Year A
 Exodus 32:1-14
 Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
 Philippians 4:1-9
 Matthew 22:1-14

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

My brother carries a gun…  no…  not everywhere he goes…  only when he provides security at a Washington, D.C. area synagogue…  I’m not sure when he took firearm training…  and got a gun license…  and began doing this…  we don’t really talk about it…  it may have been after the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018…  when the shooter murdered eleven people and wounded six…  it may be because of threats his synagogue received…  I don’t know…  I don’t condone it…  but I understand some of it…  ]  for us though…  the diocese doesn’t permit any clergy…  staff…  students…  volunteers…  or visitors…  to carry a weapon on the premises of any church property…  though trained and licensed peace officers may…

And while I believe that Israel… and Ukraine for that matter…  have a right to defend themselves from unwarranted attacks and violent aggression…  I grieve the thousands of innocent Palestinian and Israeli women…  children…  and men who have…  and will be…  wounded or killed…  or become collateral damage…  and last week’s statement from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations affirms that…  the actions of Hamas…  and the Israeli response in Gaza…  in no way advance peace…  but rather cause loss of life and harm…  and grief and devastation…  not only to the individuals affected…  but also to the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people in seeking an end to the decades long occupation and blockade…

And in a Friday afternoon statement from the ELCA…  Presiding Bp. Eaton wrote…  in part…  for the past week we have borne witness to the horrors of the escalating crisis between Israel and Hamas…  we also watch a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel blocks food…  water…  fuel and medical supplies…  and as airstrikes continue to cause unbearable civilian casualties ahead of a just-announced ground assault…  we see Israelis and families around the world in the agonizing wait for word about the fate of loved ones killed or taken hostage by Hamas…  we are in anguish…  grieving and praying for all people who are living in trauma…  fear and uncertainty…  I won’t condone this violence…  though I can understand a small bit of it…

The Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson writes…  we’ve come to this horribly messy situation because of deeply complex power games…  historical struggles…  colonial interference…  U.S. political pressures…  oil…  and good old-fashioned human revenge…  ]  and what I think is very difficult for us to understand…  and what is far too easy to minimize and dismiss…  is the subtlety and interconnection of these realities…  and how they form us…  and that multigenerational trauma is expressed not only in a people’s history…  in their stories…  but this trauma actually becomes a part of our physiology…  passed down through the generations…  in mitochondrial DNA…  which can be called genetic memory… not just as a thing remembered…  and not the result of an over active imagination…  but as an inherited and unshakable feeling… 

In our reading from Exodus…  when Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain…  the Israelites gave up on God and God’s promises…  and sought to create a false god of their own… from the gold on their wive’s…  son’s…  and daughter’s ears…  and they brought offerings and sacrifices to their golden calf…  ] and God and Moses did…  what parents sometimes do when their children behave badly…  they pointed fingers at each other…  as to just who it was who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt…  God’s anger burned hot against them…  and Moses reminded God of the ancestral promise made to this people… and for the second time…  God changed God’s mind about the disaster that God planned to bring on the people…

And then in today’s Gospel…  in yet another parable about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like…  a King…  God…   invites people to partake in the fullness of joy…  at a time when his son…  Jesus…  will marry…  and just who the Son will marry begins as a mystery…  Fr. John Shea writes that while it’s the religious leadership who’s really invited…  they go about as if nothing special is happening…  their farming and their businesses demand their attention…  ordinary time consumes them as a special time eludes them… ] and how do they treat the King’s slaves who are sent to remind them about the wedding feast…  with telling echos of last week’s parable about the tenants treatment the vineyard owner’s son…  some are seized…  mistreated…  and killed…

And in response…  in his outrage…  the King sent his troops…  destroyed the murderers…  and burned their city…  and as a result…  the guest list of the elite becomes a guest list of the indiscriminate…  there is now no ethnic…  gender…  age…  or health requirement…  there is not even a moral requirement…  the wedding of the Son has become a beggar’s feast…  a gathering of those who simply hear and accept the invitation…  and while the invitation itself did not name the bride…  we now realize that those called in from the streets were not invited to merely witness a wedding…  they were not invited simply to observe…  they themselves were invited to be married to the Son…  the only requirement is the wedding garment and an eagerness to be united to the Son…

And the man who came without a wedding garment…  was not thrown out because of his clothing…  he was escorted out because he had no intention of marrying…  he was bound hand and foot…  because he would not eat with his hands…  or dance with his feet…  and he would weep and gnash his teeth… instead of laughing and singing…  and people with this kind of inner disposition not only exclude themselves from community…   they may live with regret…

There are some Christians whose singular concern is salvation…  whether they’ll get into heaven or not…  there are some Christians who believe that baptism earns them a Get Out of Jail Free card…  but baptism…  like a wedding garment and being married to the Son…  is just the beginning of discipleship…  just the beginning of understanding and acting on Jesus’ teachings…  of making them our own…  and whose offspring will be acts of justice…  compassion…  and love…

Cities in Israel and Gaza…  and elsewhere…  are still burning…  we’ve made the same mistake as those in our reading from Exodus…  and for that matter…  as millions of others throughout history since then have made…  by giving up what is honorable…  just…  pure…  pleasing…  commendable…  excellent…  and worthy of praise…  qualities in today’s Epistle which Paul exhorts us to pursue…  we continue to believe that we can cast our own idols…  not from gold earrings…  but from carbon steel and gunpowder…  thinking that bullets and bombs can save us…  but as history has demonstrated with crystal clarity…  they’re incapable of doing in the long run…  and only serve to feed multigenerational trauma… 

I don’t know how these armed conflicts will unfold…  like many of you…  I think they’re likely to get worse before they get better…  because those who refuse God’s invitation…  can find destruction in their lives…  and if you’re going to begrudge God…  who invites everyone…  you may…  in your own hot anger…  forget your wedding garment…  and by doing so…  exclude yourself…  but the Good News is that God is more concerned that the wedding banquet is full…  than what guests are there…  that God’s need for relationship is so great…  that God came to be one of us…   and that God will never give up on us…