Year A
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

We all want to be accepted for who… and what… and how we are… we all want to be invited and included… and we can sometimes feel rejected when we’re not… we all want to be loved… unconditionally… and we enjoy being a part of special rites of passage… like baptisms… and birthday parties… or Bar Mitzvahs… graduations… and weddings…

I’ve been to some weddings that seemed to me… to be over the top… the appetizers alone at one cousin’s wedding were in themselves a feast… and I’ve been to back yard weddings with sandwiches and beer… I’ve been to one wedding where the bride wore a white wedding dress… and red Converse high-tops… one that had a steampunk kind-of theme… different weddings for different folks…

And when we’re invited… almost no matter what it’s to… there’s almost always some fussing about what to wear… has the dress code been defined clearly enough… is there any uncertainty… any murkiness… do we call others to find out what they’re wearing… after all… we don’t want to draw any undue attention to ourselves… so do we seek an external social reference point… or do we trust and follow our internal reference point… Emmanuel… God with us…

And do we RSVP right away… or do we wait until midnight on the Reply By date… do we wait to see if something better comes along… and if there’s a registry… do we think about how well we know the bride or groom… so we know how much money to spend on the gift… and even further… do we wonder who else has been invited… do we dare commit the faux pas of asking with whom we’ll be sitting… so many social conventions by which to abide… or not…

There are some social conventions in today’s Gospel reading… the first one… is whether you say “No.” to the king… especially if you’ve been invited… you don’t make excuses… and you don’t mistreat… or kill… those who come to make sure you received the invitation… what with so many mail sorting machines having been dismantled… or who may just wonder if you’ve caught the virus and are all right… and it seems as though the King is righteously indignant… I mean one chose instead to go back to his business… and another decided to go to his farm… instead of coming to this wedding feast…

This passage reminds me of the story in Luke 9:57… about those who said they would follow Jesus… even though Jesus said there’d be no place to lay their heads… and there was one who said he had to first go and bury his father… and another who said he had to say farewell to those at home… and Jesus said… No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God… that’s startling… and sounds sharp… but I don’t think that Jesus wants us to be cold and callous and uncaring and inconsiderate to those who love us and who we love… I think these stories are hyperbole… intentionally exaggerated to make a point… and the point is that we are all invited to God’s banquet table… to God’s feast… that feast is described in our reading from Isaiah… and in the Psalm… and in early Jewish history… before currency was invented… food and feasts were understood to be and to represent wealth… and God grieves when we choose to not accept the invitation… but we don’t need to wonder about how the King keeps dinner warm while he wages war against the first set of guests… destroys their city… and then has the banquet in that same city the same day… that sort of thing isn’t a problem… so let’s do a bit more unpacking…

The Rev. Jim Liggett writes… in this allegory… the first guests stand for Israel… the first two sets of slaves who follow up on the invitation represent the prophets… which is why some of them are beaten up and killed… hardly the usual way of declining an invitation… the city that’s destroyed represents Jerusalem…

In the second part of the allegory… the slaves who are sent into the main streets to invite just anybody are the apostles… the followers of Jesus after the resurrection… who brought the church together… and the church… as Matthew knew… was filled with both good and bad… righteous and unrighteous… deserving and undeserving…

After all… everyone… means everyone… and the second crowd is very different from the first one… just as the church was very different from the leaders of Israel…

So the wedding hall… the church… is filled with all kinds of guests… this was true then and it’s true now… but Matthew’s saying that in spite of the prophets… Israel’s leaders have ignored God’s banquet for God’s son… and now the church is made up of the apostles… the apostles were the slaves who were sent to the outcasts… to the lower classes… to women… to the gentiles… to the ones who had been ignored… and the apostles are told not to judge… but just to invite…

What happens next is BIG… what happens next is the second coming… the King arrives to see his guests… to see who has managed to stumble or to be dragged into the banquet…

Now there’s a lot of speculation about the guy who gets tossed out… no one’s really sure what kind of wedding robe he was lacking or what made a wedding robe… a wedding robe… Saint Augustine thought the wedding robe was… love that springs from a pure heart… a clear conscience… and a genuine faith… some scholars think it was a baptismal robe or maybe just a clean set of clothes… but some scholars say the problem was now what he was wearing.. but how he was on the inside… some say it was simply his silence…

But what’s happening here is not about actual Palestinian social customs… this is a story about the final judgment… and sooner or later… the King is going to arrive… and if you matter… if you are a real person… then you have to be able to say “No.”

Because really… in order for “getting in” to matter… you have to be able to choose… to… not… get… in… God could have created us so that we would mindlessly accept the invitation and love God back… but we all know… that love that’s forced… isn’t really love at all… in order for getting in to matter…  to mean something… it has to be a choice… and if you haven’t chosen… you really aren’t there… and so the guy who’s silent… doesn’t get kicked out because he violated Leviticus 19:19 by wearing some fabric made by weaving together two different materials… he represents the freedom we have… to say no to God… 

I think it’s impossible for us to understand just how outrageous God’s radical grace… welcome… inclusion… and forgiveness… and love are. But I for one… thank God for the ability to choose to love back… and so when we arrive at the heavenly banquet… will we ask who else is there… or with whom we’ve been seated… or simply relish that we are there…