"My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?" Mt 22:12
Being disingenuous, shady or dishonest is never an acceptable Gospel stance and Matthew's parable of the king who invited family, friends and eventually street people to a wedding banquet is a good example of this.
When those first invited to the wedding find a variety of excuses, the king tells his servants to go to the highways and byways and invite anyone they encounter. Determined to have a fitting wedding celebration for his son, the King surprises us when he sees someone without a proper wedding garment and instructs his servants to bind him hand and foot and cast him into the darkness. What message can Jesus be offering us? After all, the fellow was recruited from the street, how can the king expect him to have a proper wedding garment?
Some scripture commentators remind us that it was often the custom to offer a late arriving guest a wedding garment, but everyone would have known that the bottom line when going to a wedding was to wear clean clothes. That someone would arrive without taking time to clean up was a serious offense to any host but especially to the king.
Jesus' point is clear. When being invited to enter God's reign, gratitude dictates that we ask God to free us from our faults and purify out hearts so that we might witness to the Gospel and the power of God's love with joy. Accepting an invitation to be a disciple demands we "clean up"our lives.
Today, ask the Lord to free you of an deeply embedded fault.
For what are you most grateful about your call to be a disciple?
Lately I have been thinking of the relationship between ministry and discipleship. I think that what I am most grateful for is the intertwining of the two in my life...Ministry is teaching me what it means to be a disciple. And I am learning mostly from others who are true disciples and are in love with ministry. They are showing me that serving the work serves the people and brings us all to encounters with Christ.
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