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The Wedding Feast
Episode #155
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
With special guests Carole and Jennifer
(J) Ok, Carole. You were deeply impacted by not only the call to portray this, but I feel like you carried really, the spirit behind the old man’s response, as well as the reaction of the old man. So, Carole, how, tell me how exactly it all played out, and what you saw.
(Carole) Well, I’ll go back to when you came in the room, the hotel room. We were all in there, and you told us that you wanted us to do this skit, and that I think you said Martha wants you to do the, the old man, the one that, that comes in, that is going to be rejected. I went into… I started to shake. I mean I went to kind of a fear and trembling over it. And I said oh, God, I don’t want to do that. And ah, I said Julie where is the scripture? I asked Julie. Julie said it was Matthew 22, so we were kind of assigned our parts and I went and read that scripture, and when I did, I just got on the floor and I started to cry and said God, I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. But, and He gave me a way out, but I knew I was supposed to do it. Anyway, so it was, it was really spontaneous, the whole… in a sense it was spontaneous, though the Spirit was moving and He was preparing, and He was getting us ready for the parts that He wanted us to portray. And so, my costume was really the same old man costume; the garment was the costume, was the garment of the old man, and added a crown of my accomplishments as a five-star church worship leader; and a person who already knew everything there was to know, so you couldn’t really tell me anything. Because one of the things about the old man is they already know everything and they never hear anything because they already know everything. So, I got this costume on, and before we started I went into the bathroom and I said God, I can’t do this. How can I ask You to be You in me when I’m going in there to play the old man in its fullness and haughtiness and arrogance. And I just got on my knees and said You’ve got to do this, I don’t even know what You want to do. And so anyway, we proceeded and Sue went in, and Julie went in, and Ed went in. And my heart was beating so hard, when I went in, and Don was up there and says, “Oh, I never, I don’t recognize this person.” And I went up to somebody sitting on the left, and I shook her hand and I said wow, you got in? I’m just really impressed you got in, and I’m looking for her accomplishments, which I didn’t see any. And announced to everybody, “oh, I’m sister Wonder…Full, and waved the queen wave at everybody. And I saw the most important chair up there, and I hurried before anybody else could get it, and sat on the padded throne chair type thing. And I mean I was in it. I was in it emotionally. I was in the old man and the arrogance and the, the garb, the garment. And I remember throwing my head back at one point and just a silence coming over me. And I didn’t see where, I didn’t see when John came in, I didn’t see that part, I wasn’t really looking…
(J) Nor, nor, nor is the old man..
(Carole) Oh, I didn’t think about that but… And then Ed and Joe came over and tried to take my hands, and I looked over and I saw Jesus. And it just came over me, the reality that it was over, and all my stuff was exposed. And they tried to pick me up and I felt, I don’t know how to explain it, I just felt the reality of being bound and being thrust out of that banquet and that eternal life, and being cast out. And I don’t know, I really don’t have a great memory of anything other than that, other than wailing and saying no, no, no. And I felt it. No, you cannot do this, no. And I was saying, I think I was saying I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it was too late. There was no sorry, it was too late. And I don’t know how long that lasted. I left the room; apparently it lasted a while. And ah, and I was weeping and I found a corner in the hallway outside the room and I went and hid behind a chair and got on the floor and just was in some… I was in a place. I was in a place of regret. More than regret, I was in torment and regret. And at that point John, who was Jesus came up to me, and he put his arms around me and held me.
(J) Well, as I came in I felt the awkwardness immediately because… The first initial response because of how Carole came in, and it was funny, horrifyingly so. But it was funny, and the initial response was, they, they laughed, and it just struck me. And I was like oh no, I don’t want them to laugh, and I put my hand on my mouth and started crying. And I walked through and I was just looking around the room, and I was so excited that everybody was there. I was just so excited. And there was just a joy; the tears were tears of joy that… I looked around, and the banquet room was full. And so I walked around the corner, and I came and I hugged Sue, and I hugged Julie, and I hugged Ed. And as I was doing it they were supposed to stand up, and, and they couldn’t, so I just kind of hunched over them and just kind of hugged them and just wept, and then would go to the next one. And then I came to Carole, and I looked at Carole and I was like, what are you wearing? And I don’t remember how you responded. I mean it was like from that point on it was a blur for me. And ah, I just, I was looking, and I was in kind of shock. Why, why would you think that you could wear this to my banquet? And, but it wasn’t a disdainful condemning; It was, I gave you a robe, why are you wearing that? Why would you wear that? And I believe that you weren’t even aware of me, you were so aware of yourself you weren’t aware of me. And I said you must leave, you must go, and I just pointed out. And I looked to Ed and to Joe, and I said bind her. I didn’t say it, everything was, you know, Don had read the scripture and I just kind of… He was reading, bind them, bind her hand and foot. And so I just, I pointed to her and then I pointed to the door. And ah, the wailing and the weeping that you were doing just pierced me, and I was saying oh my God, Jesus how do you, how would you do this? I couldn’t imagine that, the responsibility and the, the wait, and the impact of having to do that, so I just sat there and wept. And you know I asked Him, I said, You know, Jesus, I don’t know how You… I don’t know how You respond in that. What are You going to do? Are You going to be joyful, are You going to be tearful? And how are we going to respond? And are we going to be joyful? Are we going to be in tears? What’s going to happen? And He showed me the scripture that I will wipe away all their tears. And I realized that you will be so impacted by the magnitude of what is transpiring that yes, all your filthiness, and all of that is gone, and you have taken on the righteousness of Christ. And the impact… you’re so glad to be there, and you’re so sorry, but you’re so happy and you’re so… You see His beautiful face and He wipes away your tears. And there will be tears, and I can’t believe that He’s just going to be stoic in that. He’s going to have tears too, because… ‘I got you’, “ I got you through’, ‘I got you here, you’re, you’re Mine’ ‘we’ll be together forever’! (John speaks this with deep emotion and tears.) And uhm, so, the, the whole thing playing out was so God, because it just, it racked us all. And uhmm… But then at the very end, after Joe and Ed bound Carole and took her out, the lights went out. And ok, at that point it’s all a blur as well. But Carole, for at least what, five to ten minutes, was just wailing and weeping out there because she was really… I told her, this is your worst possible nightmare. You’re having to face your worst nightmare for Him. And you were just out there weeping. And I think it was a travail; it was a travail for the souls of the people that we all have to lay down that old man; and it’s too costly to hold that old man. But Jennifer tell me how, because we were out, what was going on in the room while she was doing that?
(Jennifer) Like I said before, and I think, Jacquelyn back me up, it was so quiet. You could hear Carole’s weeping. There was quiet weeping from people in the room. But mostly it was just deathly quiet. And I would say that the Holy Spirit was definitely, no question, on that room, because it was …there was kind of a hallowed silence. Nobody wanted to break it; nobody sneezed, nobody coughed, nobody sniffed. And I know because I had a cold and I had the impetus to do all those things and it did not. It just, I don’t know, I felt like the silence was being ‘held’. And ah, ah, the room was obedient to the need for silence at that point, and we held it until Carole stopped crying. And I don’t know if it was… I think Martha came up, or, or, I mean I really, I don’t really remember it being broken, I just remember at some point somebody starting to talk, and kind of coming out of that silence. It was ah, it was a textural silence, and it had texture; that’s all.
