It is reported that even Martin Luther, great theologian of the Reformation, wanted to run screaming from the room when faced with preaching on today’s Gospel passage. Here’s that passage from Matthew’s Gospel: Jesus says “the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a banquet…” And what follows is a bizarre story, a ludicrous story…
To recap: a king invites people to a wedding banquet for his son (who never actually makes an appearance in any part of the story!). The first round of invitees refuse to come. Now I get that people may have something better to do than go to a midweek cocktail meet-and-greet networker (busted! I passed up the chance to go to one just this past week…). But, hello! If the king invites you to a wedding banquet for his son? That’s sort of like being on the “A” list for the recent nuptials of the talented British human rights lawyer and that handsome actor she married in Venice a few weeks ago — and saying “no, I’ll be doing my that day.” Ludicrous, right?
Then the ridiculousness continues: king sends out servants to re-issue the invitation and this time the erstwhile guests kill the servants (say whaaa??..). King gets mightily annoyed and has his soldiers torch the city. Then he issues an invitation to everybody (from the torched city??? Like, um, who’s left?…). These folks gladly come, but then when this one guy shows up in the wrong outfit he is tied up and cast into the outer darkness where, as Matthew relishes in telling us, “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (What I and many other inquiring minds want to know is: a) where in the recently torched city, and b) on a moment’s notice, is he supposed to find the appropriate wedding attire??? But that’s Matthew’s tendency to take things over the top for you!).
A crazy story, indeed. So you might see why even the great Martin Luther had “feelings” about this particular story? And you might sympathize with my temptation at the 11th hour to call Fr Mike or Rev Jo-Ann, feigning flu-like symptoms and asking one of them to pinch hit for me today? This story is, to put it mildly, a preaching “challenge.”
So let’s cut through a whole bunch of the weirdness of this parable. To do that, we need to review the context. There are similar stories reported in the Gospel of Luke and the non-canonical “Gospel of Thomas.” Neither one, however, includes the violence, the judgment, the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” of Matthew’s version. Which points to the strong probability that Jesus’ original parable was not as harsh and bottom line absurd as this version from Matthew is. So we have to take into account the actual situation, (“Sitz im Leben” as the fancy German theological term has it) — the actual historical setting of Matthew’s community from which this Gospel arose.
Here are some things we know about Matthew’s community:
- It was still part of the Jewish community, but there was a growing rift between those who claimed that Jesus was the long-expected Messiah and those who didn’t.
- This was not a “Christian vs Jews” conflict but an internal, in-house struggle. Matthew’s was the voice trying to establish that Jesus was indeed the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
- Given that understanding, Matthew was presenting an allegory: King = God, People who refuse the invitation = people who deny Jesus is the Messiah, killing the servants = killing the Old Testament prophets, the burning city = the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70 and everyone else who then gets invited = well, everyone else including you and me.
Again, please understand that one of the reasons this is actually not just a challenging, borderline ludicrous story, but in fact a dangerous story is that it, along with certain other passages in Matthew’s Gospel, helped fuel the fires of anti-Semitism and the bigotry, violence, and barbarism perpetrated on Jews by so-called Christians for centuries. In Matthew’s time, church and synagogue had not yet separated; his was, again, an “in-house” dispute. That, and Matthew is also not at his best when re-telling Jesus’ parables as if they were one off, this = that allegories. That is not what parables are meant to do.
Having said all that, there is still one final troubling piece of today’s story that we are left to deal with, namely the man who showed up to the wedding banquet not dressed in the proper attire and consequently gets thrown out into the outer darkness. The various commentaries I read had, as you might imagine, a field day with this one. One even went so far as the say perhaps that guy is meant to be an allegory for Jesus because, after all, it was Jesus who was excluded, then bound and killed.
The general consensus, though, and I agree, is that once we accept God’s gracious invitation to come to the banquet, there are certain expectations of how we are to behave. The great good news is that even when we fall short of these expectations (which I know I do on a fairly regular basis…) we are given the promise that God will always, always, always forgive us and take us back (remember the “forgive 70 x 7” lesson of a few weeks ago? It applies to how God deals with us, too).
So yes, there is forgiveness, and yes, there are standards, expectations, of how we behave and how we treat one another if we have accepted God’s invitation to the great banquet. They are not easy expectations — right off the bat in the first line of today’s beloved 23rd psalm we hear “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” That is a pretty high expectation — even a counter-cultural expectation: God is to be in the position of ultimacy in our lives, not all the things that clamor for us to buy into (or just outright buy), all the things we are told we’re supposed to want. God is to be in the position of ultimacy in our lives if we’ve accepted the invitation.
And then our New Testament lesson from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians — one of the most joyous writings in the Bible — this passage is filled with practical advice on how to live a Christian life: in times of conflict, seek the mind of Christ. Rejoice, always by seeking what there is to rejoice about. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Pray, always. And finally that gorgeous verse at the end of this passage: “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Yes there are expectations. They are contained in today’s lessons, they are also summarized in our baptismal covenant, which also reminds us that when we fall short God will always, always, always take us back, love us, and forgive us. The point being — how do we make good choices going forward? By learning from our bad choices.
All this is a tall order, yes. No one said being a disciple of Jesus Christ would be easy. But why I’ve kept at it all these years, despite falling short more times than I like to remember, despite growing weary, despite times of doubt and dark nights of the soul — why I’ve kept at it is because deep in my heart I know that:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still water;
he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and staff — they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever. AMEN.