Shane Hughes 10-5-25

Being here today. My name is Shane Hughes. I'm one of the ministers here, and it is a delight to be with you today. We're in a series, as Jeff mentioned, about our pathway. This kind of tells you what.

What the expectation is if you want to be a part of Highland. These are the things that we expect you to do. We want you to engage in worship. We want you to have a small group, some sort of table where you can meet with one another. Not only experience the table like we did together, but a community.

We want you to grow in your baptism and experience baptism if you haven't yet. And we want you to empty yourself so that you can experience the joy of service. We believe that those four things together do the work within us, their. Their graces. It's.

It's a. It's a moment where we encounter God's presence that. That brings about the kind of restoration, the resurrection that God intends for us. And there are times when we've been explaining what the pathway is that somebody says, okay, just. Just give me the bottom line.

What do I need to do? And it kind of feels like what they're asking. I don't think this is their heart's intent, but it kind of sounds like what they're asking is like, what's the lowest common denominator of participation that I can get away with at Highland? Well, we're going to answer that question more fully next week. In fact, that's going to kind of be the bulk as we think about worship together.

But there are some metrics that we want you to engage. Now, as I say that, I also say that metrics, at best, at least metrics around spirituality or on faith are at best risky, and at worst, they're dangerous. And we know this because people that tend to specialize in hitting the metrics around faith, Jesus has opinions about them. They look a lot like Pharisees. And Jesus said, look, the outside of your cup looks great and clean, but the inside is filthy.

But the problem was, is that people couldn't see it. The Pharisees looked like the most spiritually focused people in the community. They looked like they were checking all the boxes. They looked like they were doing everything right. But it's real easy to look the part and have your inside be empty.

It's really easy to ape the rituals. Just pretend like if we were talking about worship, we would say, one thing we want you to do is we want you to be engaged here at Highland on Sundays. We want you to show up. We want you to be A part. We want you to experience it, so we want you to be here.

How often do I need to be here? That's a tricky question. And if you grew up at the church like I grew up at, if you missed three Sundays in a row, you were either dead or you had moved away, because there's no way you would miss more than three Sundays in a row. And if, you know, we liked you if you showed up on Sunday, but we really liked you if you were there on Wednesday nights and then you got stars in your crown if you're there Sunday nights. Right.

Like, as tendance became a burden that people had to wear. And so we're not going to. We're not going to go that far. But it's so easy to ape the rituals. It's so easy to appear spiritual and have nothing inside.

And it's. It's also difficult on the other side because I think there are people that have been sincerely devoted to discipleship for their entire lives that have tried to focus on Jesus and put that into their hearts, not just into their actions or into their appearance, but actually be transformed by the power of it. But there are. Even the best of us have instincts in the moment that fail us. And sometimes that failure is really public.

And so sometimes even the best of us spiritually are going to make mistakes that make us wonder. And so we've resisted metrics in our pathway. So how do you measure if you're really a part of Highland?

We want you to be as off for worship. We want you to be here as often as possible, because we think it's better when we're all together. But attendance isn't the goal. The goal is wonderful. And I think it's really easy to confuse wonder with, like, a rock and set list.

Does that make sense? Like, I, this week, you revive me. Hearing Christine saying that did something to me. And then it followed up with revive us again. And I was brought back to my Church of Christ roots, and then King of Kings followed me.

Like, that is brilliant posturing of songs. Jeff's like a sommelier of, like, Christian music. He just knows how to pair it together so well. And sometimes I think in worship, if we're not careful, we can confuse the presence of God with adrenaline or excitement. Because here's the rub.

We can manufacture adrenaline. We can manufacture excitement pretty easily. In fact, there are entire industries that do that very thing. We can create excitement. If you want to come back next week, and we've got fog machines and laser lights and boom and bass.

Like, we can make you feel it right? We might manufacture excitement, but we, we can't engineer theophany, we can't engineer awe, we can't make God show up.

What the pathway is, is the is. It puts you in the posture, it puts you in the place. It trains your mind and your ears and your heart to listen so that when God does show up, you know how to dance. And that's all we can foster, is to become the part, become the kind of community where we show up day after day and week after week and person after person, waiting for God to reveal God's self. And so we want you to grow in your faith.

But we realize most of the time this is not going to be an adrenaline rush. In fact, those that are advanced in spiritual disciplines and in formation will tell you that most of the time it's not very exciting. It's actually pretty boring. It actually feels pretty mundane because you have to learn to be kinder to your family and more patient with the people around you. More forgiving of the little wrongs and not allowing small hurts to fester so that you can have practice when it becomes to big wrongs.

But here is one metric that I think we really want you to pursue. If you're like me and you like to check a box, tick a box off a list, here is one metric we would really like you to pursue around table. We would love for you to be able to pursue unlikely friendships. What do I mean by that? I mean that this church is a very diverse place.

We have five different generations here. We have lots of different economical status. We have people that have come from all over the place to be a part of Highland. We're pretty different when it comes to some of our political perspective and ideology. I want you to find someone here at Highland that is different than you and is your friend someone that you can have fellowship with that you wouldn't on a normal circumstance have anything to do with.

The only thing that might connect you to is Christ. But. But Christ is enough.

I mean, but it's so easy. Like we're all in the same group together because we all have kids and his kids, or we're all in the same group together because we like to go on lunch on Fridays.

But who in your world, who here at the building is different than you? Just recently I got to go to a five year old's birthday party and I had the joy of seeing people that were invited to that party that weren't grandparent, but they were grandparent age, right? This five year old had decided the people in their life, because it was at the sports center, they could only invite 25 people. The people in their life that they wanted to come. Some of them were grandparent aged, but they weren't his grandparents.

And I loved that. An unlikely friendship in that space.

And then what happens when you experience that rub in that friendship? Because you're gonna be different. You're gonna disagree, they're gonna say something and it's gonna irk you. What Kingdom does is that you stay with it and you see what happens. You don't flinch away and you don't disregard.

You find reasons to love anyway, and this is what we want you to do. And if you don't do it, I just want you to realize that we are going to be together for a long time. This is kind of like the best advice that I would give somebody if they were dating someone else. Go on a really long car trip with them, like eight, ten hours, where you're stuck, just the two of you in the car, and you're going to run out of things to talk about and then see what happens, right? You and I, we're going to be together for a long time.

So I wonder if it matters how we get along. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father, I'm grateful to be here today with my brothers and my sisters. I'm grateful that we are united not because we all agree or we think the same things, or that we like the same things, but that we are shaped by your son, Jesus Christ. And in our allegiance to Christ, we find he commonality with one another.

So now I ask as you we turn our hearts and our minds to your word that you would pour through me the gift of preaching that I might speak your truth in love to these, your people. It's together that the church says amen. All right, so this is a really weird text that Keith wrote. I don't know if you knew that. I don't know if you noticed that there's a very similar parable in Luke.

And actually Luke makes you feel a little bit better because in the parable in Luke, it goes like this. The king invites people to his banquet of his son. It's going to be a marvelous affair, a big party. But people keep making excuses and they say things like, well, you know, I just got married, or I just bought some land. I really want to check it out.

I just bought some oxen, I want to see if they're any good. And if you were a good student of Leviticus, you would know that These are the kind of things that might get you out of military service. Israel. And so maybe what Jesus was saying in that parable is like, you know, the things that used to excuse you, they don't anymore. You need to be at the party.

But these people didn't come to the party. And so the king says, well, just invite anybody else that wants to be there. And so they went out into the streets and they found all the people that normally would not receive an invitation to a party and, and they brought all of them there. And the end of the parable sounds like the parable that Keith read where he's like, you don't know who gets to be at God's party and it's not who you expect.

Everyone's welcome at God's table. And that's true, but Matthew's story is a little different. Did you notice how much violence there is around this wedding feast? This is almost like a story written by George R.R. martin, right?

Because the, the king sends out invitations and then those invitations are rejected. And so he sends out more servants with invitations. And those invitations are. Those servants are killed. Which seems bizarre.

I'm going to kill the mailman because I don't want RSVP makes a clear signal, I suppose. And then the king responds by sending guys to kill those guys and then burning their cities. This is, this is a high stakes rsvp. I'm not kidding you. But Keith didn't even end the parable.

Let me end it for you in verse 11. This is how it ends. But when the king came in to see the guests, now these are the guests that got invited in. It says main streets in your text, but that's kind of like highways and byways. It's the big thoroughfares, people that were just wandering through town, those that were working.

When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed there was a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe. And he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot, throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

Now what you have to understand here is in the first century, rejecting the wedding invitation and killing the messenger, that's pretty clear signal to the king. It's a, it's a signal that says, I don't like who your son is marrying. Now it could be that most weddings in the first century are political alliances. Especially for kings and rulers, this isn't just like a leader in the city. This is a ruler of a kingdom.

And so it could be, we don't like the alliance that you're forming with this wedding, or we wish you had formed another wedding. And so what this actually is, in killing the messengers is rebellion and insurrection. And then you have this guy that just shows up and he's not in the right wedding clothes. Can you blame him? First look at this parable and you think like, look, okay, this is a last minute invitation.

The guy has obviously been working in the fields. He probably didn't have time to go home to take a shower or get dressed. But because the king's servant said, come to the palace, of course he's going to come to the palace. And he ends up being cast out into the outer darkness, whether it's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I think this is hard because we have a culture that it tends to.

I think it equates casual dress with authenticity. And this is a change that's happened, I think, in most of our. Our boomerang. I think you've seen this in your own lifetime where being casual actually is more authentic for some reason. I had a grandfather that never wore anything but a suit and a tie to church the entire time that he ever went to church.

But now you can kind of get away with wearing jeans and a button up shirt to a wedding, especially in Texas. Before here I was in Silicon Valley. And the joke was the way you could tell who is the smartest and the brightest and engineer at the company is the one that showed up in sweats and a T shirt. Like that's how you could tell there was this inverse relationship to how formal I am and how capable I am. And that culture spread throughout of Northern California.

And so church growing up, or church growing up in Northern California, you would end up wearing hoodies to church all the time because that was just what you wore to school. That's what you wore to work. Every Christmas, my grandma Hughes would send a gift and a card. And the gift was a toy, something that everybody was excited about. When you're 10, 12, 13 years old and the card contained cash.

And every year my mom, I would open the gifts and be very excited, open the card, see the cash, and think to myself, this is at least like two more gifts that I can buy. And my mom goes yoink. And takes them. And she said, this is for your dress pants. Now dress pants is the worst Christmas gift ever for a 10 year old.

Boy. And so we would go, and we didn't have a lot of money. This was the only way we could afford dress pants. And so we would go in January, we would buy dress pants. They were way too long hanging over my shoes by, like, November or December, they're like high waters hanging up real tall, right?

Only one pair of dress pants, and I had to wear them every Sunday for, like, two hours a day. That's the only time they ever left my closet.

And maybe, maybe we dress down here at Highland for the right reasons, maybe the best reasons, maybe because it's an acknowledgement that God cares about our hearts, not our clothes. Don't hear me making an argument that we need to be rocking suits. Although, if that's your thing, knock yourself out. My grandpa would have loved you. That's not my argument.

My argument is that it's a statement of that our hearts are what matter. Our hearts are what I prepare. As we're traveling and getting ready to come to church on Sunday mornings, we're getting our minds ready to worship God, to be in the presence of one another. And if we're doing that, then I totally get it. And the other reason that I love it is because it helps our neighbors that can't afford to have two sets of clothes feel comfortable here.

But does casual really equal authenticity?

Is just as I am really what God's asking for.

Because I think my grandfather had something that when he put on the suit and he tied the tie, he was thinking to himself, I'm giving my best to God. And it was also what he was thinking when he was writing the check every morning, every Sunday morning as he was getting ready to give it into the offering. I'm giving my best to God. And it's also what he thought every morning when he woke up. And the first thing my grandfather would do is get out his Bible and read it.

So he was thinking to himself in the morning, I'm giving my best to God. But this text has so many questions. I mean, why does this guy that shows up without wedding clothes have nothing to say? In the text, it says he's speechless. Or it could just be he was quiet.

Was he caught unaware? Or does he have no comment? Because the outer darkness, that's a serious thing. That's like being thrown out of the protection of the city, out of the city lights, away from the campfire. It's beyond, beyond the glow of the city.

It's exile. Origen, who was a theologian in the early church, he called it spiritual blindness. It was the it was the cataracts in your eyes, like Pharaoh had a hardened heart. But it was alienation, exile, way more than it was punishing. The weeping and gnashing of teeth is not because they're tortured or they're being hurt.

It was because of regret that they can't get back into the fire, to the fire's edge again. And it's interesting because Jesus says this two other times and in Matthew, and both of those times, it's the exact same circumstance. He's talking to people who should know better, who aren't doing the hard work that they're supposed to do.

He's speaking to leaders.

And there was a tale, another parable that was around the time of Jesus, that the king provided the appropriate garments. There's a story, kind of like a fable, of three poor maidens that are invited to the palace and they feel like they have to decline because they don't have the clothes worthy enough to come into the palace. But the king gives them the garments so that they can come in.

Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakai, he writes, this may be compared to a king who has summoned his servants to a banquet without appointing the time. The wise ones adorned themselves and sat at the door of the palace, for they said, is anything lacking in the royal palace? The fools went about their work saying, can there be a banquet without preparations? Suddenly the king desired the presence of the servants. The wise ones entered adorned, while the fools entered soiled.

The king rejoiced at the wise, but was angry at the fools. The king let those adorned sit and eat, while the others stood and watched.

We find this man that is not dressed right. He's speechless. Or better yet, he just has nothing to say.

I think what Matthew's saying is that the rebels are still here.

And he ends this by saying, all are welcome, but few are chosen.

I think when you preach this text, it's the kind of text that makes liberals think you are way too conservative. It makes conservatives think you're way too liberal. I think that's how everybody feels about my preaching around here. So let's just keep going, right? Matthew tells his disciples in the book of Matthew, or Jesus tells his disciples in the book of Matthew, your righteousness must exceed the that of the scribes and Pharisees.

And what he's talking about is that you have to be better than they are. And these are the ones that are the best at looking righteousness. And what Jesus means in that moment is you have to be right on the outside and on the inside. And then Jesus gives us the Sermon on the Mount, which is like the tools for us to do the inward transformation. If you want to know how to change your heart, read the Sermon on the Mount because it is going to challenge you every step of the way.

You not on your behavior, but on what you think and what you believe and the posture of your heart. It has to be both an inward and an outward change. The Sermon on the Mount is a pathway toward transformation. And I think when we come to this text, we have to pause because Matthew is serious about this. And it's not like this is a heavenly banquet that you're going to receive one day when you die.

The heavenly banquet is now. Where Living into it now. The kingdom is now. And what makes you think, if you don't want it now, that you're going to want heaven then? Because it's the same thing.

On the other hand, you don't possess the kind of righteousness that can get you into the banquet. It's not possible for you to be able to do it at all. You will never get in on your own merit. The only way that you get into the heavenly banquet is if the king gives you the garments to wear. And here's the good news of Jesus through Christ's blood, when it's drenched over us, when it seeps into everything that we wear, it makes us worthy.

It gives us the status to become before the king. And there's no other way.

And so this parable says two things, and you have to hear them both.

The only way that any of us get into the kingdom is through Jesus Christ. But we better work pretty hard. We better work pretty hard to stay in this space. What is expected of us is significant. It's more than just the bare minimum to get us through.

If you want to be in the kingdom, you're going to have to die.

And there's no other way around it. That kind of ended in a downer. How about you just make an unlikely friendship instead? Let's see how that works instead.

Here's the thing.

The only way to make that unlikely friendship, the only way to make it real, is if you let a huge part of yourself die. It really is the only way. Would you stand for our benediction?

So I want to challenge you this week, Highland, to do the harder thing. Don't just wash the outside of the cup. Don't just appear as religious or spiritual or authentic or any of those things. Instead, do the hard work of putting yourself in the posture where you can be transformed by Jesus Christ. May you go with God's spirit, love, hope and in peace.