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June 27, 2010
“A Feast of Judgment”
Daniel 5: 1 - 6 & 25 - 28/Matthew 22: 1 - 14
Sunday, June 27, 2010
I hope you noticed that our two Scripture Readings are about feasts or banquets. The first is the ill-fated feast Belshazzar gave for 1000 of his nobles. The second is a fictional wedding feast that is described in a parable that Jesus told.
These two passages have something else in common besides being about feasts. The theme of judgment by God is also predominant in both passages.
The judgment is perhaps more obvious in the passage from Daniel. In that passage, Belshazzar, whom Daniel describes as the last king of Babylon, had a great feast for 1,000 of his nobles. At the feast, they drank a lot and decided to drink from the silver and gold cups, pitchers, and bowls that the Babylonian army had taken from the temple in Jerusalem when they destroyed it. These vessels had been dedicated to be used in Worship at the Temple. Belshazzar desecrated them by drinking from them and giving them to his nobles and wives and concubines so they could drink from them. They also used the sacred vessels as they offered toasts to their Gods, whom they believed had given them victory over the God of Israel.
At that point a human-like hand appeared in the hall and wrote on the wall. All present were stunned and afraid. This was a pretty spooky thing, something out of “Ghostbusters”. The hand wrote Babylonian words equivalent to our words Counted, Final Count, Weighed, and Divided.
The Wisemen were sent for so they could make some sense of this and explain it to the king. They eventually called in the evidently retired chief Wiseman Daniel, who had been one of the Jewish captives years before.
He told the King that the hand and the words on the wall were portents that God’s judgments on Babylon were about to be executed. The king and his kingdom were found in the negative balance in God’s ledger and God was about to remove the king and make the Babylonians subjects of the Medo-Persians.
King Belshazzar’s feast had become a feast of judgment for God.
It is not difficult to determine why this story is still a part of Jewish Literature. It fits in with the general theme of the deliverance stories in the OT. As one of the Jewish-American comedians used to say “All the Jewish holidays have the same theme ‘They tried to kill us, we won, let’s celebrate!’”. It is often pleasant to recognize God’s judgments of someone else. It is not so pleasant to be visited by God’s judgments against ourselves.
That is part of the reason why Jesus told parables. Some of the parables describe God’s coming judgments against the Pharisees and the residents of Judea. These judgments were spoken of in parables so some of the people might let their guard down and not reject the judgments out of hand. I had a professor in Seminary who said that some of Jesus’ parables are like a little, unthreatening dog who approaches with a wagging tale, likes you to pet him on the head, then goes around behind you and bites you. The parable of the Wedding Banquet was one of those parables.
The opening theme of the parable was familiar to the Jews of Jesus’ day. They all expected that when the Messiah came and started his Kingdom, there would be a great banquet, a wedding banquet where the Messiah would become the husband of Israel. At this expected banquet the Jews would be seated with their Messiah, and the Gentiles and unreligious Jews would be excluded.
So when Jesus started a story about a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son, they understood he would be talking about God and his people, the Jews. But the story took a weird turn really fast.
It was the custom in those days to set a date for a feast or a banquet without a time specified. Early on that day, messengers were sent to those who had already agreed to come reminding them that this was the day. When all was ready, messengers were sent again to tell them that it was now time to come.
In our parable, the first invitation had been given days before and the intended guests had consented to attend the banquet on the stated day. But now the day had come and as the King sent the messengers out with the second notice, that today was the day, the intended guests evidently let it be known that they would not be coming.
This was unheard of, and the host would not know how to respond, so the third invitation was sent telling them that the time had come for them to go to the palace. They still did not come. Some went to their farms, others to their businesses, while others showed their open contempt for the king by mistreating some of his messengers, even going so far as to kill some of them.
The king then responded in two ways. First, he sent troops to kill those who had killed his messengers and to burn their city.
But the wedding feast was still prepared and the hall was empty. So the second response of the king was to invite others, people they came across in the streets and in general “everyone”.
So those who hated the king were destroyed, others who were invited but did not come were excluded, and the hall was filled with guests for the wedding.
Some of the people who heard this parable that day may have understood what Jesus was predicting. He was the Son of the great King, Almighty God. The Jewish people had been invited to come into his eternal kingdom, into the palace of God. But for one reason or another many of them refused to heed the call to be with Jesus.
The messengers who were first sent on the day of the banquet probably represent John the Baptist, the 12, and the 70 who were sent out by Jesus while he was alive. The time when the banquet was ready probably represents the time after the resurrection of Jesus when the plan of salvation was accomplished. The messengers sent out after that probably represent the Apostles, the first Missionaries and the first Christians. Some of them were killed, the first two martyrs were James the brother of John and Stephen the Deacon.
This parable and the one very much like it in the gospel of Luke became very important to the early Christians, especially Gentile Christians. It was a reminder to them that they were not the first ones invited to join God’s Kingdom. The Jews had been invited first, and many of them had refused to come into the Kingdom through Jesus.
But as I said earlier, it is a human trait to revel in righteous judgments against others, so some Christians have found satisfaction in God’s justice in the rejection of the Jews and even in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD that was predicted in this parable.
But we need to be careful. It seems as if the Lord was aware of our perversities as we regard the justice meted our to others, because the parable continues.
The king came into the banquet hall and saw that there was a person there who was not wearing proper wedding guest attire. The king asked him how he got in without the proper attire. It seems possible that wedding garments were provided at the door for all those last minute guests. There is a historic precedent of a middle eastern king who provided wedding robes for his guests at his Son’s wedding.
Now remember, the people who were attending the wedding just happened to be on the streets when the messengers came to invite them. These were ordinary people, among them were probably some homeless folks. They did not need to be any thing special to get in. But once they were in they were expected to wear the proper garments.
You do not have to be anyone special or behave in any special way to come into Christ’s kingdom, but there are things that God expects of you once you do come into the Kingdom, once you do accept Jesus as your savior. Since God is Truth you are expected to be truthful. Since God is loving you are expected to love others. God loves us and accepted us into his kingdom as we were when we came to Christ. But he loves us too much to let us stay that way. He wants to make us more like Him. IF you claim to be a Christian and are not becoming more Christ-like, something is wrong.
The guest without the wedding robe was judged harshly. He was thrown out into the darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. It does not sound like a place where any of us want to be. So we had better be tending to our wedding robes, we had better be making our lives more like Christ’s so when Christ returns we will be ready for his great banquet and His great kingdom.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at June 27, 2010 04:13 PM