Come to the Banquet

Scriptures:     Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20, Matthew 22:1-14

Sometimes a preacher looks at the lectionary text for that Sunday and just wants to run away screaming.  This parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22 is certainly one of those times. Lutheran pastor Mary W. Anderson says in this week’s Christian Century, “If you wrestle with this Matthean parable through the night, it’ll leave you limping by morning…  But the odd gift of the lectionary is that it does not give us the freedom to avoid difficult scripture, nor does it give us total control over passages that refuse to be tamed by our interpretative tools.”  Even if we could only have used the parallel story in Luke 14, it might have served us better – there Jesus says simply that “someone gave a great dinner.”  But here it is a king, and the wedding banquet is for his son, and the parable begins with “The kingdom of heaven may be compared with…..”  Sure makes it seem like we are supposed to see this as an allegory:  the king as God, the son as Jesus, us as the people being invited.  But if that’s the case, boy, does this throw all of our expectations out of the window.  Just look at all of these elements:

• those who are first invited to the banquet (us, maybe?) refuse to come
• when a second invitation goes out, with a terrific dinner menu involved, not only do the invitees refuse to come, but some of them mistreat and even kill the king’s servants
• the king gets mad as hell (this is supposed to be God?), destroying, burning (sounds like a Medieval swords-and-sorcery novel, doesn’t it?)
• when the servants go out again they basically bring in the riff-raff, the good and the bad — those who had refused the invitation both times were considered to be the elite
• one man who did accept the invitation and attended is chastised because he doesn’t have the proper clothing on, and he is not only dismissed but is bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness
• finally, the king makes a truly judgmental comment on all of this:  “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Yikes.  Do you really want me to try to preach on this text?  What word of God’s grace is there to be found in all of this?

Many of you may remember a kind of lilting folk song that was based on this text called “I Cannot Come”.  It was sung by the Medical Mission Sisters, and I remember using it with my youth group in Chappaqua, NY, back in the sixties.  The first verse set up the story:

A certain man held a feast
On his fine estate in town
He laid a festive table
He wore a wedding gown
He sent invitations
To his neighbours far and wide
But when the meal was ready,
Each of them replied:

and then came the chorus, which is what most everyone who has ever heard the song remembers:

I cannot come,
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don’t trouble me now
I have married a wife,
I have bought me a cow,
I have fields and commitments
That cost a pretty sum
Pray, hold me excused,
I cannot come!

There are several more verses, each followed by the chorus, and I won’t recite all of them.  But despite the fact that this is a catchy, bouncing tune that makes you want to sing along with those Medical Mission Sisters, the last verse certainly does offer up a judgmental tone when you listen to the lyrics carefully:

Now God has written a lesson
For the rest of humankind:
If we are slow in responding
He may leave us behind.
He is preparing a banquet
For that great and glorious day,
When the Lord and Master calls
Us be careful not to say:

and then you can repeat the chorus for yourselves.

Here is a text that is tailor-made for those who would like us to hold an exclusionary, judgmental version of Christianity.  No extravagant welcome here.  No “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”  Oh sure, the third group of invitees includes all kinds – saints and sinners, good and bad – but then there is this strange pericope about a man with the wrong clothes on who is more than just excluded – he is thrown into the outer darkness.  Any of you getting uncomfortable with what you wore to church today?  I hope not.  One of the things I’m grateful for is that we’ve gotten away from a “your Sunday best” tradition when it comes to church attendance.  No, no matter what you’re wearing you are not going to be cast into outer darkness today.

There are too many Christians who would like us to believe that God judges us, not just by our inappropriate wedding robe, but by the choices we make.  Mary Anderson again:  “Sermons have been preached on this parable with the message that only practicing Christians are saved – everybody else is toast.  Imagine that an active member in a congregation has just heard that sermon… She hears the judgment loud and clear.  Her son-in-law is a self-proclaimed atheist and her granddaughter is unbaptized at age six.  She has a wonderful neighbor who is Jewish; her longtime doctor is the best listener in the world – and a practicing Hindu.  It turns out that she loves a lot of people who are going to hell… She can’t imagine her sweet grandchild in hell.”

In other words we must accept the invitation to the feast, is the basis for this kind of thinking, or we will indeed be cast into outer darkness – that is, rejected by God our creator.  Those who think this way latch on to that phrase “many are called, but few are chosen” and make of it a test for who will be present in the kingdom of God.  We’ll need to come back and deal with that phrase at the end of this sermon.

But first let’s talk about the banquet and the invitations.  Biblical scholar Kenneth Bailey notes that in Middle Eastern culture there were often two kinds of invitations issued for a community banquet.  Only after all the guests accepted would the host determine what the main menu would be. If very few were coming, they might kill a chicken or two. For a slightly larger number the host might serve lamb.  If the whole community was invited, then there was a good chance that beef would be on the menu. Now, our text says that the king had prepared oxen and fatted calves – clearly, this was to be a magnificent wedding feast.  No wonder many were chosen and invited.  The image that Jesus wants to suggest to us here is of an ever-widening circle of invitees – the more some reject the invitation (even killing off the king’s servants – think: religious wars here down through the centuries) the farther out and the more inclusive the invitation goes.  “Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests,” our text says.  Do you hear the inclusiveness and diversity in that statement?  The story makes it clear that there is no reason for people to reject a gracious invitation from the King to come to the wedding feast and enjoy all good things.  The invitation is always there.

And what a feast it was.  The Rev. Cathy Russell calls our attention to how much ministry – that is, church work – centers around food.  She says, “It’s been duly noted that Jesus did a lot of his best work – storytelling, prophesying, justice making, around the dinner table — from the wedding at Cana to the home of Simon the Leper to the Last Supper on the night he was betrayed.” We are certainly aware of that right here, aren’t we?  I hope all of you were here last week for that delicious pot-luck luncheon – if not, you’ll have another opportunity on the first Sunday of November.  We call it “Congregators” for a reason – we come together around the food that each of us has prepared because we are called by God to be on mission and ministry in this place.  I don’t think any king’s banquet could have been as good as that meal.  And, of course, we’ll have another opportunity this week with a hot dog campership luncheon.

The pot-luck and campership luncheons are our version of the great wedding banquet – and, I suspect, of many other churches as well.  In this case we see ourselves in the parable not so much as those who are invited but as those stewards, those slaves, who offer the invitations, who prepare and serve the food.  Cathy Russell again:  “Believers, you and me, are God’s party crew — we work for God, we work together as a team, to prepare and set out the meal, and we embody God’s hospitality towards all those God has invited to the great banquet we are to help lay out….. The pot-luck works well as a metaphor for Christian stewardship too — for the time, talent, and treasure given by God which we offer back to God in return.  It takes time to prepare a hearty main dish for the pot-luck table, a stew or a casserole.  Likewise, the time we invest, in the larger life and mission of the church, our willingness to be present and participate, that’s what’s going to make our ministry a dish of real substance and sustenance for ourselves and for others — a meal that’s going to stick to our spiritual ribs.”  As we begin to think about our own stewardship time at the end of this month, may this image of preparing a pot-luck dish stay with us.

God’s great pot-luck.  That’s what the wedding banquet truly is.  And we are part of those seeking to feed a world craving the joy of the gospel lived out in community.  As Paul says in the passage we read from Philippians, “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.”  But, he then goes on, in one of the strongest affirmations in the whole of the Bible, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”  To those who respond to the invitation to the banquet, Paul says, “And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours…..”

God calls us to be God’s servants and to be a part of those who offer invitations far and wide – invitations to all, the good and the bad (I’m tempted to say “and the ugly”, but that wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to do, now would it?).  Taking our part in the parable in this way puts a whole different spin on it.  Now, the invitations are about inclusiveness and continuously going out into the streets to gather in all those who hear the invitation and would respond.  It’s not just our own response; it’s the response of those to whom we offer the word of God.

But we still need to deal with this strange guy who was not wearing a wedding robe and as a result got thrown out into outer darkness.  Don’t we still have here a vision of judgmentalism – an image of those who will be consigned to hell?  George H. Martin suggests that this was a man who wasn’t yet ready to receive grace.  He says of him, “Jesus describes a guy who had free wedding clothes issued to him.  All he needed to do was to accept the grace of the new clothes, but for whatever reasons, he chose to wear the clothes of his old life.  On that basis, he also chose to live on his own terms.  It is no wonder he’s thrown out, because the banquet is all about living on God’s terms.”  Gracia Grindell puts it this way:  “I’m struck by the wisdom of the image — the inner dress being fundamental, like the heart, while the outer clothing, charity, comes from a heart that knows it needs God in order to do anything good.”

To wear the wedding robe is to be clothed with Christ.  Go back to that woman in Mary Anderson’s story who heard a judgmental sermon on this parable and feared that so many of those she loved would be in hell – would be cast into outer darkness.  During the latter part of the service she, along with other parishioners, even as we did last week during communion, recited The Apostle’s Creed, and suddenly those words “he descended into hell” took on new meaning for her.  Jesus is not going to give up on anyone.  He is going to get those “cast into outer darkness and bring them into the kingdom with him.  If she was clothed with Christ, she reasoned, she was called to be like him….. She would descend into hell as Jesus did.  She left church convinced that day that if we truly live a transformed life, we can’t stand by and feast while others starve and burn.  That just isn’t the Jesus way!”  This woman took this parable as a challenge to take her clothing in Christ with all seriousness.

“For many are called, but few are chosen.”  Perhaps we have a better handle on this now.  What is involved is self-selection.  God’s grace is freely offered to one and all.  George H. Martin, again, puts it this way:  “Lo and behold, we discover, even in this seemingly difficult parable about judgment in which some end up in the outer darkness, that there is a deep vein of God’s love and grace from beginning to end.  It’s there in the idea of the wedding banquet.  It’s there in the successive invitations and the ever-widening circle of humanity included.  The grace and love of God is found in the assumption that you’re in by virtue of the invitation, and not as a result of your place in the world or even some heavenly scorecard God has been keeping.  The only scorecard is found at the door.  Either you walk in or you walk out.”

Come to the banquet.  Enjoy the feast.  Be filled by God who will “fully satisfy every need of yours.”  Receive the invitation and enter the door.  Serve God with gladness.

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
October 9, 2011