Matthew 22.1-14 (Trinity 18, Proper 23 year A)
Don’t you think it slightly strange, in the Gospel story we’ve just heard, that a poor guy plucked from the street to attend the king’s wedding feast should then be bound and flung out for not having the right clothes on? How many street beggars or Big Issue sellers do you think would be in possession of suitable attire for a posh wedding?
We’ll return to him later. But all in all, this is quite a strange parable. It’s one thing to turn down an invitation to a wedding, but it’s a bit over-the-top to actually kill the messengers who bring it, don’t you think? Particularly since the king in the parable was the sort of despot who’d burn down your entire town in response. They’d have been well advised to say yes to a man like that, even if they had had other plans for the day of his party.
I think Matthew gets a bit more stark and even bloodthirsty than the other Gospel writers when he re-tells the stories of Jesus; Matthew also groups the stories together, so some commentators think that here we’ve two quite different stories joined together, the one about the wedding feast being populated by people gathered in from the highways and byways, after those first invited failed to respond, together with a second story about a man coming to a wedding without the proper clothes and being punished for it.
But, separately or together, they’re stories we should take seriously, and the theme of both is judgement: God invites us to a feast he’s prepared, a salvation feast, but woe betide us if we pass up on that invitation. Sometimes we soft-pedal the judgement side of the Gospel, but we shouldn’t. God is love, and his love seeks to include us all, desires to leave no-one out. But God is also the righteous judge who is angered by our rejection and our misdeeds; and his wrath is to be feared.
“The Christian Church is a revolutionary movement that became an institution - discuss.” That might have been a question in one of my papers at theological college, but was in fact a headline in last week’s Church Times. Jesus came with a revolutionary message, and here he targets those for whom the system and the ritual have become more important than God. The priests with their ritual and sacrifice, and the Pharisees with their purity and piety: these two groups had between them created a godless religion.
Let me explain. They professed belief in God, they prayed to him and offered their sacrifices; but really they’d relegated God himself to be just one component in a system that didn’t really need him. As long as they did all the right things God had to let them in: they’d racked up enough points, they’d earned their place.
That’s what they thought, anyway. In the story Jesus told there were people who expected to be invited to the king’s banquet; it was what their social standing deserved. And they also thought it perfectly OK not to go, if it spoiled the routine of their tidy little lives. In the story the king deals very harshly with their disrespect.
In the previous chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we’ve already heard Jesus tell the Pharisees and priests that (quote) “tax gatherers and prostitutes are getting into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Instead of serving God, he told them, and responding to God’s call, they’d been serving only themselves.
So what has the Church done with the revolutionary message of the Gospel? Are we looking to change minds and hearts and lives, are we looking to change the world, or have we become institutionalised? The problem with institutions is that they become hierarchical, bureaucratic and self-serving.
It’s a truth proved time and time again in all kinds of organisations and institutions, that what should be serving and encouraging and enriching the local groups and ordinary members, can end up taking from them rather than giving to them. The organisation itself becomes more important than its aims, and its structures seek to be served rather than offer service, end up impoverishing rather than enriching. The aim of the Church is to teach, preach, proclaim and live the kingdom, to share and show God’s love and to acknowledge him as king. Not to spend as much time as we do just keeping the show on the road.
Sorry - bit of a bee in my bonnet, I guess. But I’m reminded of a company someone I know used to worked for. When they did a programme of restructuring they managed to cut out a whole tier of management without anyone really noticing. They’d got more management than they needed, because one thing managers are good at doing is creating more managers and building little empires.
Let me get back to the man I started with, that poor guy plucked from the gutter and then thrown back again because he hasn’t got the right clothes? “Tax gatherers and prostitutes are getting into the kingdom ahead of you,” said Jesus - but only if they’ve listened, obeyed, responded, made changes. Only if they’re wearing the right clothes.
Here’s a thought. What if the king, knowing that people pulled in off the street aren’t going to have much to wear, had put out suits of wedding clothes for them all? Wouldn’t that be a kind and kingly gesture? And isn’t that what our gracious God does do? When we turn to God we’re clothed with his love. So maybe this man was punished not for not having a wedding suit in his wardrobe at home (and maybe not having a wardrobe, or even a home), but for not having bothered to wear the wedding clothes that had been provided for him.
In other words, for being the person who comes to church but then falls away or maybe departs in a huff because they can’t be top dog; or the person who’s happy to be known as a churchgoer, but who fails to allow Jesus into the rest of his life, whose everyday activities don’t reflect the kingdom principles he hears about on a Sunday. I know that sometimes I am that person, and that’s why I’m here. So often my Sunday praise and fervour doesn’t get properly connected in to my weekday life; it’s something I need always to be working on.
Tax gatherers and prostitutes and all kinds of folk from the highways and byways of life get invited to the kingdom feast of our Lord. They’re welcomed in, they’re commanded to come in. It’s a revolutionary party, it’s a beggars’ banquet, in which all the established principles get turned upside down. Except this one: you don’t come as you are, you come attired in the robes that the king is giving you, the ones bearing the sign of the cross, a cross to be worn not only on the outside of us but in the deep and secret places of our hearts.
To do less than that is to cheat on God and to disrespect his generous and saving grace. It’s not only the obvious targets, like the priests and Pharisees to whom Jesus told his story, who stand under judgement. It’s all of us.
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