What are you wearing for the wedding?

A minister was planning a wedding at the close of the Sunday morning service. After the blessings he had planned to call the couple down to be married for a brief ceremony before the congregation.

For the life of him, he could not think of the names of those who were to be married. “Will those wanting to get married please come to the front?” He requested.

Immediately, nine single ladies, three widows, four widowers, and six single men stepped to the front.

After Sunday when you get to the church and look around, do you see people who are rejoicing? Do you see people who are happy? Do you see people who know that they are truly blessed?

Or do you see people with long faces, and hear only complaints and grumbling?

When do you talk to other Christians, whether it be in church or outside, do you sense in them real joy over what they are believing in? or do they only talk of the wonder and peace of Heaven as if it something that you can only be experiencing in the future, that is after death?

What about you? Do you rejoice in your faith in Jesus? Or do you see Christianity as a burden? Do you see the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a burden? A burden that you are carrying around because you think or been told that this is the right thing to do?

Unfortunately there are many in this world that sees Christianity as a burden. There are many who do not understand that our faith is liberating. There are many who do not know or think of being a Christian is being a member of God’s Kingdom – of God’s church. They do not think that being a Christian is like being a part of a wedding banquet and not a funeral procession.

There are too many people in this world who think of the Christian life as only a series of rules, a series of do’s and don’ts and are designed to get them a dream in the sky sometime in the very distant future.

They consider the life of faith as only a bundle of shall’s and shall not’s which are to teach them how to treat their neighbours, and they therefore misses out on the fullness of the Christian life.

A good many Christians miss out on the fact that the Christian faith is meant to lead to more than good behaviour and a place in heaven later on…the Christian faith is meant to lead us to joyous living. It is meant to lead us to abundant life. It is meant to lead us to a life and that rich and deep and full of peace, the peace which Paul calls “the peace which passes understanding.”

The parable in this morning’s Gospel reading from the book of Matthew compares the Kingdom of God to a wedding banquet.

Let us think for a moment of all the wedding banquets that you have attended in the past. Were they not times of celebration? Were they not times of rejoicing over the love between the bride and the groom?

Let us now compare a wedding banquet to what is missing in the faith of so many Christians. Their faith ended up as something that kills joy rather than brings in joy. The problem for many Christians is that their faith is not complete. They become stuck in thinking that all one has to do is to show up in church every Sunday and to follow a whole big bundle or rules.

Because of that wrongful concept, some of us will end up failing to cloth ourselves in the clothing that our God has already provided for each and every one of us. Just like the man in today’s Gospel reading, who failed to wear the wedding suit provided for him, and so ended up being kicked out from the banquet.

Let us recall how in today’s Gospel reading of the wedding banquet, after many of the invited guests refuse to come to attend, the king opens up his house to anyone his servants can find.

He throws open the banquet hall, and everyone, regardless of whether they are good or bad, is invited to come and share in the royal wedding banquet. A wedding banquet just like one the one that any royal family, which, had we been invited, we surely would have attended.

All those lucky new guests went, they met the King’s son, and they all sat at the King’s table.

And then the King himself came into meet all the guests, and he suddenly noticed that a man is there who is not dressed as he should be, as he has no put any wedding clothes on, nor his best clothes, but dressed in shorts, old tatty t-shirt and slippers. The King then asked the man “How did you get into the banquet hall without proper wedding clothes.”

The man was speechless, he had no answer for the king, and he was evicted – he was literally thrown out of the house.

Why do you think that this man was speechless?

If you look at his situation from his point of view, I would think that he expected that everything was alright. He was after all, an invited guest, and all kinds of people were there, some of them with very doubtful backgrounds, so what did it matter what he was wearing?

Surely the host will not be caring about what I am wearing – after all he was the one who had thrown his doors wide open for people to come in….

But that view point is not really reasonable, is it?

When you attend a wedding, do you not at least put on your best clothing? Do you not put on your barong tagalong, your Filipiniana dress, your best suit or your best dress? When you attend a wedding, do you not go prepared to celebrate? Do you not go prepared to enjoy yourself? Do you not prepared to be there to help and take part in the rejoicing of the hosts?

What kind of a person would not do his very best, and what host would not look down, or despise a guest who failed to come prepared to celebrate with him, especially since all the clothing that a guest needed, was provided right at the door – as indeed it has been prepared for us.

All of us here today, have been sought out by God and invited to his banquet of life, a banquet held in honour of his Son Jesus.

We have all been invited to richly enjoy life, both in this world and in the next, and we have all accepted the invitation. We have come to the wedding banquet of our King.

Are all of us prepared to celebrate as God wants? Do we have the faith that we all needed? Have we all put on the clothing of righteousness that Christ offers to each and every one of us? In other words have we all changed for the feast? Or are we trying to wear our old clothes and live in the old way?

I remember a story I heard sometime ago of a fisherman by the name of Aaron.

Aaron lived on the banks of a river. Walking home with his eyes half-closed one evening after a hard day’s work, he was dreaming of what he could do if he were rich. As he walked his foot struck against a leather pouch filled with what seemed to him to be small stones.

Absentmindedly he picked up the pouch and began throwing the pebbles one by one into the water. “When I am a rich man,” he said to himself, “ “I will have a large house”. And he threw another pebble into the river. He threw another one and he thought, “My wife and I will have servants and rich food, and many fine things”. And this went on until just stone was left. As Aaron held it in his hand, a ray of light caught it and made it sparkle. He suddenly realized that he was holding a piece of diamond in his hand. He had been throwing away the real riches in his hand, while he was dreaming of unreal riches in the future.”

The story unfortunately summarizes the situation of a great many Christians in this world.

We have been given everything that we need or could ever want, it has been placed in our hand, and we have been invited to enjoy it.

But for some reason or other, many of us do not look into our hands. For some reason or other, many of us do not take what God has given us, or actually uses it.

Instead of using the riches given to us by God, we dream of the day when we will be richly blessed. We dreamed of the day when the joy of the banquet will be ours. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, the letter in the Bible what is actually called the Letter of Joy, recommends to his audience four very simple ways in which they can begin to experience the joy and peace of God; four ways in which they can put on the wedding clothes provided for us by Christ and so keep our place at his wedding table.

First of all, Paul recommends that we REJOICE IN THE LORD and reminds us that HE IS NEAR.

Every one of us here today is near to God.

Every one of us present here today has been invited by God to meet Him and His Son, and to enjoy His wedding banquet.

I know that whenever I am down, when I am getting lost in my own tiredness, troubles or fears, that when someone reminds me that God cares for me, that God is near to me, I can hold on to those things.

When I really think about it – when I am reminded by someone of the love that god has for me, or when I begin to think about what Jesus had done for me – for us – I am moved towards joy. I began to rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord! I will say it again: Rejoice!

That is a part of the clothing that we can wear to the wedding banquet of God. Nothing will shine or look as good as rejoicing; and nothing can be quite as infectious as rejoicing.

Knowing that God is near, Paul then goes on and says:

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS BUT IN EVERYTHING BY PRAYER AND PETITION, WITH THANKSGIVING LET YOUR REQUESTS BE MADE KNOWN TO HIM.

The thing that blinds so many of our Christian brothers and sisters, the thing that prevents us from putting on the wedding clothing of God and enjoying His banquet is anxiety and fear.

The Christian life is not a problem free life, bad things still happened to us; but my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God is near to us, and while He may not be preventing those bad things from happening to us, He can and He will help us through them.

But we need to ask, for it is only in asking, which we do by prayer, that we will allow His presence to lift us up.

God is near. Tell Him all your joys and concerns, make all your requests known to Him, and then thank Him, as you would thank a friend for listening to you.

Paul says that when we do these two things, when we rejoice in the Lord, and when we present our requests to Him with thanksgiving, that the Peace of God that passes understanding will fill us, and will keep our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

That peace shines my dear brothers and sisters. I have personally seen it clothe many people whom others would think of unfortunate people; I have seen it clothes many people that others think should be bitter, worried, and resentful towards God, and yet they are not. Instead we find that they have radiance about them.

The THIRD thing that Paul recommends – and it is related to the others. It is that we need to set our minds on good things.

Paul writes: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, THINK ABOUT SUCH THINGS. Think about good things – concentrate on what is good, not bad.

Make it a habit to look for and dwell on the true, the noble, the pure, the admirable. You will not then be without rejoicing.

The final thing that Paul recommends is that and I quote: “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or whatever you have seen in me put it into practice and the God of Peace will be with you.”

Which Christian have you truly admired? Which grandmother or father or sister or mother impressed you with their faith? How do they live their lives?

Put into practice what you have seen and heard – their way of prayer, their convictions about God and His presence, their way of thinking about this world of ours.

You know – the Christian life works a bit like the way that a freezer works.

If the freezer is almost empty every time you open it, you let out a lot of cold air; warm air will rushes in and makes the motor work extra hard. And that is costly, for it uses more electricity.

Now if we keep the freezer closed – there is no such problem – but keeping it closed means that we can get no use out of it.

The secret is to fill the freezer with good things – then when we open it to take out something; there is no room for the warm air to get in. The motor does not have to work so hard then. There will be less strain on the system.

We, Christians, by putting on our wedding clothing – by rejoicing in the presence of God; by constantly praying and offering thanksgiving to our God; by filling our minds with good things; and by practicing those things of faith that we have seen and admired in other people; we will discover for ourselves the joy of the Christian life, a life that is more than do’s and do not do. A life that has richness to it; a life that shines and gives comfort and joy to other people; much as in the same way as the happiness and joy of a wedding feast would give to everyone a feeling of the blessedness of life.

Rejoice ion the Lord always – again I say Rejoice. Amen.