that guy in the gym shorts......

It was a wedding banquet.........and this guy received an invitation he had no reason to expect.  The King's messengers invited him to the wedding banquet of the King's son, and the guy in the gym shorts decides.........

Well, truth is, we don't exactly know, and of course, he wasn't wearing gym shorts in the Matthew telling of this tale.  But this guy shows up at a wedding banquet not remotely prepared, dressed inappropriately, or as the text says.....without a wedding robe.

Now you and I don't know much from wedding robes, so I envisioned him in gym shorts.  He came to banquet, but half-heartedly, tucking it in between mowing his lawn and getting in his daily workout.  It appears that he didn't take this invitation terribly serious, and wasn't going to completely disrupt his schedule in order to stop by some party.

If you were wondering, yes, we are supposed to give some thought to the implications of this story to our own relationship with the King: God and the Son: Jesus.  When we talk about the judgment imposed on the gym shorts guy, we must make clear that our work isn't the merit on which we are invited to God's feast.  Yet, apparently, there is work to be done on our part.

Somehow, the invitation is intended to be transformative just like an encounter with Jesus is intended to transform our lives.  The blind man wants to be able to see again.....Jesus makes it happen....and then how does his life change?  What is Jesus' continuing role in his life?  In his business decisions?  In his forgiving of his neighbor?  In his generosity?  In his prayer life?

Our wedding robe is our baptismal gown....that covering in Jesus Christ calls us into a new way of living, shaped by Jesus and his ministry, and increasingly consistent with the kingdom values that Jesus embodies.  Baptized into our Lord Jesus' death and resurrection is intended to make a difference in our life, and prepare us for on-going life in the kingdom of heaven.

Or we can show up in our gym shorts, ready to move on to the next thing on our schedule.  But apparently, there will come a time when God will no longer issue invitations to the huddled masses and will begin separating out those who show no interest in the kingdom life.  Like the gym shorts guy at table 29.

H Richard Niebuhr once wrote in The Kingdom of God in America (1937) that too often the message of a liberal social gospel is "A God without wrath brought a [humanity] without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."  

Or, as I would say, we need to take the King's invitation way more seriously; there is never going to be another one just like it.