Sermon ideas

See also PostScript - Comments, prayers, questions and discussion on the week's news.

• In the 1990 Bette Midler movie Stella, no one comes to Stella’s daughter Jenny’s 16th birthday party because her friends’ families all ‘look down’ on her mother. Can you imagine how the girl must have felt? Turning down the invitation implicit in today’s parable (i.e. God’s invitation) is more than turning down an invitation to a birthday party, a family wedding or even to a royal garden party. It is a profound political slight to the king and, in the case of the last invitee, an act of rebellion against his kingship.
  
  

• A true story: ‘When inviting people to our wedding, my future mother-in-law (who was paying for the reception) invited many more people than the venue could accommodate. So we were most thankful when some people wrote back to say they couldn’t come.’ But that is rarely the case, and in the ‘heavenly banquet’ that this parable alludes to, there is no limit on the capacity. Turn the invitation down at your peril!
  
  
• Social conventions change from generation to generation. In Jesus’ day, the custom was to send out a notice of an upcoming event, followed by the announcement that it was happening – rather like the ‘save the date’ notices people send out today. However, today the advent of social media has made many people lax about replying to invitations, or indeed turning up when they have said they will. This means that events can easily be oversubscribed, or have a disappointingly lower than expected attendance. Is this contemporary casual approach to events matched by a casual approach to the commitments of faith?
  
  
• While the king says that those originally invited had demonstrated that they ‘were not worthy’, the servants subsequently invite in ‘both good and bad’. As servants, we are called on not to make judgements about anyone, but to invite everyone. Signs outside churches often say ‘Everyone Welcome’. But is that really true? Research has shown that almost all churches think they are more welcoming than they are.
  
  
• Many commentators see the last part of this parable (the expulsion of the guest without a wedding robe) as a separate parable tacked on to the end of the other one. This is partly because they are comparing it to the similar parable in Luke 14.16-24, and because Matthew’s version is very disturbing. But it is quite possible that Jesus told similar stories at different times with slightly different emphases (and endings), and his parables are intended to be disturbing. This one reminds us that we are all welcome, but responding to God’s invitation will demand changes of us.

  Sermon ideas on Philippians 4.1-9