Called to Live

Exodus 32:1-14; Matthew 22:1-14

What can you do to deserve salvation?  Is there anything one can do to be saved?  Well this is a question I will return to.

The Hebrew Bible scripture shows good with great compassion and forgiveness, unlike the stereotypical image or a wrathful God.  While Jesus tells a parable where the King (representing God) goes to war on a city and throws someone for not having the proper clothing into the outer darkness.  These scriptures demonstrate the wonderful tension between the judgment and the forgiving nature of the one true God.

The people waiting for Moses did a horrible thing in the making of the golden calf, and they have this story as part of scripture.  God was made and yet God forgave them.  That did not make the sin of worshiping to another God any less.

Jesus uses this parable with the allegory of the King as God.  It seems very harsh to expect a person from the streets to be properly dressed, which is our first clue it is truly an allegory and not a real event.  Jesus tells of the king being ready to celebrate his only son’s wedding when his servants discovered most of the invited guests were not coming.  The king sends a second set who are killed.  The first represent the prophets and the second the Christian apostles, and then he decides to go to war on their city.  That is odd that he would spend an afternoon on war when the food was ready for the wedding, not to mention war is usually not done in one day.  The war is on the invited guests’ city, the king’s own city as well.  This represents the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.  This event changed Judaism for ever, including those that followed Jesus.  The parable continues with the  invitation of anyone, the gentiles for the wedding has opened up the chosen people to the people of the entire world.

Now the one without the proper wedding robe, represents someone that had entered the religious realm of following Jesus, without truly believing.  A change of clothes represented a change of person in ancient times.  The key is Jesus is speaking to religious people, and Jesus is always speaking to religious people when He speaks of Judgment.  He is not trying to frighten us to believe. 

The forgiveness God showed at Mt. Sinai, the forgiveness Jesus showed to those who came to Him for healings, the command to forgive 77 times, and especially the forgiveness he gave to us all upon the cross, cannot be separated from His statements of judgment.  The judgment is for those of us that do believe not to scare us right, but to call us to live.  We did not do anything to deserve salvation, not even putting on a new robe of belief.  Nothing we can do is good enough to make us deserving of salvation, that is what Grace is, a free gift.  Even accepting it is not the act, nor appreciating it.  We are saved and in knowing that we live out today with the eschatological belief in judgment.  This tension allows us to live following Jesus’ model of Love, yet knowing we are forgiven already.