While in seminary in 1997 I attended the General Convention of the Episcopal Church which was held in Philadelphia that summer. I have never been big on conventions and huge gatherings, partly because my hearing makes it such a challenge, but this event was nearby and worth attending. The governing body of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America (that’s our official name) is the second largest governing body in the world, even among world governments. We are second only to India.

The Eucharist for the entire convention of 12,000 people was a grand spectacle to observe and participate in. It was held in the basketball stadium for the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a Eucharist in the round with the altar and presiding bishop in the center of the court. I sat on the second row very close to the front near the aisle. When the elements were brought forward, I estimated that nearly fifty gallons of wine were brought to the altar. But the most interesting and amusing part was the offertory.

Each row (and there were at least 250 rows) seated about 50 people. At the offertory an usher appeared at the first row in front of us and sent a basket down to the other end. An usher at the far end simply turned the basket around by handing it to the row behind. By the time the basket made one trip down and back traversing a hundred people, it was brimming with cash. No, it was overflowing with bills falling out of the pile in a rather undignified way.

The usher with the overflowing basket of cash was within reach of me. I handed him the basket and smiled knowing that what followed would likely be amusing. Panicked he looked back up the aisle at the head usher for the section standing about 50 yards away. They made frantic sign language at each other. Finally, the usher near me squished all the cash he could into the basket with one hand and walked briskly up the aisle while trying to contain the bills from falling out. I turned my head to look up the aisle and see what happened next.

The section head usher ran away and came back shortly with a very large dark green garbage bag in his hands. They dumped the cash from the basket into the garbage bag and my usher walked briskly back down 50 yards to start the basket down the next row. At this point things got even more amusing. Each pair of rows generated the same amount of cash and the same brimming basket was walked briskly up the aisle to be dumped unceremoniously into the garbage bag. I imagined that later in the day the janitors would find piles of garbage out in the halls of the stadium and wonder where their garbage bags went.

But isn’t that just classic Episcopal Church planning? We are so focused on making our liturgies “decent and in good order” that we fail to account for the bounty of God’s Grace. We fail to imagine that 100 people would over-fill the kind of wicker basket that any of us might have at home. We fail to think about the next step that given all this cash, what do we do with it? Our problem in the national church AND here at Grace Church is not whether we have enough cash for this or that project or for next year’s budget. Our challenge is now and always has been a lack of faith just like that day in 1997. Our baskets and our expectations are simply too small for God’s gracious bounty.

I began to look at today’s Gospel in the same way. The king is about to throw a wedding banquet. Now that word, “banquet” just doesn’t begin to describe what Jesus means here. If you imagine the recent royal wedding between Kate Middleton and what’s his name? It was a wedding feast of epic proportions. God, the king in this story, has thrown out the rich and powerful. Into this feast we are all invited, the middle class, the students, the poor, the retired, those with health problems, those with financial worries, ALL of us are brought into the grand wedding hall. Most of us feel honored and even humbled to be in such a grand place.

Now instead of focusing on the jerk wearing baggy cargo shorts that fail to cover parts of his backside, I want to stop us right here at the wedding feast. Our Eucharist every Sunday and our community gatherings are supposed to be JUST LIKE THAT. Do you feel awed to be here today? Do you feel a bit humbled in the presence of the Almighty? Do you feel honored to be invited? After the service are you eager to tell your friends about the incredible party you attended on Sunday? These should be our goals for every Sunday celebration.

Yes, it is my responsibility to structure Sunday worship so it meets these goals. But I now think these goals have been so watered down by church tradition and “the way we always did it”, that we have lost the sense of the epic banquet thrown by the king.

These are open questions for us. What would happen if we could really throw an awesome party every week in honor of what God has done for us? What would happen if people were caught up in our party like folks on the streets of New Orleans at Mardi Gras? Would your faith grow stronger if you saw all kinds of people streaming forward to receive the precious body and blood of our Lord? Would a tear form in the corner of your eye when you realized you just caught a glimpse of heaven?

I only have a few conclusions to share: Our baskets and our expectations of each other are WAY TOO SMALL. In the same way, our parties on Sunday are WAY TOO LAME. Thirdly, we must do something radically different. We must throw parties on Sunday that become the talk of the town in a positive way. People will come to our parties at Grace because Jesus is truly present.

I invite you to help us throw parties on Sunday fit for a king because it is the king and his son that we celebrate. I welcome new ideas, volunteers, iconoclasts, and rule breakers. I welcome those who cherish tradition too. If we make our celebrations fit for the king and raise our expectations of one another, I guarantee you your faith will grow. The church will grow. All because your hearts will be open to what God is doing with us right now.