Dressing for the Wedding

[Our Lessons today were Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14.]

We continue today with the series of parables in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus is responding to the questions of the Chief Priests and Pharisees at the beginning of Holy Week. We heard first of the parable of the two sons where Jesus identified the Jewish authorities as those who spoke the right words but did not really do what God wants. Then came the parable of the vineyard where Jesus said the kingdom of God would be taken from the religious authorities who oppressed the people and given to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom. Today’s parable throws us a curve.

For his parables, Jesus used common images which would be instantly familiar to his audiences. Now he specifically identifies the kingdom of Heaven as being as a wedding feast. Wedding feasts were big deals in that culture. Here the king—clearly God the Father—is holding a wedding feast for his son—just as clearly Jesus. Just as in last week’s vineyard parable, the king’s messengers—the prophets—are mistreated by those invited guests. Many of the invited guests don’t bother to show up, even though the feast has “the rich food filled with marrow” and “well-aged wines strained clear” in the words from Isaiah describing the heavenly banquet. So the king tells his servants to invite “everyone you find” to the feast—not just those originally invited. This sounds like the Gentiles.

Now comes the curve: the king finds a guest not wearing a wedding robe! He asks the guest how he got in without a wedding robe and receives no reply. (Our translation says that the guest was “speechless” but some translators believe the better sense of the Greek text is that the guest chose not to reply.) In an act that seems totally bizarre to us, the king tells his servants to bind the guest hand and foot and to “throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” When you hear about “weeping and gnashing” in the Scriptures, you can be pretty sure you are seeing a reference to God’s judgment.

And this is a story of God’s judgment and Jesus will return to that theme later in Holy Week when he speaks of God’s judgment as the separating of the sheep and the goats. We'll here this reading next month at the feast of Christ the King. Those who took care of the least will be placed on one side and those who didn’t feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and so forth, will go on the other. Judgment will fall on them.

In our story today of the wedding feast, no one has to earn an invitation. God invites everyone—the Jew and the Gentile, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor.

As for the unfortunate guest without a wedding robe, guests did not provide their own robes; they received them on entering the hall. If a guest is willing to put on the wedding robe—perhaps the white robe the newly baptized put on to symbolize their being washed clean—they can enter. They have faced God’s judgment.

And it is God’s judgment, not ours. We should not enjoy the idea that anyone will not be chosen and we absolutely must never hope that someone—anyone—won’t be chosen. I commentator I read says that we should hope that no one is in hell and leave to God the decision as to whether anyone is. I think one of the most important concepts that we often forget is that we will be judged by God by the measure which we use to judge others. Our problem is that, like Jonah last week, we don’t trust God’s judgment to be as rigorous as our own.

We mustn’t be smug or self-righteous at the wedding feast because we haven’t earned a place there. No one has. We should be humble in that knowledge, but we in this country sometimes feel we are better than those who are less well off.

Right now, the entire world is going through difficult economic times. Businesses are failing, jobs are being lost. I read that $2 trillion—two thousand billion—in retirement savings have evaporated. I read about obscene—there is no other word for it—displays of wealth and arrogance by leaders of financial institutions. In many cases, peoples’ lives have been drastically altered. People are afraid.

I don’t have gentle platitudes to offer. I can’t say that if you come to church, you won’t have problems or that if you don’t you will. That might help attendance, but it wouldn’t be true. I can offer this promise: God wants to help you get through. If you let Him, you will find that you are given strength necessary to endure these times and come through them.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said recently that “the causes of poverty are many. Setting aside the lazy but persistent mythology that blames all poor people for their poverty, the majority of people … who experience deprivation and disadvantage are caught in events beyond their control—and this is manifestly true of children.”

We are all linked to each other and we are all affected by the pain these times bring to our fellow children of God around the world.

Father, we pray for your Church, that we may be a compassionate community, ready to stand alongside those who suffer the burden of debt. We pray for those who work in government, finance and the law, that they may work towards practical solutions for the problems caused by debt. We pray for those individuals who, because of their debts, feel they have nowhere to turn: that they may know your presence, guidance and peace. We pray for those countries affected by the enormous burden of international debt: for a just and lasting solution to the problems they face. We pray for ourselves, that through our choices, actions and words we may daily live out our faith, and bear witness to you, the source of all good things, through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.