Friend, How Did You Come In?

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21 October 2026 · Trinity 20 (observed) · Matthew 22:1–14

So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. (Mt 22:12).

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. AMEN.

There is one man in this parable nobody worries about. We do worry about the ones who stayed home. The farm. The business. The servants beaten and killed, and the city burned. That part sounds like the world out there. We hear it and think of the children who don’t want to come anymore, or the neighbor who has his reason or reasons every week.

But Jesus didn’t end the parable there. He ends it inside the wedding hall. The servants have gone into the highways and gathered “all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests” (Matt. 22:10). And then “the king came in to see the guests, and he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment” (Matt. 22:11). That’s the man we don’t worry about, but he is the one to pay attention to, because this is the man who heard the invitation. This is the man who came.

He didn’t stay home, and he didn’t lay a hand on the king’s servants. He showed up. He found a seat. He is at the wedding. That is the man the King walks up to.

So who is he?

Luther did not make him a villain. He said the King will find not one man but a large company without the garment, and that “these are pious people.” They heard the Gospel and understood it, “yet they cleaved to certain works and did not creep entirely into Christ” (Luther, Church Postil, Trinity 20).

This is not the man in the highways. This is the man in the pew. Maybe even the one who comes on a Wednesday night. And what is he wearing? According to the parable, his own clothes. Maybe his best clothes. He came the way you would come to any wedding: cleaned up, on time, in the good shirt. But his own clothes.

You know what your own clothes are. The years you’ve been a member. The offering envelope. The work you’ve done for this congregation. Being the one who shows up on a weeknight when others stay home. And of course, none of that is bad. It’s all commendable. God gave you every bit of it, worked it in you. But if you think you put it on yourself, you can’t wear it into this hall.

The garment for the wedding is not yours to bring. The garment is Christ. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Isaiah said it in tonight’s reading: “This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me,” says the Lord (Isa. 54:17). Clothed in Christ’s righteousness. From Me, not from you, or your years, or your record.

We might hear that and think, “Good. Jesus is talking about the self-righteous. He’s talking about the Pharisees. That’s for them.” Of course, that’s what the man wearing his own clothes would think. Or we might think, “Well, that’s me, then. I’m the one who doesn’t belong. I’m the one who’ll be found out as an imposter on the last day.” Both are waiting for the same King’s question. But listen to what he said.

“Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” (Matt. 22:12). That’s the first note. He calls him friend. It’s not sarcastic or rhetorical. He isn’t shouting at him. There are no ropes to bind a man hand and foot yet. He just asks a question, face to face, at the table. How did he come in here? But the man’s response is the key.

“And he was speechless” (Matt. 22:12). Matthew’s word means his mouth was shut. Muzzled, like an ox. And it is a passive word: something closed his mouth. In this case, it was the Law. That is what the Law does. St. Paul says the law speaks “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). Every mouth. The scoffers’, and yours, and the man’s.

Think about what he could have said. “I came when I was called.” True. “I’m better than the ones who killed the servants.” True. “I’ve been here every week.” Maybe true. But none of it answers the King, because the King did not ask how good he was. He asked what he was wearing, and the only honest answer to that is silence.

Then the King speaks to the servants: “Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 22:13). Jesus means it. There is an outer darkness. There is a weeping that does not stop. And the road there runs through the wedding hall, past the bread and the wine, for anyone who would dare stand before God in his own clothes.

Of course, if the parable ended there, you too would be speechless, damned by the Law, and you would have no answer either.

But there is one other speechless man in Matthew’s Gospel.

Just a few days later, in the same week He told this parable, Jesus stood before the high priest. False witnesses came forward. “But Jesus kept silent” (Matt. 26:63). He stood before Pilate. “He answered him not one word, so that the governor marveled greatly” (Matt. 27:14). Isaiah saw it coming: “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth” (Isa. 53:7).

But why was Jesus silent? Surely He had something to say. Indeed, He had every answer. He had no sin. He could have prayed, and the Father would have sent Him “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53). But He kept His mouth shut because He was standing in the place of the man without the garment. He took the silence of every mouth the Law has stopped and made it His own.

And what happens to Him the rest of that week? “When they had bound Him, they led Him away” (Matt. 27:2). “They stripped Him” (Matt. 27:28). At the cross “they divided His garments, casting lots” (Matt. 27:35). He “suffered outside the gate” (Heb. 13:12). “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land” (Matt. 27:45), and in that darkness He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).

Does that sound familiar? Bound. Taken away. Cast out. Stripped. In the dark. The King’s Son, the Bridegroom of this wedding, received the sentence spoken over the man without the garment. He was stripped so that you would be clothed. He was silent so that you would have something to say.

So what do you say, then, when the King comes in to see the guests?

You point to what you are wearing. “I was baptized. He put Christ on me. I didn’t sew it. I didn’t pick it out. You dressed me.” And that is the whole answer.

St. Paul asks the question for you: “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen” (Rom. 8:33–34). And St. John: “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). The Son who kept silent before Pilate now speaks before your Father. He speaks for you. He says your name.

To the one who thought the garment was for someone else, He says: take off your own clothes. Your years and your record, none of that will count in the wedding hall. Just confess it. And to the one who thought, “I’m the man who’ll be thrown out”: you are not standing in your own clothes. You were baptized. You are wearing Christ. The King looks at you and sees His Son.

Tonight He puts it on you again. In the absolution: “I forgive you your sins.” At the altar: “Given and shed for you.” That is the garment of Christ’s righteousness, handed to you in words you can hear and in bread and wine you can taste. The Catechism says a person “is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’”

And then He opens your mouth. The man without the garment was muzzled. But the guests of Christ sing, like we said in the Epistle: “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:18–20). David prayed, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise” (Ps. 51:15). The Law shuts your mouth. The Gospel opens it.

So when the King does come in to see His guests on the last day, you won’t be speechless. You’ll be singing, because He dressed you, He feeds you, and He speaks for you. Friend, come in. You are wearing His Son. Come and eat and drink. It is for you.

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie · St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center, Random Lake, Wisconsin

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