The invitation rejected

Matthew 22:14 -- "Many people are invited, but few people are chosen."

In this teaching, Jesus used the image of a wedding reception to discuss the nature of the kingdom of God. A king whipped up wedding invitations and sent them to people of the kingdom. When the party was hardy and handy, some apparently had better things to do and didn't come. The king, being the king and all, had other invites ready to go out and he sent a servant to do the inviting. Later, he even had one of those guests thrown out of the party because he wasn't wearing the right clothes.

All this was to say that we are invited to participate in God's kingdom, and we are given the right, the privilege if you will, to accept or reject this invitation. If we do accept it, we must try to be properly prepared and presentable.

Tonight and tomorrow I finish training, team-building, for my last Kairos prison event at Raymond Correctional Center. We have met, oh, 5 million times since January (it seems that way at least). We go into the prison next Thursday and return home on Sunday. It is a wonderful, excruciating four days of work, talk, eating, praying, work and getting up at all-together unearthly times in the morning.

We invited seemingly hundreds to come with us. We have a team of about 24, I think. It is the right 24 or so, I believe, because I also believe God was involved in the picking of this team, the coming together of this team, the building of this team and even the right words being given to this team. Though others certainly could have come, these are the 24 who were "chosen" by the one who is on the throne.

One of the reminders we will give tomorrow is to wear the proper clothing: No jeans (uggghhh) and no NFL tee-shirts (ugghhh). We have to be properly prepared, ready with the right words and ready with the right prayer and ready with the right clothing. We wouldn't want to be dressed like a resident, for example. And we will be reminded not to take cell phones or drugs or some such into the prison or we will be thrown out.

The connections are obvious here. The kingdom of God is like this wedding reception and this wedding reception is like this team we've built for Kairos in a number of ways. The invitation was sent, and it could be rejected or it could be accepted.

How often do we misunderstand this? We think we can accept God's invitation anytime in the future. We think we have all the time in the world. We think there are more important things to do so we don't accept the invitation when we should. And God allows all this. So some prisoners don't get to see what it's like in the kingdom. Simply because someone thought they had better things to do.

Maybe the invitation from the king won't come to them next time. Or maybe there is no next time.