GLEANINGS from the Daily Office – Blowing Off the Royal Wedding is a CEM

GLEANINGS (from the Daily Office) – Blowing Off the Royal Wedding is a CEM  – Year Two, Advent 1, Friday, December 4, 2015, Matthew 22:1-14

“The wedding is ready but those invited were not worthy.”

I love a good wedding especially when I have no pastoral responsibilities. There is usually good food and good wine. And not infrequently there is good music, a live band. I once danced on a plexiglass dance floor built over a wonderfully lighted swimming pool. How cool is that? Macarena cool. What’s not to love!

But there are seasons of weddings that seem unending. Occasionally two fall on a single Saturday and that on the third Saturday in October. If you live in the south and remotely care for SEC football, that is asking a bit too much. So you blow off one or both knowing you will not be cast out of the in crowd.

But there is something inherently different about the wedding given by the King. It is not “this week’s wedding of the century.” It is the last wedding ever. We are free to blow it off but a second chance at attending is unlikely. Not only that, our ticket will be given to another and the new invitee will be held to a high standard as well. Any lack of intent to honor will be outed.

This is when communicating terribly hard truth is pastoral. Blowing of the Royal Invite is a Career Ending Move. Just ask the chief priests and elders of the people.

–Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”–