A kangaroo kept escaping from his enclosure at the zoo.  Knowing that he could hop high, the zoo officials put up a ten foot fence.  He was out the next morning, just roaming around the zoo.  A twenty foot fence was put up.  The next morning, the zoo officials found the kangaroo was wandering the zoo.  When the fence was forty feet high, a camel in the next enclosure asked the kangaroo, “How high do you think they’ll go?”  The kangaroo said, “About a thousand feet, unless somebody locks the gate at night!”

That clever kangaroo had found a way out of his situation, and unless the zoo keepers learned to lock the gate, they would never keep him in.  By way of contrast, in our text for today the Lord Jesus was talking about the exact opposite – not about getting out but getting in.  He was talking about opening the Gate to Heaven and granting free entrance into the kingdom.  And yet, strangely enough, His own people didn’t seem to want that.  Like the kangaroo, they had found a way out of God’s invitation and nothing could keep them in.  Such was the thought behind Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet.

In the parable Jesus likens the grace of our Heavenly Father to that of a man, who was preparing a Wedding Feast for his son.  He spared no expense, providing a fattened calf for the pleasure of his guests.  In the same way, God has held nothing back, withheld no good gift from you and me, including His own Son.  Instead, He has lavished us with all the bounty of Heaven, all the riches of His love, all the joy and hope, comfort and peace that His heavenly storehouse can hold.  And He freely extends His gracious invitation to everyone.  All are to called to come to the Feast.  

Now, it was the Jewish custom in Palestine, when you held a feast, to send out the initial invitation months in advance, listing the date and place.  But when the actual day arrived, you would send out a servant to announce the time and personally invite the guests to come.  Unfortunately, it was at that point in the story that the guests rejected the offer.  Our text says they paid no attention to the invitation.  The Greek text literally says: ‘they couldn’t care less.’  They were more interested in their work and their desire for earthly gain.  What a sad commentary that is on the greed of our sinful human nature.  In our desire to find fulfillment and satisfaction, we often pursue our careers with all our time and energy, devoting everything to the gaining of material possessions, at the loss of what really matters – the spiritual and eternal treasures of God’s kingdom.   

As a matter of fact, in St. Luke’s rendering of this parable, he tells us that many of the guests began to make excuses for why they couldn’t come.  And it’s interesting to note that the word excuse actually means: ‘to beg,’ kind of like our expression, ‘to beg off of something,’ which is to say, they just didn’t want to do it.  Sadly, in the same way all too often you and I make excuses for why we’re not more involved in God’s kingdom.  We rationalize why we can’t take time for worship and the Sacraments, prayer and Bible study, work in the church and service to the world.  But in so doing we trample God’s grace underfoot and insult His wonderful invitation.   

You know, that’s exactly what the guests in our text did.  They mistreated the king’s servants, a word that means: ‘to shamefully humiliate.’  Worse than that, they murdered them.  But then, that’s exactly what our sin is like too – not only our sins of commission, the wrong things we do, but also our sins of omission, the good things we fail to do.  You see, our sin is not only a shameful mistreatment of God and His Word, in all actuality it’s murder.  For it was our iniquity that hung Jesus on the cross and murdered Him.  No wonder, then that the King was enraged – so much so that He came and burned their city and put them to death.  This was Jesus’ subtle prophecy of the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., because of their rejection of the Messiah.  But in reality it’s a prophecy of the eternal judgment to come, the same judgment we all deserve for our sin – to be burned to death in hell for all eternity.

Fortunately, though, God does not treat us in the same way that we mistreat Him.  He does not give up on us so easily like we do Him.  Instead, He keeps on extending His gracious invitation to us, not once or twice, but over and over again in the Word and the Sacraments.  He even went so far as to send His own Son in the flesh to personally bring us the invitation of forgiveness, life and salvation.  We see this pictured in our text, where the servants went out to the street corners and dragged the people in.  These were the places that we frequented by the beggars, the poor and the destitute, and such were you and I.  But Jesus came and took us by the hand and dragged us into the safety into His heavenly kingdom.  That’s what happened when He died on the cross to erase all our sin and iniquity.  He excused all our excuses and put an end to our guilt and shame once and for all.  In other words, God loved us so much that He would rather hurt Himself than hurt you and me.  He would rather give up His Son to save us.  Jesus chose to die so that you and I might live.

However, Jesus didn’t stop there.  He also has clothed us with the spotless garment of His righteousness to make us worthy to come into His Banquet Hall.  You see, it was the custom in those days for the host to provide the guests with wedding garments.  This would have been especially necessary for the guests at this particular banquet, because they had been brought in directly from the streets.  They had nothing but dingy, grimy rags.  And without the proper clothes they couldn’t attend the feast.  That’s why the man in our text, who refused to wear the wedding garments that had been provide, was kicked out into the outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In a way it reminds me of the woman, who was getting ready for bed one night, while her young daughter was watching her preparations. She had just washed her face and was applying beauty cream, when her daughter asked what she was doing.  The woman explained that it was to make Momma beautiful.  The little girl thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “They lied to you, Mommy.”

Although there is nothing in this world that can truly make us beautiful, Jesus came from that other world, the heavenly world to make us beautiful and precious in His sight.  He removed the dingy, grimy rags of our sinful flesh and robed us with His blood and righteousness, so that we are pure and perfect in His eyes.  And He did that in our Baptism, when we were called to the Feast.  The Holy Spirit called us by the Gospel, enlightened us with His gifts and brought us to saving faith in Jesus.  And each and every day He sanctifies and keeps us in that true faith, through the Means of Grace, as He cleanses us of all the spots and blemishes of our sin and clothes us with Jesus’ Holiness to cover up all our shame.  Without the garment of Jesus’ righteousness we are lost, like the man in our text.  But by the free gift of faith we can come right in and feast on the rich foods He has prepared for us – love, joy and peace, forgiveness, life and salvation.

You might say that Jesus is like the royal cupbearer, whose job it was to taste the king’s food and drink and make sure it wasn’t poisoned.  Only in this case the roles have been reversed.  Jesus, the king, took the cup from us and tasted the bitter agony of death, removing all the poisonous curse of sin, so that you and I, His servants might live eternally.  He swallowed up death and hell itself and now feeds us with redemption and life.  That’s what happens every time that we come to the Sacrament of the Altar.  Jesus is the Host, who meets us here and feeds us the Feast of Forgiveness.  He nourishes us with Himself, His very own body and blood shed on the tree of the cross to grant us remission of sins.  That is the Feast of God – a foretaste of the Feast to come in Heaven!

In January of 2001, Canada’s first Ice Hotel was opened.  That’s right – the Ice Hotel.  It’s open every year from January to April just outside of Quebec.  It’s a hotel made out of 4,500 tons of snow and 250 tons of ice, and it costs around $750,000 to build each year.  It has beds made of ice, an ice bar, two ice art galleries and an ice cinema.  Before it opened, 1,000 people had already booked rooms.  But those wanting to stay need to get in quickly, because the Ice Hotel only lasts about three months before it melts.

Just as there is a sense of urgency to getting into that hotel, so there is an urgency to getting into God’s kingdom.  Right now the gate stands wide open.  The King has gladly extended His invitation to us in the Gospel.  There are no conditions or qualifications we have to meet to come to the Feast.  We are free to come right in as a free gift, simply through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior.  But when Jesus comes back again, it will be too late.  All those who are not properly clothed will be kicked out.  That’s why we need to be urgently about the business of bringing people into the Banquet Hall.  God wants us to go out into the highways and byways and let people know about the Feast.  After all, there are many people out there who know nothing about the party.  They don’t even know they’re invited.  And it’s our job to invite them to come in.  And we do that by inviting our friends to Church and Sunday School with us, by talking with people about our faith in Jesus, by visiting those who are sick and hurting and comforting them with the Gospel.  May God the Holy Spirit inspire and empower us to do that daily, so that the feast is full, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.