Knowing that, we can maybe relax a bit after
hearing today’s dramatic… and violent!... parable!
Understand that Jesus’ story is
here being remembered by Matthew and his church after having been remembered by
the people who heard Jesus, and the people who heard people who heard Jesus,
and the people who heard the people who heard the people who heard Jesus, and… you
get the idea! I suspect that Jesus’ original parable about how God’s covenant is for everyone
has, through a first century version of the game Telephone, become something quite
(well… how do I say this nicely?) weird!
It might have been easier if we did as some have attempted and just cut out the weird, jarring, far-out, or disturbing parts of the Bible. The problem is that, as strange as this is, it's still Scripture. It may feel like a game of Telephone, but the Holy Spirit is still part of the process. So now what?
I think it is helpful to recall that during the time between
Jesus’ teaching and Matthew writing it down, the early church was bogged down
in an argument. Even though God has expanded the Covenant to include all kinds
of people—varieties of Jews and a myriad of Gentiles are all now members of this
new Christian movement, they are beginning to repeat the same mistakes that Jesus
tried to fix. The weirdness of this passage partially reflects the pinch these early Christian communities felt.
Come with me as we walk through
this passage.
Imagine that you were lucky
enough to get an invitation to the Coronation of King Charles III last spring.
You would have received a card that might have read “the Lord Chamberlain has been ‘commanded by the King’ to
invite the holder to the Coronation at Westminster Abbey at 11 a.m. on May 6 in the Year of Our Lord 2023,” or something like that. And notice that the King
would not have enticed you with the nice buffet afterwards. Would you have said
“no?”
Well, that’s exactly what happens
in Jesus’ story in Matthew’s Gospel today. The king really wants these people
to come, but they could not have cared less! They are not interested in the food, and they
don’t want to dress up. Not only that, some are also so annoyed, so bothered by
the invitation that they berate, beat, and sometimes even kill the
messengers! This is an outrageously weird story!
Okay, but it’s weird on purpose.
Imagine that what we have here is really The History of God’s Salvation…For Dummies!
It was written by and for Matthew’s
church a few decades after Jesus may have said something kind of similar. I think that the parable that Jesus originally spoke might have sounded something like this: “God invited people to something great, to be God’s people and a light
to the world. Only people didn’t respond as expected. So now God has invited everyone—not
just one people or one nation or one group, everyone! —into the reign of God, and
the promise of God's reign has been extended to the ones who have accepted the invitation.”
Or something like that.
Along the way, someone added on to the original parable the part about the king who killed the party-poopers and
destroyed their city. Why? To tickle the
ears of Matthew’s church and invite them to think about how Jerusalem was
destroyed by the Roman Empire in 70 AD, and with it the end of Temple-based
Judaism, and also how the Roman city of Pompei, the most cosmopolitan, artsy, and secular city in the Empire, was wiped out when Mount Vesuvius
blew its top soon thereafter. To drive home the point that “Shape up and fly right! God is not fooling around!”
But wait! There's more! You know those
servants who were sent out to bring in everyone, both the good and the bad? They
would remind those Early Christians of what we would call—from the last chapter
of Matthew—the Great Commission, where Jesus tells us to “Go into all the
world, baptize and teach!” So the Christians in Matthew’s church would have
understood that God has sent Jesus Christ, who lived and died and rose again,
and empowered the Church to go into all the world.
End of story, right? "They"
are out. "We" are in. Hooray for us! Let the party begin!
Not so fast, sports fans! You may have been invited off the street without warning, but are you dressed for the party? The real sour note of this story (for us anyway) is the part about the guest who has been hauled in from the street and then is suddenly thrown into the eternal cosmic dumpster fire. Why? For not having the right party clothes handy! What’s up with that?
Preachers have been trying to wiggle out of this for generations, with some commentators saying some malarky like "well, hosts kept party garments ready for guests and these jokers just didn't put them on" or some such silliness. [Sigh!] All that does is disguise the fact that this part makes us squirm. They don't want Jesus to sound so, well, mean! And I get it! We love the welcome part of the first part of the story, even with the special effects, but the “where’s your wedding gown?” part…? Not so much!
Well, it is very weird and I think it's meant to be weird-- but for a reason! I suspect Matthew's church heard and understood why it was weird... otherwise they would not have kept the story in their Gospel! The problem is that we are not in on the joke.
Or are we?
When I hear about the wedding garment, I think about a very old tradition that
many Christian churches do when someone is baptized -- even today! The candidates
(even babies) have their old clothes removed and after they are baptized from
head to toe, they put on new clothes. The newly baptized are dressed in a brand-new
white party suit!
So, I wonder if the wedding
garment in Matthew’s Gospel might not point to this new clean white baptismal garment
that would have been well known in the early church? I don’t know. In any
event, I think that the Gospel is telling us that we are not party crashers
but invited guests!
So, how do we dress for
the party?
Today’s Epistle to the Philippians
suggests an answer. Paul wrote this letter from prison. And he urges his friends
to be reconciled, calling on his companions in Christ to rejoice and to stop
worrying. He says, “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” he is not just saying have a positive attitude, he is
saying "put on Christ" -- like that baptismal garment! What we choose to wear outside does affect how we are
inside, and how we are inside shows up outside. We have a choice. If we choose
to be faithful, to come to the party, we also choose how we are, the kind of
garment we put on.
Like a teenager trying to find
just the right outfit for the big night out, we might find ourselves trying on
several new outfits over the course of our lifetime and our life in Christ.
Putting on the “wedding garment” is a life-long process. It is a process that
includes intentional prayer, intentional stewardship, intentional service, and
intentional worship. As Christians grow and mature, as faith becomes more and
more woven into our being, we develop new holy habits of sacramental living, reading,
and learning scripture, discovering the skills of prayer, and the joy of
generosity. As we do this, we find that we have, in fact, put on—and are
putting on every day—the wedding garment! Every day, we are more and more
dressed for the party!
Thinking about the wedding
garment reminds me of a poem by the 17th Century Anglican priest
George Herbert. He wrote this poem just before or just after the King James
Bible was first published 400+ years ago. He describes the ritual of a priest
putting on his vestments in the quiet of the sacristy before a celebration of
Holy Communion. But he is also talking about every Christian who in faith and
baptism has not only accepted God’s invitation to new life in Christ but has also
chosen day by day to put on the wedding garment. The poem is called “Aaron.”
Aaron
Light and perfections on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To lead them unto life and rest:
Thus are true Aarons drest.
Profaneness in my head,
Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest:
Poor priest, thus am I drest.
Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest:
In him I am well drest.
Christ is my only head,
My alone-only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me ev'n dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new-drest.
So, holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine tun'd by Christ (who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest),
Come people; Aaron's drest.
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