Peter J. Storey - "No Party Poopers Allowed" (October 10, 1999)

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Woman	The third reading is from the Gospel According	0:04
	to Saint Matthew, the 22nd chapter.	0:07
	Once more, Jesus spoke to them in parables	0:13
	saying the kingdom of Heaven may be compared	0:18
	to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.	0:22
	He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited	0:28
	to the wedding and they did not want to come.	0:32
	Again, he sent other slaves saying	0:37
	tell those who have been invited look,	0:41
	I have prepared my dinner, my oxen,	0:45
	and my fat calves have been slaughtered	0:48
	and everything is ready, come to the wedding feast.	0:52
	But those who made light of it went away.	0:58
	One to his farm, another to his business,	1:02
	while the rest, seizing his slaves, abused and killed them.	1:07
	The king was enraged.	1:14
	He sent his soldiers and killed those murderers	1:17
	and burned their city.	1:21
	Then he says to his slaves, the wedding feast is ready,	1:24
	but those who were invited were not worthy.	1:29
	Go therefore into the main streets	1:33
	and whoever you find, invite them to the wedding banquet.	1:37
	And those slaves went out into the streets	1:43
	and gathered all whom they found,	1:48
	both the evil and the good, and the wedding banquet	1:51
	was filled with people reclining at table.	1:56
	But when the king came in to see them,	2:02
	he saw there a man not wearing a wedding robe,	2:06
	and he says to him, friend, how did you come in here	2:11
	without a wedding robe?	2:15
	But he was silent, and the king said to the waiters,	2:18
	bind him feet and hands and throw him out	2:24
	into the outer darkness.	2:29
	There, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,	2:32
	for many are invited, but few are chosen.	2:37
	This is word of the Lord.	2:43
Congregation	Praise be to God.	2:46
Man	Let us pray.	2:54
	May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts	2:57
	be acceptable in your sight oh God,	3:01
	our strength and our redeemer, amen.	3:03
	I'm going to preach on the gospel lesson this morning,	3:15
	my friends, and you will doubtless have gathered already	3:18
	that this is a difficult text to preach upon,	3:22
	which is doubtless one of the reasons why Dr. Willerman	3:27
	was so generous with his pulpit this morning.	3:31
	It was also a parable told at a difficult time.	3:38
	Jesus had had these people right up to here.	3:49
	I'm talking about those the Bible refers to as chief priests	3:56
	and elders of the people and scribes and Pharisees	4:00
	and doctors of the law, whatever their title	4:02
	these were the big deals of Israel.	4:05
	He and they are now in direct conflict.	4:12
	He knows that they can do him terrible harm,	4:17
	but the more or less polite debates in the countryside	4:22
	are over.	4:25
	Jesus has marched on Jerusalem,	4:26
	he was thrown their money changers out of the temple,	4:28
	he has virtually taken over the temple	4:32
	and made it his own pulpit, he has welcomed	4:35
	the blind and the crippled and the lame	4:38
	into its portals for the first time.	4:41
	This parable is all about trouble	4:50
	with the insiders of the day.	4:57
	Jesus has already hit them with two very stinging parables	5:05
	and here comes another.	5:12
	Just as there deciding what to do about him	5:17
	and how to quiet him down and whether they can risk	5:19
	arresting him or not, he says to them	5:22
	now tell me, do you want the good news or the bad news?	5:25
	Here it comes.	5:29
	The good news, at least for some people,	5:32
	is that the kingdom of Heaven is really just one big party.	5:37
	I always suspected Jesus was a party person.	5:50
	His first public act according to Sir John	5:55
	is to put his considerable powers	6:00
	at the disposal of a wedding feast.	6:02
	I get the impression that when Jesus and his followers	6:06
	came to any village and arrived there,	6:09
	it was like the circus coming to town.	6:13
	Everything brightened up.	6:17
	Life came with him and with his followers.	6:18
	Tony Campolo, in a book entitled	6:28
	The Kingdom of Heaven is Like a Party,	6:32
	tells thee the story of how he traveled to Honolulu	6:37
	in order to speak at a conference.	6:42
	He arrived there, of course, six hour time difference	6:44
	from the east coast of the United States to Honolulu,	6:47
	he was jet lagged, he woke up in his hotel	6:52
	at about half past two in the morning,	6:55
	he got dressed, went out looking for somewhere	6:57
	where he could get a cup of coffee	7:00
	and he found a little diner.	7:02
	Stopped in there, just one man behind the counter.	7:04
	What would you like?	7:10
	I'd like coffee and donuts and he sits down	7:10
	and he's just about to start eating his donut	7:13
	and drinking his coffee when the doors are flung open	7:15
	and in walk about eight or nine prostitutes	7:18
	off the streets of Honolulu and they've come	7:21
	for their coffee, too, and they pile into the small diner	7:25
	and they're all around him, one his left, one on his right,	7:28
	they're garrulous, they're noisy, they're a bit crude.	7:31
	Just as he's trying to make his getaway,	7:37
	he hears the woman on his left say to the other one,	7:42
	yeah tomorrow's my birthday, 39 tomorrow.	7:44
	And the reply from the woman on his right is,	7:50
	and so what do you want me to do about it?	7:52
	Throw a party and give you a birthday cake?	7:54
	And the one with the birthday says,	7:59
	you don't have to be so rough.	8:00
	I don't need a party, I don't even know	8:02
	what a birthday party is, I've never had one.	8:03
	And Campolo decides there and then what he's going to do.	8:09
	And when these women have left, he goes to the person	8:14
	behind the counter and he says,	8:16
	listen, he says, why don't we throw a party for Agnes.	8:17
	That's her name, isn't it?	8:21
	Tomorrow's her birthday.	8:23
	I'll get the decorations and I'll get a cake.	8:25
	Well, this beefy man behind the counter,	8:28
	a little smile crosses his face,	8:30
	he says, no wait a minute, he says,	8:32
	I'll do the cake, I'll bake it myself.	8:33
	And so, sure enough, half past two the next morning,	8:38
	and Tony Campolo's out of bed again,	8:42
	gets dressed, goes down to the diner	8:44
	with all the decorations he's bought during the day	8:46
	and they begin to set up for a celebration.	8:48
	A number of women come in, and are told the secret,	8:53
	until Agnes and her friend walk in	8:58
	at exactly three AM, and everybody jumps up	9:00
	and screams happy birthday, and they sing to her,	9:04
	and her knees wobble, tears come into her eyes	9:09
	and then, Fred, the man who runs the diner,	9:13
	walks out of the kitchen with a beautiful cake	9:18
	flaming with candles, and Agnes just loses it	9:21
	and breaks down and sobs.	9:24
	Her first birthday party ever.	9:27
	And he says, well, now, Agnes, blow the candles,	9:34
	blow the candles, and she blows them,	9:36
	and then he says, now, cut the cake, cut the cake,	9:38
	and she says, hey do you mind if I don't cut the cake?	9:42
	Do you mind if I just have it for a while?	9:46
	Do you mind if I take it home and just keep it there	9:49
	for a while?	9:52
	Sure do that.	9:53
	She says, I'll be back, I live two blocks down,	9:54
	and off she went.	9:57
	The kingdom of Heaven is like a party,	10:02
	here is a Christian preacher, sociology professor,	10:06
	Tony Campolo, half past two in the morning,	10:08
	having a party with a group of prostitutes.	10:12
	Now Jesus says, is that good news or bad news to you?	10:16
	'Cause that's the way it is.	10:21
	The kingdom of Heaven is about feasting	10:26
	and balloons and joy and welcome and hospitality.	10:28
	Is that good news or bad news to you?	10:33
	The next thing he says is this:	10:40
	he says I've got some news for you,	10:44
	and you've got to decide whether it's good news	10:46
	or bad news for you, some of you won't be there.	10:48
	It's not that you weren't invited.	10:53
	You haven't been snubbed.	10:56
	My father wants and truly longs for everybody to be there,	11:01
	but not even a king can make you say yes.	11:08
	You did the snubbing.	11:14
	You counted yourselves out of the feast.	11:17
	In this parable, the responses to the gospel invitation	11:24
	are very clear.	11:28
	One response is complete indifference.	11:30
	I couldn't care less.	11:33
	A second response is preoccupation.	11:37
	I've got more important things to do with my time	11:40
	than go to your party.	11:42
	And the third is outright hostility.	11:47
	I don't agree with God throwing parties.	11:52
	I'm against it.	11:57
	I won't be there.	11:59
	And the shock of course, is that these responses	12:05
	come not from a callous and careless and faithless world,	12:09
	these responses Jesus makes absolutely clear	12:13
	are the response from the insiders of the religious faith.	12:16
	So what else is new?	12:23
	You know these big deals, Pharisees, Sadducees,	12:29
	chief priests, the rest, they had followed Jesus	12:34
	almost as long as his disciples.	12:37
	They had had somebody there whenever he spoke.	12:42
	Except they being just like the security branch	12:47
	used to be back home in South Africa in the old days,	12:49
	whenever we spoke, you could always tell	12:52
	who the security policemen were.	12:55
	You could tell because they never laughed at the jokes.	12:59
	You could tell they couldn't enter into the spirit	13:03
	it would've been betraying what they believed	13:06
	and stood for.	13:08
	And so they were always out of place at the party.	13:09
	These people had seen the joyful signs of deliverance	13:16
	and they had watched with studied indifference.	13:24
	These people, whenever Jesus began to talk	13:31
	about something that really mattered to ordinary people,	13:33
	began to raise their ridiculous religious priorities,	13:36
	preoccupied with them.	13:44
	These people had been openly hostile from time to time	13:50
	trying publicly and deliberately to undermine	13:53
	Jesus's special touch with the people.	13:57
	For them, you see, the problem was	14:03
	that the kingdom of God could never be a party.	14:07
	That wouldn't be right because they had taught everything,	14:12
	everyone that the kingdom of God	14:15
	was really an exam, an examination.	14:17
	They already had their A's, they knew the exam	14:24
	backwards, they already had a list of those	14:28
	with C's and D's and horrible F's,	14:32
	they knew who would fail, they determined who would pass,	14:36
	and therein lay the meaning of their lives.	14:41
	Little wonder they couldn't handle this transformation	14:46
	from an examination into a wedding feast.	14:50
	But there's more good news, Jesus said, or is it bad news?	15:01
	If you won't come, my father says go and get the rest.	15:06
	And the good and the bad alike will pack the wedding feast.	15:11
	Now Jesus is really laying it on,	15:19
	or certainly Matthew is, because in Luke's version	15:22
	of this parable, it is the lame and the blind	15:26
	and the crippled who are invited to replace	15:32
	the important guests.	15:39
	But here Matthew says uh uh it's more than that,	15:42
	it's the bad and the good.	15:45
	I do feel sorry for these Pharisees and Sadducees,	15:52
	and elders of the people and so should you.	15:56
	Can you imagine how their world,	16:01
	their whole frame of reference begins to fall apart?	16:03
	Because like most of us, a lot of life	16:10
	was all about who's in and who's out,	16:17
	what qualified and what disqualified people.	16:24
	That kind of thing is alive and well today, sadly,	16:33
	still in religious circles.	16:38
	We like to have out litmus tests.	16:44
	If you travel across this continent,	16:50
	you will discover a number of litmus tests	16:55
	by which people judge and determine	16:58
	whether you are going to be one of them or not.	17:01
	And they're all about who should be in	17:08
	and who should be out,	17:09
	who should come to the party and who should be kept away.	17:12
	Down the years, we have raised so many tests	17:20
	only to see God determined to break them down.	17:25
	The tests of race and income and education	17:31
	and language group and gender.	17:38
	We are so good at raising the barrier.	17:44
	And Jesus says to this group of people	17:54
	who make a life's work, they make a living out of that,	17:57
	the bad and the good will come together,	18:04
	and if you stopped obsessing about who should	18:09
	or who should not be at the party,	18:14
	perhaps you could begin to enjoy it.	18:16
	And by the way, says Jesus, if you do come,	18:23
	do come in the right frame of mind.	18:28
	'Cause no party poopers are allowed.	18:34
	I don't pretend to understand the end of this parable.	18:44
	I've looked at what a number of other people	18:51
	think about the end of this parable,	18:54
	I am not all that persuaded about their conclusions, either.	18:56
	Where the person who's not wearing the party dress	19:03
	is flung out.	19:07
	But I do understand that while all may come to God's party,	19:12
	and while all are welcome, there is an appropriate spirit	19:21
	in which one attends a wedding feast,	19:27
	and if you're not willing to attend in that spirit,	19:31
	then perhaps it were wiser you didn't come.	19:34
	I come, surely, to the wedding feast of God	19:42
	in humble gratitude for the invitation.	19:50
	That's part of my wedding dress.	19:55
	I come amazed that I was invited.	19:58
	That's part of my wedding dress.	20:03
	I come wanting to celebrate in my life	20:06
	what matters most to my host.	20:11
	That's part of my wedding dress.	20:16
	And perhaps the things my host wants me to celebrate	20:20
	are the things that Paul talks about	20:24
	in that reading we heard from Philippians,	20:26
	all that is true and all that is noble and all that is just	20:30
	and pure, all that is lovable and gracious,	20:34
	all that is excellent and admirable,	20:39
	I come wanting, I come longing,	20:44
	to fill all my thoughts will all these things,	20:48
	with the help of my host, who is God,	20:51
	who throws this party for Jesus, God's son.	20:58
	You see, it's not so much about how good I must be to come	21:04
	or how bad, our understanding of good and bad becomes	21:08
	somewhat relative when we enter the presence of a holy God.	21:16
	It's all about knowing that just being there	21:28
	is the best news ever.	21:35
	It's all about wanting to be different enough to stay.	21:44
	It was said of John Wesley and Charles, his brother,	21:54
	that the word all was the most important word	22:01
	in their vocabulary.	22:05
	For all, for all my savior died.	22:07
	Come all to the gospel feast.	22:11
	But it was also said of Wesley and his movement	22:15
	that they who made it so easy for all to come	22:21
	made it tough for them to stay	22:27
	because staying meant changing my life.	22:32
	Staying meant being converted.	22:38
	Now that's a word we are a little cheery about these days.	22:44
	I heard about a little church in England	22:50
	where a visiting preacher came	22:54
	and spoke for the first time about conversion.	22:58
	They hadn't heard it for a while,	23:02
	and he even made an invitation and he said	23:06
	now if anybody really wants the converting power	23:08
	of God in your life, just stand up and I'll pray for you.	23:10
	And a rather smartly dressed ex-colonel of the British army	23:17
	who had been sitting in that pew for so many years	23:22
	suddenly popped out of his seat,	23:24
	standing up stiff as a ram rod.	23:26
	And there's his wife tugging at his sleeve	23:30
	and saying sit down, George.	23:33
	People like us don't get saved.	23:35
	The good news, my friends, or the bad news?	23:41
	All are invited.	23:44
	Will you come and be chosen?	23:47
	Amen.	23:49

Item Info

Title:

Peter J. Storey - "No Party Poopers Allowed" (October 10, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 3:15. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:51.
Based on the parable of the wedding feast, this sermon claims that God's disposition towards us is both bad news and good news, depending on your perspective: the kingdom of God is like a party, some people won't be there, but God will fill the party either way. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41v5bt75

Date:

October 10, 1999

Speaker:

Storey, Peter J., 1938-

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

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Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0980
ref10117_jt5
uachapelsermaud
duke:320619
dcrau001624
ark:/87924/r41v5bt75
c80f3a34-7717-48dd-b28f-cd2efcb4e82c

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Peter J. Storey - "No Party Poopers Allowed" (October 10, 1999)

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