Royal Wedding

This weekend over 3 billion people witnessed (estimate based on yahoo news) the wedding of Price William and Kate Middleton. Almost 2000 guests witnessed the exchanging of vows in Westminster Chapel. What I found interesting was the choice of who was invited to the event and who was excluded. While many high profile people were invited a number of important political people were excluded including President and Mrs. Obama, the president of France and two former prime ministers of Great Britain. Additionally the Syrian ambassador was uninvited to the royal wedding due to Syrian government using lethal force against pro-democracy protesters.

Jesus talks about a wedding banquet and continued to teach on the subject of who is invited and who is ultimately excluded from the banquet in the third book of the New Testament entitled

the Gospel of Luke. You can read the story in Luke 14:15-24. It tells of a banquet where people are invited but are too busy to attend. So the banquet giver invites anyone and everyone who will accept his invitation to come and attend the feast.

The wedding banquet motif is further enhanced with another story Jesus told found in the first

book of the New Testament, Matt 22:1-10. In this story the king throws a party for the wedding of his son but the guests not only don’t want to come they absolutely refuse to come, mistreat the king’s servants and some are even killed. So the king invites anyone and everyone (other than the original invitees) to come and celebrate the wedding. It appears that he goes so far as to even provide garments for some of the less fortunate guests to wear to the banquet.

Both of these stories help to describe the coming Kingdom of God and the wedding feast that will one day take place. There is coming a royal wedding the likes of which will blow away the pomp and circumstance of William & Kate’s.

Bible calls this the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Rev 19:5-9. The church is the bride and Christ the bridegroom. I’m looking forward to day when the bridegroom comes to take his bride to the party!

The celebration will be epic!

Pastor Val