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Twenty Second Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Gospel:
Matthew 22: 1-14
God's Invitation
Highlighted
Verses: Matthew 22: 1-14
Once more Jesus spoke
to them in parables,
saying: 2“The kingdom of heaven
may be compared to a king who gave a
wedding banquet for his son. 3He sent his slaves to
call those who
had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4Again
he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look,
I have
prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered,
and
everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ 5But they made
light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6while
the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7The
king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and
burned
their city. 8Then he said to his
slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but
those invited were not worthy. 9Go therefore into the
main streets,
and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ 10Those slaves
went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good
and bad;
so 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 a
wedding
robe, 12and he said to him,
‘Friend, how did you get in here without
a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. 13Then the king said to
the
attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer
darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14For many are
called, but few are chosen.”
Have
you ever received an invitation?
An invitation is a special
way of asking "would you like to?"
Would you like to come to my
birthday party? (That's a kind of invitation, isn't it?)
Would you like to come over
and play?
Would you like to go
to the movies?
Do those sound like invitations you'd like to receive? (Me too!)
But receiving an invitation
is really just the beginning,
isn't it? It's nice to be invited, but then we have to accept.
Birthday parties are only fun if we actually GO to them,
right?
So a successful invitation has two parts: one person makes the invitation and (we hope)
another person accepts it.
As I read this week's Gospel lesson - which
tells the story of an
invitation - I couldn't help but think about the ways that
the
Bible is like an invitation.
Think about that for a minute.
God uses the Bible to speak to us about kindness and
forgiveness...about sharing and love. And in that way, it's like an invitation from
God. But just because the Bible says these things doesn't mean
that our work is done...in
fact it's just beginning!
Like other invitations, we have to accept
God's invitation in the things that we do - and the ways that we
live. God has laid out a path...but it's up to us to follow it. Will
you accept God's invitation this week?
Good. Let's pray.
Dear God,
We know that you have invited us into your presence. Help us to accept
your life-changing invitation by living lives of love and caring.
Amen.
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