Who’s at the Table?

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.  Matthew 22:11-12  NIV

How did you get in here – We often read this parable as if it is about God’s gracious invitation to the undeserving.  What we fail to notice are the requirements of admission.  Thomas Sowell wrote: “Guests are people you invite to your home.  Gate crashers are people who come without being invited.”[1]  His point is political.  When he wrote these words more than a decade ago, he probably had no idea that the southern border of the United States would essentially no longer exist.  Today America is experiencing what Europe has faced for quite a long time—the invasion of gate crashers, literally.  No one invited these people but they come anyway.  Well, maybe that statement isn’t quite true.  They are “invited” by the deliberate ineptness of the government and at the tremendous expense to real citizens.  Their “invitation” is simply the lack of legal enforcement, and it matters not what the excuse.  A government that refuses to uphold its own laws is not a government of its citizens.  It is a government of intentional chaos.

Rather than investigate this collapse of a society built on law and order, I’d like us to think about the gate crasher in Yeshua’s parable.  Wedding guests, even last-minute ones, still have requirements.  You don’t show up inappropriately.  If you want to be part of the celebration, you follow the rules and the expected norms.  Otherwise, frankly, you don’t belong.  To come to the party unwilling to honor the host and the other guests is to show disdain for the invitation and the people who did arrive appropriately.  Such a person can’t really be tolerated.  He insults everyone.  Sowell draws a political implication which seems to have other implications:

“Both legal and illegal immigrants have come here primarily to work and make a better life for themselves and their families.  But a country requires more than workers.  It requires people who are citizens not only in name but in commitment. . .  Today’s immigrant activists and the politicians who kowtow to them have just the opposite agenda, to keep foreigners foreign and to make other Americans accept and adjust to that.  It will be a national tragedy if they succeed.”[2]

Now I want to point to a spiritual implication.  The God of Israel has opened the door of His Kingdom to those who were not originally on the guest list.  He has graciously extended His desire to celebrate to us, the outsiders, and we have responded, gratefully showing up at the great Wedding Feast.  But somehow we Westerners thought that showing up was all we needed to do.  We forgot that coming to this party also meant honoring the host.  We showed up announcing that we had our invitation but we didn’t need to adhere to any expectations.  We could do what we wanted, enjoy the hospitality, and never bother with the social protocols.  In fact, we did worse than simply refuse to dress appropriately.  We told other invitees that they didn’t have to honor the host either.  All they had to do was accept the invitation to get in.  “Praise God, grace is free.”

The host, of course, would be devastatingly humiliated.  “How could you join my celebration and think you could eat whatever you want, dress however you please, offer blessings any way you wished, and ignore all the wedding expectations?  When did you become so crass as to suggest that all the norms of a great wedding feast don’t apply any more?  No, sir.  Out you go.  This feast is for grateful invitees who want to join according to the expectations of Moses and the prophets.  No, sir, I don’t think you fit.”

Isn’t it like showing up at the wedding and insisting you don’t need to honor God’s protocol established through Moses?  Even Yeshua recognized that fallacy.  A wedding requires more than guests.  It requires commitment to the spirit of the party.  Entry is not free!  Some will be expelled.

Topical Index: immigrants, wedding feast, invitation, expectation, Moses, Matthew 22:11-12

[1] Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America and other controversial essays (RENA, 2010). p. 119.

[2] Ibid., p. 124.