I believe most of us are pleased to receive an invitation to a wedding. Wedding invitations usually come with a reply card, and a stamped envelope, and it’s good to reply as soon as you know whether or not you can come. People have to plan—and these events often come with a hefty price tag.

When the day comes, we dress up for the occasion, showing respect for the couple. (Although what "dressed up" means has certainly changed in recent years!)

Things have not really changed since Jesus’ day. Even then, it was good form to respond to the invitation, and good form to dress up for the wedding.

Every parable of Jesus has something unexpected in it—this story of the royal wedding feast has two:

1. The entire guest list declines to attend. Even today, that would be a shocker! Why would people refuse such a gracious invitation?

The story takes a bit of a detour, as the king orders his the guests’ city to be burned down—all happening with the feast prepared—all that roast beef sitting getting cold! (This probably alludes to the destruction of the temple in AD 70.) New guests are found, as the slaves gather people in from the streets, "both good and bad." But one person comes without the appropriate garment—and the king orders him expelled from the feast.

And there’s the second twist:

2. When the king has gone to such lengths to bring everyone to the banquet, why then is the man ejected? Was the invitation not open to all?

Both of these twists in the story stand as challenges to the church of today and to us as people of the church.

We would truly be shocked if we sent out an invitation to a wedding, only to have almost everyone decline. But somehow, we have lost our ability to be shocked by the indifference so many people show to our invitation to join the banquet at God’s table. It was not always so: in relatively recent distant times, the vast majority of Canadians paid at least lip service to the Christian faith. Today, many people, even within our own families, have chosen to attend to other business rather than to accept God’s gracious invitation.

At the planning process session this last Thursday evening, one of the participants spoke of the church’s loss of influence in society and in the corridors of power. I have heard that from other people in other contexts, including from both the former and the current Primate. A case in point: the difficulty we had in getting the government’s attention over the Residential Schools situation.

Many people—perhaps even society as a whole—appear to have rejected the invitation, and we may and do lament that fact. But on this Thanksgiving weekend, let us rejoice and give thanks that many others have indeed heard the call, and have gathered at the wedding feast of the lamb.

There are many others—out on the main streets, "both good and bad," whom God desires to come to the feast. All these are invited to come, to rejoice, and to be fed. Our task is to keep extending the invitation—and to make the guests welcome when they arrive.

Every week we extend this same invitation:

And yet, we are faced with that second twist: just coming does not appear to be sufficient! Appropriate preparation is required. We need to "dress up" for the occasion. We also need to figure out what that means.

God invites us, because God loves us: unconditionally, just the way we are. But God also loves us too much to want us to stay the way we are.

If we know Jesus is present, let us then present ourselves in an appropriate fashion. We are not here because we have earned, or somehow deserve it, but out of pure grace. Being in the presence of Christ is a gift, pure and simple. It is of the nature of a gift that no repayment is expected, or in this case, even possible. It is also of the nature of a gift that it invites us into a new relationship with the giver.

The invitation is a call to change—to turn our lives around, to be reconciled to each other, and to present ourselves at God’s table as people who are prepared and determined to walk life anew. We hear this invitation in our liturgy, in both the BCP and the BAS. The invitation is made to all, on only one basis: that we are prepared to put on the wedding garment of repentance and reconciliation.

God has invited us to this feast. Let us come to the table as a reconciled and repentant people, rejoicing in the love that has invited us, drawn us in, and bound us together. And then let us go forth to share this love, extending the invitation to all, that they too may know the presence of Christ in their lives.

And above all let us give thanks that our God is present at this table, and at all our tables.