In its essence this parable of the great feast is a likeable story, with the wry, subversive message of so many of Jesus’ parables. If we associate ourselves with the random and gratuitous guests who make it into the feast in the end, we feel quite nice about it. Or we would, if it weren’t for all the violence. Luke’s Gospel gives us the same story, only it’s not a king and there’s no wedding and no son. But there’s also no murdering or destroying or burning, or binding hand and foot, or weeping and gnashing of teeth. So what is Matthew up to?
One way of understanding the bloody mess that Matthew makes of this parable is as a struggle to understand how the coming of Jesus, which was meant to be the renewal and fulfillment of God’s saving acts in history through his people Israel, was met not just with indifference, but with violence. The community out of which this Gospel emerged likely had first-hand experience of that violence, which began with the murder of Jesus but did not end there. It did not end with the Jewish War of rebellion that came later, or when the armies of Rome recaptured Jerusalem, massacred the population, and burned the city to the ground, an event to which this text probably refers. The violence did not end when some Jews were forcibly expelled from the synagogue for their insistence on acclaiming Jesus as Messiah. And it did not end when the church moved from the persecuted margins to the center of power and began to use texts like this one to justify wave upon wave of violence against Jews.
It still goes on, the needless, absurd violence of history, when God’s only desire is to call us together into the wedding feast of his Son. And that, in some sense, is why we are here today. We come at God’s invitation to remember and to celebrate the promise that there is a meaning and purpose to human history deeper than the clash of religions and empires. In Christ we find that deep purpose of God, and when we come to his table we experience just a taste of his wedding feast, where all divisions and disagreements are forgotten and we are reconciled with God and one another in the abundance of mercy and love.
Sound nice, doesn’t it? So why, then, does Matthew have to go and spoil everything? Why, when we’d begun to relax and feel like the tension in the story is resolved, does he have to ratchet it back up again by putting in this bit about the man who got thrown out of the party for wearing the wrong clothes?
To answer that we have to understand another use of the rhetoric of violence in Matthew’s Gospel. You can actually see the same thing in lots of places in the Bible—like in the story of the golden calf that we also heard this morning. In these cases, this language is not a reference to literal, historic violence, but is meant to convey the power of emotion. It is a way of speaking of the intensity, and vulnerability, of God’s love. Anger, jealousy, vengeance are metaphorical ways of saying that here is a place where, if we’re not careful, we are liable to betray God’s trust. But it’s also a point about which God is not indifferent, not lukewarm, or just kind of interested.
Modern bible critics, especially feminist ones, have questioned the implied equation between love and violence in this kind of theological metaphor, but that’s a topic for another day. What I’m suggesting now is that this little episode of the man without the wedding garment is Matthew’s way of saying that God’s promise, what’s really going on in history, what we really should be orienting our lives toward, in spite of all the ambient craziness, is a wedding feast— and this promise really matters to God. We shouldn’t think that just because we were invited to the feast graciously and at random, we can just slide in for the free food and beer. It’s the king’s son we’re talking about here, and we need to show up with our best.
My cousin Joui, the San Francisco fashion designer, who got married in August, sent out wedding invitations that included instructions on what to wear. It was kind of a head-scratcher—as I recall there was something about “think Great Gatsby meets Bollywood”—but as near as any of us could figure out what she was really trying to say was “be creative.” Don’t just reach into the closet and pull out that suit you keep there for weddings and funerals. Have some fun. Make me happy and show up with some flair. Well, we stodgy older relatives kind of grumbled about it and rolled our eyes, but then we set to work on our costume because we knew it was important to her. And we did end up looking quite colorful, I must say. My eighty-year old dad took the prize by showing up at his niece’s wedding in drag. When we asked him why, he said that he went to the thrift store to try to find suitable attire, but nothing on the men’s rack fit the bill, while there was lots of glamorous ladies’ clothing just his size.
Today we kick off our annual pledge season at St. John’s. It’s a time when we celebrate the generosity of God in calling us all together into the banquet. We’re marking the occasion with a kind of party in the Parish Hall where we show off for one another about all the good work we’re doing and all the fun we’re having doing it. Over the course of the next four weeks we’ll be hearing from representatives of our congregation about what a difference it makes in their lives to respond generously to God’s invitation—to come to the wedding dressed to the nines. And we’ll have inserts in the bulletin each week that invite us to share in a reflection on the themes of abundance, gratitude, and generosity that is taking place across the Episcopal Church.
Those of us who planned this stewardship program want it to be a low-key and enjoyable affair. Whatever form your participation takes will be welcome, even if it comes off the ladies’ rack. But as much as we insist that giving to the church is good for our health (which it is), and that St. John’s is worthy of our support (which it is), and as careful as we are to keep the tone upbeat and encouraging and positive (which we should) there is still that little bit of tension that inevitably comes along with pledge season. At least there is for me. When I look into it and try to understand what that tension is about, I find that Matthew’s Gospel, that reliable guide to what is simultaneously so sublime and so challenging about the Christian life, has an answer.
The first explanation for that inevitable tension is that we can’t accept the invitation to the wedding feast without also thinking about all the things going on in the world that make us afraid and hinder our generosity. We can’t help it—we think about the wars and the economy and gas prices and how will I educate my kids and what about my retirement, and will the crops fail and what happens when the fish are all fished out of the sea? When we commit ourselves to give such and such an amount of our money and our time to St. John’s in the coming year, we have to push through all those anxieties and say, “God—I’m coming to your feast, because that’s the world that I believe in.” That’s not easy, it takes faith, and hope, and love, but it goes to very heart of what it means to follow Christ.
And the second reason why there’s always just a little tension around this pledging thing is that we can’t escape the nagging suspicion that it matters to God. There’s this little voice deep down, when I get my pledge statement and see how much I’ve given (or how little), or when I’m relaxing at the end of a long week of hard work, that says, “was that your best? Is that your wedding garment?” It’s not about being guilty, or feeling inadequate, or fearing God’s wrath. It’s not even about how much I love St. John’s Church, and want it to succeed. It’s about knowing how much God loves St. John’s Church. It’s about how deeply God yearns for us, here, to live in the kingdom. It’s about feeling in my heart how passionately God wants to use us to invite anyone who will come to the wedding feast of Christ the Son.
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