The Glorious Invitation – Part 2: Life on the King’s Terms

In part 1 of this post, we introduced Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 14. We ended with the idea that, just like those invited to the wedding feast, few are willing to say yes to the fullness of the invitation and become true followers of the King.

You see, that’s the real heart of the matter. I can call myself anything I want. But unless somehow something inside me has said yes to the full invitation of the King, to live on the King’s terms, then where do I stand?

Real Forgiveness

We must look elsewhere in scripture to find the King’s terms, and they’re surprising. They’re actually forgiveness, mercy, lovingkindness and an invitation to eternal life.

The King’s offer, you see, is an invitation to yield to things that I cannot do for myself. I need God’s help to be a man or a woman of mercy rather than retribution. I need God’s help to be someone who is both able to receive forgiveness and someone who offers forgiveness, not carrying grudges, not making room for resentment, being willing to let go of the places where I’ve been hurt and wounded.

Because that’s what gives us the energy, the capacity, the gifting of the Spirit of God. If I’m willing to be merciful and forgive, that gives me the capacity I need to stand up on behalf of someone who is being mistreated.

You see, resentment and unforgiveness rob us. They rob us of the energy we need to serve faithfully. It’s like a knot inside us. And that knot requires nurture, which means it requires energy. It requires work. Every time I think of that person, what happens? Bang! I think of the time where I also was hurt by that person, and the wound comes festering right back up to the surface.

It is emotionally, spiritually and physically costly to be a person whose relationships are marked by resentment, competition, wanting to be better, in a way that puts me better than not my own best but better, at least, than someone else.

True Freedom

None of that, you see, is the way of the King. None of that is the way of mercy or forgiveness. To live as the King demands takes courage. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit. It takes God working within us to become the kind of men and women who not only receive mercy and forgiveness, but exhibit it as well.

The only way I can do this is to be a wholehearted follower of Christ, the one who is not self-absorbed around my own cause and concerns. I have a kind of outward vision that gives me the capacity to notice what others may not: the person who is wounded, the person who doesn’t seem to be himself today.

That kind of outward focus comes as the result of true freedom, the kind of inner freedom that comes from knowing I’m forgiven, and I operate in the mercy of Jesus. I know that even if I don’t get it right, he will give me what I need to continue to move forward, because his mercies endure forever.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22-23a). And therefore, I can serve.

We can be available, you and I, for God to use us in the ways that God wants us to be used, to be available for his work in the world, to care for other people, to notice the unnoticeable, to make room in our hearts for people who are like us, who are not like us, and to be secure, because we’ve been forgiven. We belong.

I’ve been reading Jon Meacham’s biography of John Lewis, who died in 2020. Lewis was called the conscience of the Senate, and Meacham’s biography of him reads almost like the text of a sermon. There was a tremendous inner courage and resolve in John Lewis, and it was because he knew the power of God in his life. Since he was a boy, he was called as a preacher. He knew that kind of commanding presence. And that’s what gave him what he needed to be able to serve faithfully, whether others followed or not.

It is to that power, that grace and that mercy to which we must again say, “Yes, I will, with God’s help,” so we can be available for God to use us. So today is a call to lay down the resentments, the self-absorption, to receive in a new way the forgiveness and mercy of God, to be healed and to say yes to Him, to Jesus, that we may not continue living life on our own terms, but his.

 

What does it mean to you to live life on the King’s terms? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

 (This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon for Oct. 11, 2020, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Haines City, Florida.)  

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.