Once upon a time there was a man named Walt Disney who was a genius story-teller.  One of Disney’s passions was to retell and visualize stories by the magic of technology for a new generation. One of my favorite stories that Disney chose to retell is the story of “Sleeping Beauty.”  Sleeping Beauty, you recall, is the story of a princess born to the king and queen of a kingdom.  But there’s also an evil witch who places a curse on the baby princess, saying that she will die by her sixteenth birthday.  So the king and queen decided to hide their little daughter away in the woods to live a simple life disguised as a peasant girl.  The girl grows up not even knowing she’s a princess.  She falls in love with a man she assumes is another peasant boy, but who is really the prince in disguise. 

Well, I’m sure you know the rest of the story, but what if it turned out differently?  What if “Sleeping Beauty,” Princess Aurora, never found out that she was a princess?  What if she grew used to living as a peasant girl her entire life?  What if she never met Prince Philip and ended up marrying a peasant boy?  Well, the story certainly wouldn’t be as interesting, but it would also be a tragedy in disguise, wouldn’t it?  Here would be a princess who really belongs in the palace and ruling over the kingdom, but who never knew who she really was, scraping a living the best she could as a poor peasant because that’s all she’s ever known.  It would be sad if she never found out her true identity, but it wouldn’t be a very exciting story.

But even though she doesn’t know it at first, who this girl really is is what makes the story exciting.  And when she finds out who she really is, the daughter of the King, that changes everything in her life.  Unfortunately, the wicked witch also learns the true identity of the girl, that Princess Aurora really is still alive and has been hiding out in the wilderness all these years, so becoming her true identity, the great evil dragon, she tries to destroy the Prince and the Princess he loves so she can rule the kingdom.

This, my friends, is a reflection and a retelling of our own story.  We who are baptized are the sons and daughters of the King of heaven.  Our true identity is that we’re princes and princesses.  And yet, our God and Father has made His kingdom invisible to hide it from the enemy, the dragon who is called the devil or Satan.  In Revelation chapter 12, we read the story of how the dragon tries to destroy the Prince (that’s Jesus) when He was born, but the dragon couldn’t get at the child.  The child was snatched up to heaven.  So the dragon goes after the Princess, but she also is whisked away from the dragon and given a secret home in the wilderness where she is taken care of and protected from the dragon.  The Princess in this story is the Church, the people of God, you and me, God’s own children.  The wilderness where God has placed us for a time is this world, the earth, and the shelter where we’re protected while we live in this wilderness world is Christ’s Church.  As we belong to this Christian Church, it becomes for us a refuge where we can come together under the protection and care of our heavenly Father, the King.  And here we’ll always be protected against the power of the dragon, the devil.

But we mustn’t let that become in our own minds the end of the story, as if this home in the wilderness, our life here on earth, is all there is for us.  That would be like Princess Aurora living like a peasant girl her entire life and never taking her rightful place as princess.  It not only would be sad and boring, but it would be a tragedy if that was the end of the story.  Our life here on this earth, in this wilderness, is only temporary.  We come to learn while living here what our true identity is—that we’re sons and daughters of the King—and that we have a true home beyond this wilderness where we’ll live and rule with our heavenly Father, the King.  The dragon knows who we truly are, maybe even better than we ourselves know, so he is trying with all his power and sneakiness to try to get us to forget or never to learn who we truly are.  The devil tries to lure us out of our fortress in this wilderness, luring us away from the protection of God’s house and invisible kingdom.  You see, the devil knows that without the protection of God’s powerful Word, without the shield of faith in God, we’re unprotected and in the power of the dragon.

But even while we’re in the protection of our Father’s mighty fortress in the wilderness of the world, we really shouldn’t get so used to this temporary shelter that we think this is all there is.  It’s only for a short time that we’re asked to live here separated from our heavenly Father, constantly being stalked and threatened by a dragon right outside our door.  It’s only for a little while that we must find protection and care in this invisible kingdom.  It’s only for a short time that we must be in disguise as sons and daughters of the king.  We know we have a true home with our Father in heaven.  We know that our brother, the Prince named Jesus, has gone home to be with His Father and our Father, but NOT to leave us alone in this wilderness.  He has gone to prepare a place for us.  And He said before He ascended into heaven, “In My Father’s house there are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will also come back and bring you to be with Me, so that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3). 

It would be sad, even a tragedy, if we forgot about who we really are, or if we got so used to life in this wilderness that we forgot about where we really belong.  That’s where Jesus’ parable for today in Matthew 22 finds some of us.  It’s time for the King to call everyone home to the true kingdom He’s prepared for us.  In our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 25, and also here in Matthew 22, our Lord compares His kingdom of heaven to a great and wonderful feast that He has prepared for His people—“a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well-refined” (Isaiah 25:6), a wedding feast for His Son, the Prince, as Jesus compares it in His parable.  And not only is this a big wedding party, but it’s also a time and place where death, the great enemy, will be swallowed up forever, and where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Isaiah 25:8).  When we get there to that great homecoming celebration, as we take our places as sons and daughters of the King, we’ll say, “Behold, this is our God, the LORD.  We have waited for Him, that He might save us.  Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation!” (Isaiah 25:9).  We’ll say, “Finally the time has come!  How long we’ve waited for this day when we no longer have to be hunted down by that dragon and plagued by death.  How long we’ve lived in disguise in the wilderness, where we were persecuted and treated badly because no one believed we were really sons and daughters of the King, or that our Father’s kingdom was really real.  But now we can rejoice because it is real and our Father has really and truly brought us home to be with Him forever.  We were right to believe in Him and His kingdom.  We were right in saying that we are princes and princesses.  We were right in believing that old dragon to be defeated.  And now, let the feast begin!  Let the party start, because all that our Father has promised us He’s delivered!”

It’s so sad that many people, and sometimes we ourselves, are too wrapped up in the cares of this world to consider the King’s invitation, forgetting who we really are or where we belong.  We think we have more important things to be doing in our lives than to believe in some fairy tale about a far-off, invisible kingdom in the sky.  We’ve got farm work, we’ve got business to attend to.  We love our lives in this world and the things we’ve collected to entertain us and give us comfort in this life.  How sad it would be if our lives became all about life in this wilderness!  How sad for our friends, relatives, and neighbors who don’t know about our Father, the King, and the kingdom He has prepared for us.

But our Father sends out His loving and gracious invitation—“Come to the feast!” (Matthew 22:4)  And we’re reminded of who we truly are—sons and daughters of the King—and of our Father who loves us.  We’re reminded of the wonders and joys of His kingdom of heaven.  We don’t want to lose sight of our true identity.  We don’t want to forget our home in heaven. 

But looking forward to the day we’ll finally be there at our Father’s big feast, we can’t help but to tell everyone we meet about our Father, the King, and invite them, too, to come home with us.  The more convinced we are about our true home in heaven with our Father, and the more we’re looking forward to that great wedding feast, that celebration of all God’s promises now being reality, the more we’re looking forward to that kingdom, our true home called heaven, the more we’re going to want to tell others about it and invite them to come with us.  Our Father, the King, wants to fill up His banquet hall to enjoy this wonderful, never-ending party He’s prepared.  That’s our mission in this wilderness world.  We spread our Father’s invitation to all, “Come to the feast!”