10/11/2026
Here's Deacon Kit's sermon for those missed it on Sunday. It is based on Isaiah 25: 1-9 and Matthew 22: 1-14.
Today, I am going to start by telling you about my grandmother Edith Armstrong Aicholtz, my mom’s mom. Although she passed away in 2011 when she was 97 years old, I do have this picture of the two of us from the late 90s/early 00s. And you can tell tell how old that picture is because I have brown hair and beard in it.
I also have another picture of my grandmother and her family from the 1950s. It show her with all her brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives so it’s basically my grandparents and geat aunts and great uncles. Everyone in that pictures has passed away, and my grandmother was the last one of her siblings to die. I remember when she found out that my Aunt Mary, her last remaining sibling, had died. I could tell that she was really sad. She said, “Does this mean that I’m all alone?” I tried to comfort her by saying, “Nana, you are not alone; They’re all part of the Communion of Saints. Plus they’re all at a wedding banquet waiting for you to get there.” I hope that offered her some comfort.
Today, we read the Gospel lesson that I was referencing when I talk to my grandmother. The first part of it is Jesus’ description of heaven. Now this isn’t a literal description; heaven isn’t going to to literally be an eternal wedding banquet. After all, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” If you were a student in my 7th grade English class, I would explain that this is a metaphor, which means that we are comparing two unlike things without using the words “like” or “as” so that we can see similarities between them.
But why does Jesus use a metaphor instead of just yelling us exactly what heaven is like? I don’t really know, but I have a guess. And just so you know this guess is just based on my personal opinion. I have not read any theological text explaining it. You may someday come across a preacher or scholar who says something completely different. However, I think that part of the reason that Jesus uses a metaphor instead of telling us exactly what heaven is like is because right now our mortal minds are limited. Our consciousness is stuck in these physical corruptible bodies that are part of sinful human existence. Because our minds are physically limited, we cannot really know exactly what heaven is like. But someday we will. When the Resurrections occurs, we will be transformed into perfect beings, and our consciousness will not be limited to our physical senses. Until that time, we will have to have Jesus’ metaphor to understand what heaven is like.
And Jesus tells us that heaven is like a wedding banquet. For us in the 21st century, that is sort of like a wedding reception. As far as I am concerned that is the fun part of the modern wedding ceremony. I’ve even had clergy agree with me. About fifteen years ago when one of my former co-workers got married at the end of the ceremony, the priest told her husband to hurry up and kiss the bride so that “we can all go party.” Generally speaking, that is what happens at a wedding reception. The guests enjoy some good food, good music, and good company. Often a modern wedding reception lasts at least the rest of the day and sometimes long into the night. When my best friend from high school got married, his reception lasted well into the night. In fact, I don’t know how long it went. Some of the wedding party wanted to keep going late into the night, but I was so exhausted from the day that collapsed in my hotel room.
In Jesus’ time, wedding banquets were different. They didn’t just last for the rest of the day; they lasted for days! It was not uncommon for them to last a week. And it was not just for the family and friends of the couple getting married. The whole community was invited to the banquet with the groom’s family being responsible for all the food and hospitality. And people think that modern weddings are expensive. Can you imagine having to feed and house the entire City of Little Falls for a week just because you were getting married?
Luckily, we don’t have to do that. But for God, hosting a wedding banquet would be easy. For this heavenly wedding banquet that we will experience, God is that head of the groom’s family. He is going to supply us with all the food and the hospitality that we will need. It will not just be for the rest of the day, or for one night, or even for a week. The wedding banquet that is the Kingdom of Heaven will last for eternity.
The guest list for this event will be impressive too. The whole community is invited. Isaiah tells us today that at the end of time, God will gather all peoples onto His mountain for a “feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” This means that everyone in the world is invited to God’s feast. Our ethncities and nationalities will not matter. After all in Genesis 1:27, it says that humans are created in the image of God. It doesn’t say that only certain groups are created in His image. We all are! Also Isaiah tells us that at this feast, God will end all sorrow and troubles so when we get to the Kingdom of Heaven, we are all going to be happy and have no sorrow.
In Jesus’ parable, the king has his servants go out into the streets and gather anyone that they can find when the initial guests do not come. Now we might find it strange that someone wouldn’t want to come to a celebration, but the king does get others to come. In fact, our reading says that both the good and the bad came to the wedding banquet and the hall was filled. Then the king comes to see who is there. He notices this one man who is not wearing a wedding robe and he has that man thrown out of the wedding banquet. That might seem odd to us. After all, this guy was just invited and probably didn’t know that he was going to a wedding banquet that day. He probably didn’t have time to put on the right clothes. Why would the king be angry with this man? All Jesus tell us at the end of the parable is “Many are called, but few are chosen.” What does He mean?
Well, everyone is called by God, but are all of us ready to come to Him? We all should be ready for God. That’s what are faith is about. There is a story from Martin Luther where someone asks him what he would do if he knew that the world would end tomorrow. In the story, Luther replied that if the world was going to end tomorrow, he would plant a tree. That may seem odd, but Luther explained that we should always be prepared for the end because we don’t know when its going to come. We should always be living our lives like the end is coming immediately. Luther felt that he would plant a tree in his ordinary life so he would plant a tree even if the world were coming to an end.
And part of our job as Christians is to make sure that all people are prepared for the end. After all in Matthew 28: 19-20, right before He ascends into heaven, Jesus tells His disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Since we are the heirs of His disciples, we still need to follow what Jesus was saying.
Now I am not saying that we all need to go knock on people’s doors and ask them if they have found Jesus and are prepared for the end. Studies have shown that is really the worst way to get people to come to church. Most people start attending a new church because they are invited by a friend, not because a stranger knocks on a door. I am here at Holy Trinity because one of my students invited me to come to her confirmation twenty years ago, and I stayed. But another (and easier) way to get people to be prepared for Jesus is just to be an example. It’s easy to be a nice and kind person.
Despite our call to invite others to the faith, we should not be judgmental about who is prepared and who is not. That is up to God. God decides who get into the banquet that is heaven, not us. We might think that we know what a good person is and does, but ultimately, that is up to God. After all, God says in Isaiah 55: 8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways … For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God gives us His grace as a free gift, and He gives it to who He wants to give it to. It is up to God, not to anyone else.
I do hope that God has decided that all of us get to go to His heavenly banquet. There are many former Holy Trinity parishioners like Charlie Rice, Marty Mayton, and Roger Stock that we would like to see again. Personally, I would like to see my grandmother and my great aunts and uncles again because I miss them. Maybe someday through God’s grace, I will get to introduce you all to them. But for now, let us have faith so that God may give us His gift of grace and let us stay at His heavenly banquet.
AMEN
