For any visitors, whether you are joining us here in person at our Delran worship site or online via our live-stream, welcome to Resurrection Parish. This week we will be beginning a new message series called “Staying Power.” In this series we will be looking at how we grow by the commitments that we make. Specifically, we will be looking at how we mature as Christians, in our Christ-likeness, by the commitments that we make and keep. In this series we will look at the power of commitment and the steps we invite people to take as a church. These are commitments or habits that must be practiced over and over again. We will talk about both the commitments and the benefits of those commitments. You can’t be committed to everything but it is important to be committed to the right things.
I am sure that nearly all of us have made New Year’s Resolutions. Last January I made a resolution to practice playing my ukulele every day. I did pretty well for about the first three weeks. Then the excuses started: “my meeting tonight ran longer than expected,” “I am feeling really tired tonight,” or “Oh, there is something on TV I really want to watch.” Long story short, I am really no better at playing the ukulele today than I was last January.
Commitments, and excuses for not keeping them are all a part of life and the tension between the two never completely goes away. Marriage, family, work. Life asks a lot of us. Church can fall into that category too. Spiritual commitments are a part of life as well. At least they can be, & I would argue they should be.
We grow spiritually by the commitments we make. This is a series about how to grow in your faith and as a follower of Jesus Christ and the commitments we want to help you make in order to do that.
Now, you might be asking, “Why does spiritual growth matter anyway?” I am going to take the position that without a commitment to growing spiritually you are actually depriving yourself.
Spiritual growth empowers you to identify your purpose and to accomplish what God has created you to do. Spiritual growth enables you to become the best version of you, the person God created you to be, the person you want to be. Spiritual growth encourages you to love the people around you the way you want to love them but often fail to. Spiritual growth allows you
to love and care for yourself in a way that is healthy and helpful. In fact, your most important objective in life could be to grow spiritually.
That’s why we should be open to and interested in spiritual growth. But being open to growth is not enough. There’s a second part. And, the second part is the crucial part. Anyone can be open to growth, to actually grow you’ve got to make a commitment.
Staying Power is absolutely necessary for spiritual growth because there are obstacles to growing spiritually. Everything will conspire against that commitment: work, kids sports, family obligations, TV, Twitter. Spiritual maturity requires a long obedience in the same direction.
So to look at this we are going to look at today’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew. Again, Jesus is telling a parable, “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son” (Mt 22:2).
So Jesus is saying that the Kingdom of God is like a big party. Often we don’t want to commit to spiritual exercises, because they have been made to seem dour and depressing. This was never how Jesus described life with God. Instead he chose to compare the spiritual life to a party.
Like our own culture, weddings were a big deal, a very big deal, even longer and more elaborate, at least in some ways. A wedding feast thrown by a king would obviously be the grandest kind of affair in the life of the community, everyone would want to be included.
But that’s not what happens. We are told, “He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast but they refused to come” (Mt 22:3). It’s important to recognize, as we’ve mentioned before in looking at the parables, just how unlikely are the scenarios they describe. They’re so unlikely, that those listening to them would have laughed out loud.
Anyway, the king refuses to take “no” for an answer, “A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: ‘Behold I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.’ Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them and killed him” (Mt 22:4-6).
This is an absurd story, of course, but it is an allegory, a story in which all the character and details represent something else, something in real life. In this case Jesus is summing up the history of Israel and how they had historically ignored God’s invitation and mistreated God’s prophets.
The story continues: the king, undeterred with this ingratitude and hostility, perseveres in his desire to throw a great party for his son and fill his party with guests says: “’The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests” (Mt 22:8-10).
In order to fill the feast, the servants go out and invite anyone they can find. They bring in both good and bad alike. They do not discriminate.
So the good news is that the party is finally filled but then there’s a twist in the story and a turn of events. “But when the king came to meet the guests he saw a man there did not dress in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence” (Mt 22:11-12).
The implication here is that the king not only would have provided the feast for his guests, but would have also provided wedding clothes, like party favors. This was sometimes a custom, but would have been necessary for the guests at this banquet since they were brought in directly from the streets. Evidently, this one particular guest refused to put on the new garment.
And so the parable ends sadly: “Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth’” (Mt 22:13).
I guess you could say he’s disinvited to the party. Just because the king didn’t like the way he was dressed? No, because he refused to put in any effort whatsoever to participate in the feast. He refused to commit to the party in even the simplest way possible, by simply changing his clothes. He came as a consumer, without commitment.
God invites us to be a part of his kingdom on earth, to be a part of what he is already doing. And he even offers us the grace we need to accept the invitation and grow spiritually. BUT, grace is not opposed to effort; in fact, it builds on our effort.
As a parish, we want to help you do what you can do to live as a follower of Christ. So, over the next few weeks we are going to look at the commitments we think are vital for spiritual growth. Those spiritual commitments are: Serving,Tithing, Engaging in a small group, Practicing prayer and sacraments and Sharing your faith – STEPS. These are commitments we want to help you to make and keep in order to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ, and we’re going to be talking more about each of these steps over the course of this series.
But, not all at once: it’s a step-by-step process, and in no particular order. But really the only step we want you to take today is to commit to this series.
We’re all invited to the party. And you can come as you are. You’re just not suppose to stay that way.