New Clothing and a New Heart

Please be sure to READ and LISTEN to today's readings :-)

Holy smokes, today's Gospel is full of so many lessons and so much to pull from.

Again, today we are learning more about the Kingdom of God and what it is like. Today the Kingdom is being compared to a big wedding feast. We all know the planning and work that goes into a wedding! We all know the amazing celebration a wedding is! How painful is it when you have gone through so much trouble and want to celebrate an incredible occasion with people, yet they are totally disinterested and come up with lame excuses not to come!

There are so many obligations in our life that come before God. Consider all the things that you put before God in the normal course of your day? It's not that these things and people aren't important (family, friends, jobs, etc), but shouldn't God always come first?

Too often we are in such a rush in today's society to stop and spend any time with God. When we do it's usually squeezing him in while we are running from one thing to the next. I am just as guilty as everyone else. I think of how I will stop anything and everything I am doing when certain friends call or need my help, yet, do I do that when God wants to talk?

When those "worthy" to come refused the invitation, the King sends out his troops to the streets to invite everyone they found.

This kind of bugged me a little bit when we are looking at this as a parable about the Kingdom, then I had remind myself that during the time of Jesus, the Gentiles were not God's chosen people, however, ultimately, everyone is invited to God's banquet, Jew, Gentile, "good" and "bad."

Once the banquet hall is filled, the next part of the story really unsettled me! The man that showed up without the proper "wedding garment" had his hands and feet bound and was cast out into darkness. This totally struck a nerve with me because I didn't understand the context. This is NOT about the clothing we wear to church. This is NOT saying that you have to be physically dressed in special clothes to be accepted.

Not wearing the right garment is talking about showing up without having repented and a changed and renewed heart.

In the first reading Ezekiel 36:25-26 says

"I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

We can't show up to the Kingdom wearing our old, dirty selves. We must repent and and put on a new self!

"You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in god's way in righteousness and holiness of truth. ~ Ephesians 4:22-24 (NABRE)

You see, this wedding garment in the story that bothered me so much, well, on further digging I learned that if someone showed up without proper clothing, they were given it by the steward of the house. Refusing to take and wear those garments would be a HUGE insult and show disdain for the host. 

Understanding this context this story makes so much more sense to me! God is calling us, he is offering us the new garments, he wants to give us a new heart and new clothing, all we have to do is accept and wear it in order to enter His Kingdom! 

It's time to make God a priority in your life! It's time to repent and allow him to create in you a clean and pure heart! It's time to accept His invitation to the banquet!