'The Invitation'

Every invitation asks a question. Not just Can you come? but Will you come?

Anyone who has ever planned a wedding knows this. You can prepare the food, set the tables, polish the silver, and send out the invitations—but the celebration only comes alive when people respond. An invitation left unanswered is a celebration unrealized. A feast prepared for no one is not a feast at all.

Jesus tells a parable like this. Matthew tells a story like this. And they are emphatic about the point: God’s invitation is generous and open to all—but a response is required.

This is the heart of Epiphany. It is the season when the light is revealed—not hidden, not secret, not reserved for insiders—but shining in the open sky for anyone willing to look up and follow it (Matt 2:1-12). Once you see that light, you cannot pretend you did not see it.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepares a wedding banquet for his son (Matt 22:1-10). Everything is ready. The animals are butchered. The bread is baked. The wine is poured. The table is set. Nothing is missing. Nothing is tentative. This is not a last-minute gathering; it is a carefully prepared celebration.

Yet what is shocking is not the generosity of the host—but the refusal of the guests. In Middle Eastern culture, the host would send out an invitation to the big celebration months in advance so people could put it in their calendars and protect that day from other affairs. Then they would send out a second invitation the day of. Once everything was 100% ready in the house, the host would send out a servant to go from home to home in the village to let the guests know that the time to celebrate has finally arrived.  So, there was no excuse for the guests to refuse the second invitation.  However, some were indifferent. They had fields to inspect, businesses to manage, deals to close, schedules to keep (Matt 22:5). None of these things are bad in themselves. They are simply allowed to take priority over what is truly important and, therefore, become a snub and affront to the host. 

So, the king does something that no other king would do. “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So, the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests” (Matt 22:8-10).

This is not a selective invitation. This is not merit-based grace. This is extravagant, unsettling generosity. The streets and intersections were places of the overlooked and the unwanted—the poor, the broken, the morally suspect, the socially invisible. And the king says, bring them all in. Fill the hall. Let the celebration begin.

Isaiah had already seen this coming centuries earlier: “It is too small a thing for you to restore the tribes of Jacob… I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

God’s invitation has always been larger than expected— wider than borders, deeper than worthiness, broader than respectability.

The question is not whether God extends His invitation. The question is how people will respond when the invitation reaches them… and whether they will pass that invitation along to another in the highways and byways of life.

Blessings to all,

Jonathan Beck