Matthew 22:1-14
As many of you know, my little sister is getting married this week. You probably also know that I’ve been a guest at a lot of weddings over the past couple of years. Ben and I are in our late 20s, so it is just that season of life for us, and we are honored to be included in so many celebrations. But it is a LOT of weddings. So all of the scripture passages about weddings strike me a little differently right now, a little closer to home. I can picture the parents of the newlyweds, frantically trying to ensure that there will be enough food, enough drinks, that the flowers are just so and the seating chart takes into account that those two cousins are feuding. I can picture the brides and the grooms in their best clothes, tripping over trains and scuffing brand new shoes as they pace, all nervous energy. I know very vividly the amount of thought and effort and money that goes into every detail, how many texts and phone calls and emails were exchanged just to make sure everyone could show up at the right time and in the right outfits. As someone who literally learned how to officiate weddings in graduate school, I even know how many hours of training and rehearsal it takes the many vendors and professionals to show up ready for the big day. Weddings are a big deal! That’s probably why there are several wedding stories and parables in the Gospels, even though Jesus himself never married.
Nowadays, the actual wedding ceremony is usually the shortest part of the event, very much eclipsed by elaborate receptions with dinner and dancing in a picturesque setting. But our receptions have nothing on the wedding banquets of Jesus’s day. Weddings in Ancient Palestine were multi-day, sometimes even multi-week affairs. Entire extended families came together to host daily feasts with as much variety of food and drink as they could afford. The higher status the families were, the more auspicious the match, the more extravagant the wedding feast. So Jesus tells us the story of a king whose son has married, and this king pulls out all the stops for the celebration. Fatted calves and oxen have been slaughtered, wine has been mixed and made ready to serve. He sends servants around the city to find out why the seats of his banquet hall are empty, but they come back shaking their heads. So he sends them again, thinking surely the guests will come once they hear how enticing and costly the meal is. Still, the invitees cannot be bothered. Some of the would-be guests even lash out against the King’s servants, abusing and killing them. This king is either not very popular, or he is friends with the worst sort of people.
So, he sends out new slaves, and tells them to invite whoever they meet. The wedding hall fills up with the good and the bad, with whoever happened to be walking by and had nothing better to do. The food gets eaten, and the wine gets drunk, but all the while something terrible is happening outside the banquet hall. The king has sent his armies to kill almost everyone on the original guest list, and to burn their city. There is a city outside the castle walls, and that city is burning, and the new guests are expected to just keep the party going.
But there is one man there who is not rejoicing, one person who has foregone the fancy clothes that would have been distributed to every guest prior to entry as part of the king’s hospitality. This man is confronted by the king and remains silent. For his silence, for bringing down the mood and damaging the aesthetic at the banquet, he is bound and cast out into the night, the darkness lit by a burning city.
Wait, what? Is that really the story Jesus chooses to tell us to teach us what the kingdom of heaven is like? What an ugly, miserable story, what an uncomfortable parable. What are we to make of it?
Well, for many years, many people have turned this parable into a very easily digestible allegory. The king is God, the first invitees are the people of the covenant, the slaves are the prophets, and the well-behaved guests who are invited last are us gentile Christians. That is an awfully convenient way to frame it, because it places us in seats at the table, feasting and enjoying a good party with God while the world burns, the people of Israel with it. You might see how that doesn’t sit quite right when you spell it out. Any time we take a story of Jesus and make ourselves the heroes at the expense of someone else, we have missed the mark.
What does it say about who we believe God is, if we decide God is the king in this parable? Do we believe God is petty, and violent? Or is it more that we wish that God were as petty and violent as we are sometimes? Do we wish God would destroy violent people, even if it means destroying all the innocent people around them? Do we believe in a God who is as monstrous as that?
Of course not. The God of our faith is the God of loving enemies, of blessing those who curse us and making peace with those whom we have wronged, the God who wants justice like rivers and whose property is always to have mercy. This is the God of Jesus, and Jesus is the one telling us this parable. So where is our God in this parable?
What if God is the man without a robe? What if God cast off what separated him from his creation, only to be cast out for his humility?
Jesus shows up to the wedding banquet with the rest of the rabble, but there are people weeping outside. There is gnashing of teeth out there, out in the burning city besieged by soldiers who may believe their cause is righteous but really just want to go home to their families at the end of the day. There is suffering outside, and the king is doing nothing to stop it. So God himself shrugs off the falsehoods of wealth and inequity and stands before the powers and principalities of this world. He stays silent under interrogation, like the voices of so many of his children that have been silenced by this violent regime. And so Jesus is cast out, bound like he is being prepared for his grave. And in submitting to this, God joins those who are weeping and gnashing their teeth as they flee the destruction all around them. God would rather be in the outer darkness with us than perpetuate the systems of power that try to smother our light.
See the wedding banquet may have been enticing, with rich foods and expensive wines, but it was a lie. It was the attempt of a vindictive tyrant to flaunt his wealth to his peers, and when that did not work he set them on fire and made his own subjects play along to save his ego. The presence of Jesus disrupted that façade. This is what Jesus does for us. He shows up and stands out as the one piece that does not quite fit into our systems of power. He reveals the lies that are holding us hostage at the wrong banquet and then he points us toward the bread of life. He shows up in the outer darkness, so that even there we are not alone. God will always give up his spot in the palace to kneel with us in the dust. May we learn to do the same for one another.
Mother A Writes 