The wedding guests part 2

 The Wedding guests part 2

Matthew 9:14-15 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”  And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

Fasting was a well established practice from the Old Testament. We know David fasted as an act of repentance and during times of intense prayer during crisis situations. The practice is also seen during similar situations when Israel as a nation is in crisis in Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

But we also know that both Isaiah and Jeremiah criticized the practice when it was done for attention and not with proper motive. The people had turned the practice into nothing more than a ritual to show others how spiritual they were, while mistreating those beneath them socially.

In Jesus’ day, John’s disciples were fasting in repentance and sorrow for their sin. But the Pharisees were using fasting and the rest of the mountain of rules they had added to Torah as a means to be superior to the common people, to whom they referred as sinners. Very often in the Gospels when the Pharisees mentioned “tax collectors and sinners” the sinners part weren’t necessarily any particularly horrible people. It was just the lower classes that they saw as beneath them. Even though fasting was not commanded in the law, the Pharisees had added it to their customs and had made twice weekly fasting one of the many expectations for righteous living.

It’s a little surprising that John’s disciples would side with the Pharisees against Jesus in this. John had announced Jesus as the Lamb of God and had soundly denounced the Pharisees as a generation of vipers. I have never really understood why John didn’t fold his ministry into Jesus’ after what he witnessed when he baptized his cousin. He seemed to know that he was the forerunner to the Messiah. Why he didn’t have his disciples join with Jesus and proclaim Messiah’s coming has always been a mystery to me. But he didn’t.

Jesus seems to make this point with this particular parable. The bridegroom was a picture used in the Old Testament of God, and in appropriating it for himself, Jesus is not subtly equating himself with God. He’s reminding John’s disciples very plainly who he is and reminding them that in his presence there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). Jesus is saying, “Look, John has been preaching repentance because I was coming. He even told you who I am. Now is the time to join in the feast, because very soon the time is coming to leave the table, take off the feastday clothes and get to business.”

That time is now. We have a job to do while the bridegroom is away. Prayer and fasting should be our well known companions while we’re striving to fulfill the Commission Jesus left us here to do. Now is the time to be in the field, sleeves rolled up, sweating over the great harvest.

But the unspoken yet implicit promise of this parable is that the bridegroom is coming back. The first time was the betrothal feast. Once the betrothal feast ended, the bride stayed and prepared herself for the wedding while the. bridegroom went back to prepare his home for her arrival.

We’re supposed to be preparing for the bridegroom’s return right now. That preparation involves completing the bride - the church. That task can only be accomplished by fulfilling the task he left us - the Great Commission. That mission needs people who will go, and it needs people who will fast and pray. Not everybody can travel to Bangladesh, but every Christian can take part. While the bridegroom is away is the time for fasting and praying that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to get busy.