10/15/23 - Wedding Robes by Rev. Chip Roland - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 10/15/23

10/15/23 – Wedding Robes by Rev. Chip Roland

WEDDING ROBES

October 15, 2023
20^th Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 32:1-14, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14
Rev. Chip Roland

Rob Bell is a fellow who became famous, let’s say “church famous” in the early 2000’s. He was the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan. It is one of those congregations that’s often classified as a mega church. I think the best way to describe him, especially back in that day was sort of the platonic ideal of a youth pastor. He exuded as sort of Christian hipness. I mean he had it all! Hip hair, hip black-rimmed glasses. I’m sure he owned at hatchback and plays a guitar! His short video mini-sermons were salvation for many a pastor or lay leader desperately looking for a hook for the weekly youth group meeting. In his first book, Velvet Elvis, he describes the founding and rapid growth of Mars Hill. Because of the church’s exploding attendance, their parking availability was quickly overwhelmed. Sundays after church involved long lines to get out of the parking lot. Tempers flared; certain fingers were shown. Eventually, Bell addressed it in a service, saying “If you are here and you’re a Christian and you can’t even be Christian in the parking lot, please don’t go out in the world and tell people you’re a Christian. You’ll screw it up for the rest of us. And by the way, we could use your seat” (Bell 96).

Sunday post-church, crowds…can be rough! It’s one of those bits of knowledge passed down the generations of restaurant workers and retail workers. When I was in seminary, we became aware of a phenomenon in the Bay Area where restaurants were paying their workers extra to work Sundays. This wasn’t just because it was the weekend or a traditional day of rest. Reportedly, this was because the post-church Sunday patrons were, difficult. Words were said along the lines of rude, entitled, self-righteous, and, perhaps worst of all, lousy tippers! Folks are supposed to know we’re Christians by our love! Not because we sent our eggs Benedict back three times and demanded to speak to the manager!

I spent a lot of time thinking about why this might be. Why were they like this? I know there are churches out there that preach a theology of grievance. You know the type of course. Everyone in the whole world is against us. Everything different is a plot to destroy our faith from Harry Potter to whatever specific thing we’re supposed to be outraged by now. Pour that on thick, add zero self-reflection, and send people out into the world. See how nice they’ll be to the wait staff. Maybe it’s more mundane than that, though. Maybe people are just thinking “Hey, we’re saved. We went to church. We’re the good people. We don’t actually have to be good.”

So, picture you’re this guy who didn’t wear his wedding robe. You might have known there was some sort of kerfuffle surrounding the wedding feast the king was trying to hold for his son. Rumors were spreading around that the swells of the country, the folks who normally get invited to such things were behaving terribly and the king was absolutely taking in personally. You didn’t think much of it because these courts of stories were always spreading among the common folk. Rich people misbehaving was then, as it is now, one of the best sources of free entertainment.

But you absolutely were not prepared for what happened next. The slaves of the king poured out into the main street proclaiming that everyone, from every walk of life is invited. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. It doesn’t matter if you’re seen as an honorable person or there’s some sort of stigma attached to you. everyone come in! Truth is, you’ve always been fascinated about what goes on behind the king’s doors. So all you can think is “I got in, I got in, I got in!!!” You were careless about everything else getting into the banquet. You remember pushing some folks out of the way to be first at the door. You didn’t even go home to change into something nice. Now you’re one of the swells after all. And if being one of the swells means anything to you. It means you don’t have to care about others. So, you were totally unprepared when a very displeased king came up behind you and said “Hey buddy…..”

There’s a way of thinking about the Christin faith I tend to refer to it as elevator theology. This is to say that the whole drama of Christianity, of salvation is condensed into one goal. Getting to heaven. Mostly for myself but, sure for others. It’s a type of spirituality that borders on solipsism. It kind of ignores what Jesus says in Luke 17, sharing that the Kingdom of God, in Luke’s language, the wedding banquet in this parable is less of a destination but something that is within and amounts to us. It is as much about being in the world in a specific way as much and it is about where we go after we die.

In this context, what does it mean to wear our wedding robes? I think Paul touches on it in his letter to the Philippians. He commends the church to think on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable. He tells them to let their gentleness be known. I think it’s key that this is in context to a life spent in rejoicing in the Lord. That all these things that we wear are wedding robes, that are doing our best to dance in rhythm with the kingdom come not for our own innate goodness, but, ultimately God’s welcome to us all. He calls us to rejoice in the Lord who is full of grace and full of love. To live a life defined by the joy, the gratitude of that unexpected, undeserved invitation to the wedding banquet.

In the parable, those who are deemed unworthy of the banquet are those who would not listen to and abuse the prophets and to Matthew’s audience, the Christian missionaries after. To be clear, he is specifically skewering the religious authorities, the swells so outwardly convinced of their own righteousness and so threatened by people who might tell them differently. “How dare you suggest we aren’t really the good people.”

But, of course, if worthiness is the criteria, aint none of us are getting in. We like to think that if we were among the children of Israel and Moses was gone for 40 days and 40 nights, we wouldn’t have freaked out and turned our backs. But the truth is, none of us know. And how many of us have been through dark times in our lives where our faith has at least wavered or been extinguished? I certainly know I’ve been through dark nights of the soul. I suspect I’m not alone. But the banquet halls are thrown open and the invitation has come out and you are on the list! We all are! Put on your wedding robes. Let everyone see! Through our gentleness, through our love and grace let them see a hint, and echo of the God who is the ultimate source of it all, who invites them too!

My Story

“What goes through your mind as you sit in the sanctuary and look around?

As I sit in my pew and look up at the cross with the wonderful light illuminating it, I am reminded of why I am at Westminster on this particular day. The cross reminds me that Christ died for me and, in a sense, I am to do the same in my daily life. The brightness of the cross illustrates for me the brightness of living my life in the way of Christ.”