Sermon 10092011

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer!!  AMEN!!

Let us pray!  Jesus Christ, on the day of our baptism, we were given the wedding robe that shows Your entrance into our life and claiming us as Your own.  May we daily be reminded of our being claimed and encounter You personally every day.  For You came to save us and welcome us into Your kingdom wearing the garment of our salvation bought by Your death on the cross for all of us saints here at Emmanuel.  AMEN.
For those of you who are movie fans, when Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire arrived on screens we saw the transformation of a wizard from a young boy to a young man.  During the movie, we also saw another character transform from a ‘geeky’ know it all book worm into a beautiful young woman.  When Hermione Grainger stepped onto the screen in the evening dress for the ball, everyone was taken back how stunning she was dressed simply but elegantly in the dress.

In today’s Gospel, we hear of a banquet put on by a king for the wedding of his son.  What is required, like the ball in Harry Potter, is not just daily informal attire, but special garments or robes fit for the feast being prepared.  These robes would be ‘brilliantly’ colored, usually white and adorned with gold or another highly extravagant adornment suitable for the class of the individual, but it would be clear to anyone that this was no ‘ordinary robe’, it was special.

Thus, in the Gospel, when the king sees an individual “not wearing a wedding robe” he immediately is suspicious and asks, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”  Being king and knowing all the social protocols, this was not right.  The man whom the king had spoken to was speechless.  And this clearly was a sign, he was not invited to the feast, had entered by nefarious means and probably meant harm and not good.

So the king dispatches his attendants saying, “‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”  And thus we see that if one is not properly adorned for the wedding feast, they are not welcome to partake of the wedding feast prepared by the king.

This lesson from Matthew is a metaphor for us today.  You see God has prepared the wedding feast for us today.  Every time we gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, those who come to receive the Precious Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior need to be adorned with the proper attire.  Now you would rightly say, we don’t have a dress code here at Emmanuel, we welcome all who come whether in their scrubs from working in the hospital, the field with bib overalls or work boots from checking wells or driving the grain cart or combine during harvest, to whatever may be the only clothes we own.  Everyone is welcome.  Yet, the ‘wedding robe’ is a metaphor of what we have been clothed with at our baptism.

You see, when the Water and Word, intimately connect with one another when the words, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” are spoken at the font as the Water is poured over the infant, child or adult, God clothes us with our ‘wedding robe’.  This is a spiritual clothing that doesn’t leave us, but protects us and shows that we are claimed by God and what His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ has done for each and every one of us.  We no longer are only sinner in need of saving, we are now as Luther says, Simul justus et peccator ‘simultaneous saint and sinner’ redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ.  We are now as Jesus says, the ‘chosen’ who now partake of the precious Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior at His High Feast.  We with the ‘wedding robe’ given to us in our Baptism into His death and resurrection now partake of with all the saints the life giving gift of Jesus Christ for all of us saints here at Emmanuel.  AMEN.