Excuses, excuses! There were certainly plenty of them in the story that Jesus told (Matthew 22. 1-14) and we hear plenty as we go about our daily lives too.
Have you heard about the notice that was on display in a works office which read: “All requests for leave of absence on account of bad colds, headaches, sick relatives, funerals, weddings etc. must be handed to the Head of Department before 10.00am on the morning of the match”?
Or what about the mother trying to get her son up and out of bed in time to go to church:
MOTHER: Son, it’s getting late. You must get up and go to church!
SON: I don’t want to go to church.
MOTHER: Give me two good reasons why you shouldn’t go to church.
SON: First, I don’t like the people. Second, the people don’t like me.
MOTHER: I don’t care. It’s getting late, now get up and go to church!
SON: Give me two good reasons why I should go.
MOTHER: First, you are 50 years old, and second, you are the vicar.
They say, don’t they, that there are always two reasons why we do things; the good reason and the real reason!
The people Jesus identified as making excuses in his story were the people of God; in his case the Israelite leaders and the many people who followed them. Tom Wright has described well what was going on in Jesus’ story. He says that Israel’s leaders in Jesus’ day and the many people who followed them were like guests invited to a wedding – God’s wedding party, the party he was throwing for his son. But they had refused to come to the party. Jesus had spent lots of time travelling around Galilee spreading the news about this invitation but, for the most part, people had refused to come. Now he was in Jerusalem and, again, people were refusing the invitation as well. God was planning the great party for which they had waited so long. The Messiah was here, and they didn’t want to know. They abused and killed the prophets who tried to tell them about it, and the result was that their city, Jerusalem, would be destroyed.
As a result, God was sending out new messengers to the wrong part of town to tell everyone and anyone to come to the party. And the good news was that they were coming in droves. We don’t have to look far in Matthew’s gospel to see who they were. The tax collectors, the prostitutes, the riff-raff, the nobodies, those who were blind or lame, the people who thought they had been forgotten by others and rejected by God. They were thrilled that God’s message was for them after all.
But there was a difference between this wide-open invitation and the message that many would like to hear today. Sometimes, we want to hear that we are all right exactly as we are; that God loves us as we are and doesn’t want us to change – that our behaviour and actions are excused. People often say this when they want to justify particular types of behaviour, but the argument doesn’t work. When those who were rejected by others came to Jesus, he didn’t simply say, ‘You’re all right as you are’. Instead, he forgave sins, healed people, and set them off on a new path. His love reached people where they were, but his love refused to let them stay as they were. Love wants the best for the beloved so their lives were transformed, healed, changed.
And that is the point of the end of the story, which is otherwise very puzzling. God’s kingdom is a kingdom of love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness. There are many places in the Bible where it speaks of us wearing dirty clothes, stained with blood and these being cleansed and washed clean by the blood of Christ, so that instead of standing in the shame we deserve we stand in the shining white garments of righteousness. These images are saying that it is Christ who makes the difference for us, who gives us garments of righteousness – which doesn’t simply mean that we are forgiven but also means that we now actively pursue love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness – but we still have to put these garments on and live in them. These are the clothes that we must put on if we are to be at the wedding party that God throws for his son. And if we come but refuse to put them on, then we are saying that we don’t really want to stay at the party at all. That is the reality and if we don’t acknowledge them then, once again, we are making excuses.
God cares about all people including those of us that do evil. But the point of God’s love and care is that he wants us to change. He hates what we do when we sin and the effect that that has on others too. That is why his love reaches us where we are but refuses to let us stay as we were. But if we accept the invitation and then don’t change, there is a problem and this story suggests that, if that is genuinely the case, the person who is refusing to change, refusing to put on the wedding clothes is saying that he or she does not wish to be a part of the party and will not be able to remain.
So, this story presents each of us with a challenge as we reflect on the extent to which our lives have changed as a result of responding to love of God that we have found in Jesus. Total change does not happen overnight and God understands the difficulty we experience in making fundamental changes to our lives. This story is not speaking about that situation. What it does speak about is our will, our intent. Are we seeking ongoing change in our lives, praying for it to come, reflecting on our failures and seeking to learn from them, being inspired by examples of love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness to want to act in these ways ourselves? If we are, then we are, at the very least, seeking to put on those wedding clothes and wishing to be at the party.
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Gungor - Please Be My Strength.
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