October 12, 2008
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14
I don't know about you, but I find the gospel lesson this morning a little hard to hear. It starts as a simple parable, and I use the term “simple” cautiously. As we know, the parables are never really simple, but rather layer upon layer of truth and revelation. It then quickly moves from parable to allegory, where everything in the story represents something else, and often has moral, social, religious, or political significance. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son….” Jesus says, and proceeds to tell us a story about a ruler who gave a lavish party and nobody came. As the tale progresses, it becomes pretty harsh. The king, the God figure in the story, was initially incredibly patient and determined, then furious, but he kept offering the invitation – and kept being turned down. Eventually he had all manner of people rounded up, the good and the not-so-good, and welcomed them as guests to his party. But in the midst of all the planning and the revelry, there is an alarming amount of violence in the story. The invited guests murder the king's messengers, and when the celebration finally happens, the king, noticing someone not clothed in the traditional wedding garment, wields his vengeance. He has the guest bound and thrown into “the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This phrase, found seven times in the New Testament, six in Matthew alone, is a common metaphor for the final judgment.
Many of us first learned about God as a “Hallmark” sort of God, warm and fuzzy, a “come as you are” sort of God, a sentimentalized, feel-good God who loves us unconditionally. And that's both fundamentally true and incomplete. Scripture tells us over and over that all are welcome, not just the well-to-do, traditional folks we think of as the deserving faithful, but those on the margins of society as well. It's a familiar theme, oft repeated in the stories of the Bible, which speaks to its importance. But I don't think we can stop there. We don't live in a “Hallmark world.” Things happen! We are surrounded by all sorts of people and we encounter all sorts of joys, challenges and even tragedies along the way. Like the invited guests who would not come to the banquet, sometimes we simply get too busy, too distracted, by things, by all that is going on in our lives, all we have to do at home and in our workplaces. Thus we miss a wonderful opportunity because we forget to slow down, to dwell in the moment, to leave aside all of our to-do lists and worries, our preconceptions and our judgments, the egocentric lenses through which we all view the world from time to time. We are invited to let go of all that, to open our minds and our hearts and to just be present in the moment, to use all our senses to see, to smell, to taste, to touch, to listen. Preoccupied by our own affairs, we fail to recognize the value of the invitation, or the very real demands it involves – I know that this is true of me, more often than I want to admit. God's grace is freely given, but it's not cheap, and it is not easy.
Obviously nothing here is exactly as it seems. The king of the story represents God, and God is not talking about just a vineyard (as we heard last week) or a banquet. He is talking about no less than the kingdom of heaven, where, yes, we are all welcome, to come as we are, bruises and all, but not to stay that way. We are called to the kingdom of heaven to be changed, to be healed, to be transformed. Having been compassionately embraced, we are invited into something deeper, a maturity of faith, a growing closer to the image of God, less preoccupied with our own personal concerns, and instead transformed into a joyous community. The invitation, which by free will we are able to accept or decline, is not a suggestion. If we choose to follow Jesus, there are expectations.
It is not easy. Amidst the challenges of our busy and complicated lives, how do we know how to behave, how, as Paul says, “to pray as we ought?” How can we be sure that we're not deceived by our own weaknesses, that we don't let our own baggage get in the way? Again it's a choice. But the instruction manual is there – obviously we try to follow the example of Jesus. It is not easy today, and it wasn't back in the early days of the church. In our reading from his letter to the Philippians, written from prison, Paul gives us clear directions. Writing at a time when there was some obvious discord among good people of the community, Paul loves and longs for the faithful in
“ Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9
As many of you know, last week I attended the first of four week-long sessions of Clergy Leadership Project. Important goals of the program are to build leadership skills in the context of scripture and community. Besides coming together every day as a group for in depth learning and conversation, we were each assigned to a smaller covenant group. We will work together closely over the next two years. Every morning, we started the day with a forty-five minute bible study, in which we listened to a passage of scripture from the daily office in three different voices, and were asked to reflect on a question about the passage in the context of the CLP experience. I've found this a useful way to look deeper into scripture in the context of other areas of my life as well. We were pointed to a web site that uses this method of theological reflection to define a question from the readings of the Revised Common Lectionary for each Sunday. I offer this method to you now. The question for today is this, “In the gospel passage from Matthew, the king makes much of the proper wedding garment to come to the banquet. What does the wedding garment represent?”
Amen.
The Rev. Maggie Geller
Church of the Good Shepherd