Sermon Notes — October 11, 2026
Matthew 22:1-14 (NRSVUE)
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 11, 2026
More than once over the last several months a thing has happened. I read the first few verses of the text that I’m going to preach on in the coming weeks and I think to myself, “Oh, I know that story.” And later, when I start to study it, I think to myself, “Oops. That’s not the story I thought it was.”
In my high school youth group we used to sing a jazzy little tune while our youth pastor played the guitar called “I Cannot Come to the Banquet” and the chorus goes like this – I promise I won’t sing – but the words are
I cannot come to the banquet
Don’t bother me now
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum
Pray, hold me excused I cannot come
And the verses of the song tell the story.
From Luke.
Not Matthew. They are not the same story. Yes, they’re very similar, but Luke’s version is kinder and gentler. In Luke’s version, a man – not a king – throws a huge dinner party – not a wedding feast – and invites a ton of guests, and when everything is ready he sends out his servants to tell his guests that it’s time to eat. But all of the guests make excuses – and in my youth group we thought it was so funny to change the lyrics to the song to “I have bought me a wife; I have married a cow.” Anyway, lots of excuses. And the servants come back to tell the host that no one is coming, and the man tells the servants to go out again and this time to bring back the poor people, the people with disabilities, the people with no homes. And the servants do that, but there is still room at the table, and the host tells the servants, “Go out again and bring everyone back. Make sure every seat at the table is filled.”
And the story ends with this very Lukan picture of the Messianic feast, full of the very people who never would have otherwise been invited to such a fancy party, eating food that they would never have access to. God is generous and invites everyone, and those who say yes to God’s invitation are welcomed into the Kingdom no matter their history, their background, or their present circumstances.
And that’s the story I was thinking of when I read the first few verses of today’s text a few weeks ago and thought, “Oh, I know that one.”
I did not.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Your word, O God, is a feast all its own. Let your Holy Spirit open our minds to your call to listen, for we know your holy Word heals and reconciles your people. Amen.
To understand Matthew’s version of the story we need a little bit of context. I want you to open your Bible to Matthew chapter 21. Matthew 21 begins this section of the gospel. It begins with Jesus and his disciples entering the city of Jerusalem. It’s the story that we read on Palm Sunday–the Sunday before Easter. We often call it the Triumphal Entry. In Matthew’s version of the triumphal entry, Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on a donkey and a colt – somehow? – and then goes directly to the Temple where he flips the tables of the moneychangers and runs out all the people who are buying and selling things. That’s another story for another time.
Then, Matthew says, while Jesus is there in the temple, the people who are blind and disabled come to Jesus and he heals them, right there in the temple. And – and – on top of all of this, the people in the temple are calling Jesus
Son of David
Again, another story for another time, but the Jewish people – the regular folks – are associating Jesus with King David. And Jews believed that the Messiah would be a descendent of King David. The Jewish people there in the temple – the regular old folks – are one step away from calling Jesus the Messiah, and the Jewish religious leaders – the elites – take notice. Jesus is a peasant from Galilee who associates with the most outside of the outsiders. How could he possibly be the Messiah?
And so they come at him. They ask who gave him the authority to do the things that he has done in the temple – flipping tables, running people out, healing people. Who gave him the authority and the power to do those things? The Jewish leaders thought that they themselves were the authority, and they didn’t give him the OK.
Jesus responds to their question – who gave you the authority to do these things? – by telling three stories – three parables. Today’s text is the third of those three parables. Each of the parables calls out the Jewish religious leaders in some way.
Here’s what I need to say about that. People have perverted the gospels since the time they were written and used them for anti-Semitism – hatred of and bias against Jewish people. They have used what Jesus says to the Jewish religious leaders as blanket condemnation of all Jewish people. That is inappropriate at best and evil at worst.
Jesus was Jewish. When he condemned the behaviors and attitudes of the Jewish religious leaders, he was talking to his own people. He was calling for better behavior from the people who shared his beliefs and who had been given responsibility to lead the religion that raised him. Jesus was not speaking to or about all Jewish people. His complaint was for a very, very small group of leaders because he wanted to reform and correct their corruption of a religion that he loved.
That said, Jesus is calling out these leaders–he is telling them that they have had every opportunity to behave and lead in a way that represents God’s love for the world, but most of all for those who were most likely to be mistreated or taken advantage of.
Two weeks ago Terry preached on the parable of the two sons – one who refused to work in the vineyard and then changed his mind and went, and the other who said that he would go and then didn’t. That was the first of those three parables. In this story, the religious leaders are the second son – the son who said that he would do the work and then didn’t. If I had preached on the lectionary text last week–and boy did I dodge a bullet – you would have heard a story about people who rent land from a landowner so that they can grow their crops. The landowner sends his servants to collect rent, and the renters kill his servants. The landowner sends a second set of servants to collect the rent and the renters kill those servants, too. Finally, the landowner sends his own son to collect the rent – you see where this is going, right? – and the renters kill the son as well. The religious leaders are the renters who benefit from God’s goodness but refuse to acknowledge God’s benevolence. That’s the second parable.
Today Jesus’s condemnation gets a little bit broader and a bit closer to home.
The story is easy to follow for the most part. The wedding feast is a symbol of the heavenly banquet that Christ will host at the end of all things. The servants that the king sends out with invitations to the banquet are the prophets, the evangelists – anyone who has gone into the world to share the good news and had their message rejected. The banquet that Matthew describes looks a lot like the banquet that Luke describes. The wedding hall is filled with guests. Those originally invited have been uninvited. And those sitting at the table never expected to be there.
But Matthew adds a tag at the end. One of the guests isn’t properly dressed – he’s not wearing his wedding garment. And it’s not like this poor guy left the house that morning thinking he would end up at the king’s wedding banquet, but the king very much holds it against him. He singles out this man who is not wearing his wedding robe and he tells his servants to bind him and throw him into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth because
Many are called but few are chosen
No thank you. I would like Luke’s story, please. I don’t want weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don’t want outer darkness.
What are we going to do with this? Because Jesus is no longer talking about Jewish leaders who have lost the plot. He has moved on from that, and in this version it’s one of the last invited who ends up in outer darkness.
That’s not the story I want to hear.
But it’s the story that Jesus wants to tell. So we gotta do something with it.
First, we have to consider what it means for Jesus to say that the kingdom of heaven is like this: It’s like a king who holds a wedding feast for his son, and the people who receive the first round of invitations decide not to attend, and so the king sends out his servants to invite everyone. Notice what he says in verse 10 because it’s easy to miss–
the good and the bad.
A wedding feast in the time and place of Jesus wasn’t just a wedding day with a big reception. It was an all-out weeks-long rager where the host provided everything – food, accommodations, wine…for the people who were invited first, that kind of party might have been par for the course. But for the second round of guests, it was a week of respite – these are the people who either live hand to mouth or can’t provide for themselves at all. It is a picture of God’s mercy and provision for people whose very existence was precarious.
The lectionary pairs this text with the description of another banquet in Isaiah, chapter 25, verse 6, when Isaiah says
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
It will be said on that day, "See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation." (Isaiah 25: 6-9)
This is the kind of banquet we should imagine when we read the text from Matthew. A banquet of life and goodness and mercy and salvation.
But what about this poor man who didn’t have his wedding garment? It sounds like the king is holding this guy accountable for something that was out of his control. If he hadn’t planned to attend a wedding feast when he left the house that morning, why should the king hold him responsible for not wearing the right clothes? That’s not fair.
That’s the thing about a parable – it doesn’t give us easy answers. We don’t end with a nice little lesson that we can take with us when we leave and put into practice tomorrow.
But here’s what I think. I think that Matthew is turning to the church – remember that by the time Matthew writes his gospel, there is a church and it is struggling with how it’s supposed to live in the world. I think that Matthew is turning to the church to remind us that while God’s grace is free it is not cheap.
This tag at the end about the man wearing the wrong clothes reminds me of the apostle Paul’s words in Ephesians 4:1. He begs the Christians there to
Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called
And he goes on to describe what that looks like
Humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace
Which makes me think of the fruit of spirit that Paul outlines in Galatians
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23
And in Colossians, when Paul tells the church that
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. (Colossians 3:12)
We are sitting at the table, but this parable asks us to pay attention to what we’re wearing. Are we clothed with compassion and kindness and humility, meekness and patience? Do our lives produce the fruit of the spirit? Have we put on gentleness?
The parable doesn’t tell us what this man did to deserve being flung into outer darkness, but the king did tell the servant to bring everyone, both good and bad. The point, I believe, is for disciples of Jesus never to become complacent simply because we have been invited to the feast. It matters whether we walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called because we are representatives of Jesus. Our behavior tells the world what Jesus is like, and Jesus reflects the very character of God. How we walk matters. How we live matters.
Today and this week my prayer for us is this: That we will pay attention to what we are wearing; that we will be intentional everyday to ask God’s Holy Spirit to clothe us in righteousness – in compassion, kindness, humility, and meekness so that when the world sees us it will see the kindness and goodness of God, who loved us so much that he sent his own Son to save us.
The feast is set, the table is prepared, and the world is watching.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.