. We are once again dressed as His pure, holy and radiant.

Preparations for a wedding are often filled with frenzy and agitation. But preparation for Christ’s royal wedding means slowing down, contemplating our sinfulness and repenting of our filth. Repentance is how we prepare for the Royal Wedding feast. Putting off the old and putting on the new. Putting off ourselves and putting on Christ. Wearing what we have been given to wear. Amen.

A freebie thought: The Kingdom of God is for the humble and obedient. Never mind the superficial surface evidences like so-called fashion or style. We’re all invited to join God’s party on the basis of admitting that we didn’t make the grade. Thank God, His banquet isn’t a garden party for the successful and the smooth. The broken down, those who come in last are offered a seat at the King’s table. Far from being an exclusive gathering of the great, the loaded, the top dogs of society, the Kingdom offers a free pass paid by the blood of Jesus for those who normally would be left outside, for the dregs of society. The superficial badges of appearance and competence that we wear must be left outside the door. It’s because of the knowledge that we’re all messed up - all have sinned - that we can come into God’s house. Stripped of pretence, we’re all ordinary - but much beloved.

We are invited – not because of who we are, but because of who the King is.