A fearful invitation

“My friend, how is it that you came in here

without a wedding garment?”  --Matthew 22:12

One of the most troubling of parables is the story of the King and the wedding feast, and the “dis-invited” guest.  This vision of the Kingdom of Heaven is frightening at least on one level. And that is the vision of God --allegorically-- as a hard and vengeful king.  Jesus begins this parable saying:

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared

a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants 
to call those he had invited to the banquet, but 
they refused to come. (--Mt. 22: 2-3)

 The king (who seems to clearly stand for God) is preparing a wedding feast for his son (Jesus seems an appropriate reading there).  He invites the guests exhorting them to come, but his invitation is snubbed and his messengers are finally killed. So, the enraged King sends his army to “destroy those murders and burn their town” (cf. Mt 22: 5).  This vengeful or punishing God doesn’t seem like the God who is love (cf. 1 John 4:16). But isn’t that what Jesus is saying? That His father will be enraged if we reject His invitation and abuse (and/or kill) His messengers, and that we better watch out!?  That is perplexing. Troubling. Worth pondering. But I wonder if that is what this parable is really about?  Or is there something else happening here? A different message about the Kingdom of God. A message about how we receive it.

I’ve been thinking about that first vision of the guests who “refused to come,” and that final vision of the guest who gets dis-invited from the banquet.  It seems to me that there is something important going on in this parable dealing with the way we receive God’s invitation. When the guests are first invited they simply don’t go. Perhaps they don’t really listen to the messenger, or perhaps they are distracted by immediate duties or obligations. They just don’t go.  How often are we like that. We probably have an excuse most of the time, but how often do we simply not bother to respond when God calls?  Then the messengers are sent out again to announce that the food has been prepared and the table is set and the frozen margaritas are melting!  But the guests still don’t go. They turn away from the King’s invitation, “one to his field, and another to his business…” (cf. 22: 5) and others take the messengers, abuse them and kill them. I wonder if this isn’t where Christ is calling us to see a vision of the Kingdom of God. Here we see the difficulty of saying YES to God’s call. Some guests are actually busy –going to their fields and their work—and so it might seem reasonable for them to ignore the King’s invitation, or God’s call? How often do we feel too busy to spend time with God? Too busy to go to mass because of weekend obligations or because of some project at work we need to catch up on –maybe inventory or something like that, or maybe it’s the lawn that we’ve been meaning to mow. Wouldn’t it be easier if we didn’t go to church and just stayed home and washed those dishes and folded that laundry and raked those leaves? It’s not that we don’t want to respond to God –it’s just that we are so very busy! 

And that seems to me the crux of this parable. That busy-ness!  After a while of God calling us and us being too busy to respond, we may get a little resentful. We may get tired of feeling like God has us on speed dial! Just like some of those guests in the parable, we may begin to feel an urge to kill the next messenger God sends our way.  The Kingdom of God is like this King who is throwing this party that he really really really wants you to attend... think about how annoying that might seem, if all you wanted to do was stay home, finish the laundry and binge watch Stranger Things. It’s not that the Kingdom of Heaven is like that king or like that wedding feast… the Kingdom of Heaven is like that call! It’s going to interrupt your regular daily duties and desires and hopes and plans and it is going to demand a response.

And when it comes to the response, I think we see something about that in the final image of that guest who has no response when the king asks him: “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” (cf. 22: 12) And when the man has no answer, he is bound and thrown out into the darkness “where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth” (cf. 22:13).  I have always been struck by how unfair that feels. The man may have been caught off guard by the king’s question. And, anyway, the guy was forced to come to the party by the king’s servants. Why should he be punished? He didn’t want to go to this stupid old party anyway??  And that is where I think I find the lesson of this man.  What might the wedding garment symbolize? Of course, baptism or the grace of God… something like that. And so the fact that the man isn’t wearing a wedding garment, means he doesn’t really want to be at this party. And God, a God of Love, isn’t about to force anyone to stay at his party if they don’t want to be there.  So he has the guest bound and tossed out into the darkness. It seems to me that this is a very important part of the parable. The king doesn’t kill the guest. He sends him back out into the darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It’s almost like the king is saying, you don’t want to be at the party, then I won’t force you to stay. Go back where you came from: bound by sin, go back out into the darkness of a life of toil and suffering.  Because if we aren’t ready to say yes to God, to hear His call and respond with joy, then we aren’t ready to be in His presence.  And so –in some way—we are still bound to sin, and we are still walking in the darkness.  But that doesn’t mean we are lost. God is still calling. God is still inviting.  The next time he calls you, I challenge you to put those dishes down, drop that laundry, shut off that mower, forget about work and distractions and Stranger Things, and try saying this: Speak Lord, your servant is listening.