Sermon preached by the Reverend John E. Kitagawa at the
Celebration of the Holy Eucharist on
Exodus 32: 1-14; Philippians 4: 1-9; Matthew 22: 1-14
Here is the question. Do you find this morning’s Gospel illuminating
and helpful? Are you any clearer about
the nature of the “kingdom of heaven?” Does
the passage make you excited about the “kingdom of heaven?” Does it fire your imagination and hold up the
kingdom of heaven as a consciousness to achieve? I have to admit the last part of the parable
really ticked me off. How could the king
expect anyone to be wearing a wedding garment on the off chance they would be
dragged into the social event of the season?
Equally absurd is the likelihood that everyone else just happened to be
wearing wedding garments when the king's servants hauled them in. So, I know the temptation to just write this
passage off as incomprehensible, repulsive, or useless. Instead, I invite you to probe a little
deeper with me in search of value for our faith journeys, and perhaps relevance
for these difficult days.
The only way to make sense of
this passage is to realize Matthew stitched two different parables
together. Parable One is about a
king giving a wedding feast for his son.
The invited guests refuse to come, offering a number of excuses. Some “went away, one to his farm, another to
his business" (Matthew 22: 5)—strongly suggesting that tending to
ordinary, everyday concerns was a higher priority than a relationship with the
king. Similarly, we allow the busy-ness
of life to crowd out our best intentions to live a faithful life. Surprisingly, in the story, some respond
violently, killing the king's servants (Matthew 22: 6). The king, in turn responds violently, and then
sends servants to bring in "both good and bad" (Matthew
Parable One contains a
powerful and difficult message. Jesus
was clearly speaking a word of judgment upon the people of his time. His audience would have been shocked to hear
Jesus suggest that rejecting him would lead God to seek others to be honored
guests in the kingdom of heaven. After all, the audience thought of their
community as the community in covenant with God. This is not a Jewish issue. Jesus' message is not confined to ancient
times. His original audience was made up
of devoted religious people. They were
pious, adhering to traditions that taught and fed them. From Jesus’
perspective, however, they had lost touch with God’s intentions, and they had
lost their focus on God’s desires for the world. In Jesus’ view, they were not fully honoring
their part of the covenant relationship with God. We are much the same. We have the potential and record for falling
short of our promises to God. If you have
any doubt about this, reflect on your life in relationship to the Baptismal
Covenant in the Book of Common Prayer[1].
Let us now turn to Parable Two
, which is another wedding feast story.
We can assume the guests were invited, and unlike those in Parable One,
they did not make excuses, and they showed up for the party. The point emerges as the banquet is in full
swing. The king notices that a guest is
not properly dressed. He asks why. When there is no response, the king has the fellow
thrown out. It would be easy and
erroneous to think that this is a parable about God’s negative judgment upon
those who do not fit in with the rest.
Unfortunately, separating the
parables does not seem to present God in a more flattering light. In one, God appears to be violent and
vengeful. In the other, God’s actions
seem overly and unreasonably influenced by a fixation on fashion. So, we have to wonder what Jesus is trying to
communicate. On its own, Parable Two
was less threatening to Jesus’ audience.
To them, the king's actions would have been reasonable and expected. Everyone would have known the proper attire
for a wedding feast, and would have made preparations to fulfill their part of
the social contract. Thus, the guest's
lack of a wedding garment would have been considered a deliberate affront to
the host. The message about preparing
oneself spiritually is an ancient religious theme. Coupled with Parable One, the message takes on new dimensions. It becomes a teaching to re-enforce the
importance of living according to the covenant.
Secondly, Matthew is trying to convey Jesus’ thought that it is not
enough to adhere to the letter of the law, while ignoring the spirit of the
law. In this construct, the wedding
garment might be a symbol for a person's willingness to be transformed by the
Spirit.
In other words, Parable Two
warns us that it is not enough simply to be baptized and to be churchgoers, and
it re-calls us to covenant living with renewed commitment and zeal. As it is sometimes said, Baptism makes you a Christian person. In Baptism, we are indelibly marked "as Christ's
own forever."[2] However, being Christian is a
life-long journey. It is a journey,
which, according to the Book of Common Prayer, calls us “to follow Christ; to
come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for
spread of the
Hopefully, you now feel more
informed about this passage. However, if
I were stop here, you might not feel any more excited or motivated about the “kingdom
of heaven.” So, let us return to the
first line of the parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding
banquet for his son (Matthew 22: 2).
Now, there is something to get excited about! We should pay close attention to the fact that
Jesus is making this comparison. As Episcopalians,
we should be both familiar and comfortable with the concept of a good party. Even a confirmed introvert like me knows how
to enjoy the blessings of good food, good music, good company, and good
conversation. I have learned how to
appreciate gracious, generous and caring hosts.
And, I have learned to be thankful.
When Jesus compares the
kingdom of heaven to a wedding banquet given by a gracious, generous and caring
host, we have an inkling of what he is talking about. I can and you can extrapolate from personal experience
and begin to have some sense of how awesome and wondrous living in the kingdom
of heaven would be. We must hold onto this perspective of joyful
celebration when considering the details we have just reviewed. The first thing to notice is that the
original guests self-selected themselves out.
Maybe they were aware of what they were doing, or maybe they just did
not see the meaning of their responses. The
parable helps us to see that they were invited to the most important banquet
they would ever be invited to, and that they mistakenly blew it off. Secondly, we can discount the verses about
servants going out to remind the guests, the guests killing the servants, and
the king killing the original guests. I
doubt these words were ever spoken by Jesus.
They strike me as later accretions. Third, I believe it is entirely consistent for
Jesus to suggest the king was a good steward of all that had been prepared, and
recognized that many in his realm, good and bad, were hungry and in need.
I am struck by the second
parable’s focus on a violation of the dress code. I could not figure out any way to coax good
news out of that one. That is, until I reflected
on something a parishioner said at the reception following Randy Fenton’s
Memorial Service. I noted that Scott (Horton)
was unusually dressed up in a suit, shirt, tie and dress shoes. (He is usually attired in shorts, shirt, and
sandals. Scott said it was a tribute to
Randy. I did not immediately see the
connection. Scott explained that Randy and
he had been in the Men’s Spirituality Group.
In that context, Randy had explained that getting dressed up for church
was one of the ways he spiritually prepared to receive the grace of God through
the liturgy and the Sacrament. In
classic Anglican terms, this is an outward and visible sign of inward and
spiritual grace. I am a lot more
comfortable with the idea of the wedding garment being a symbol for a person's
willingness to be transformed by the Spirit, and that openness and vulnerability
to the Spirit are basic criteria for inclusion in the kingdom of heaven. From this perspective, I have no trouble with
the idea that people closed to the transforming power of the Spirit might not
find a place at the banquet table. I
think the violent exclusion of the improperly dressed guest is also a later
accretion by a community needing to justify the exclusion of people deemed inappropriate
in some way.
I know God to be merciful and patient;
loving and kind; forgiving and generous.
Today’s Gospel suggests that we, the invited guests, are the ones who make
conscious and unconscious choices to turn away from God’s love, mercy and
grace; rather than God withholding them from us. We need to ask ourselves how we are like
those who avoid God’s company with lame excuses. How
are we like the “A-List” guests who do anything to avoid hearing God’s
continuing invitation? How are we like the guest who got into the
banquet under false pretenses?
Even in difficult economic times like today,
Jesus wants us to know we have very little to worry about, unless we tear up
God’s invitation, and/or ignore God’s follow-up calls. Today’s Gospel suggests there are only two
responses required of us. First, we have
to accept the invitation. Second, all we
have to do to participate in the kingdom of heaven is to be open to the power
of the Holy Spirit to transform and empower us.
AMEN.
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