Grace and peace to you from God who is Creator, Christ, and Spirit.
The lectionary texts this week consist of three passages that are comforting (the 23rd psalm, the peace that passes understanding passage from Philippians, an Isaiah passage about a feast for everyone.) And, then we have a Gospel, the Gospel which is supposed to be good news, a Gospel that ends with weeping and gnashing of teeth. Just to set the tone, I am preaching about the weeping and gnashing of teeth parable today, not the nice ones.
So buckle up, or if you have had a really rough week, I don’t mind if you go drink some coffee in the fellowship hall and read the 23rd psalm or about God’s feast or the peace that passes understanding instead. But I will bring it back to compassion at the end!
BBC’s bitesize guide tells us that the parable of the wedding feast is about Jesus teaching that the Kingdom of God is open to everyone, not only Jews. A wedding feast would have been a familiar setting that people would have understood. Maybe this parable is about the Kingdom of God being open to everyone, but I really wrestled with this text and interpreted it in a different way. If this is a living word, it must be open to some present day eyes reading it anew.
Are we supposed to think of God as the King? A king who invites people to a banquet but kills them when they don’t show up the way he wanted them to? A God who is a figurehead and a decision-maker who makes slaves do his work without listening to their perspectives? Who makes orders and doesn’t deal with the bodily costs of those orders, but watches everything play out?
If I was one of the guests invited to the banquet, I would not be having fun knowing that a town was burned prior to the occasion and one of the guests was thrown out for failing to wear the proper robe.
The Kingdom of heaven is apparently this King’s wedding feast. At first read, I don’t want to be at that Kingdom of Heaven. But maybe there is some good news buried in here.
Maybe Jesus is showing us the Kingdom of heaven exists even somewhere in the now, even the now when people kill each other and aren’t fair. That there are little pockets of goodness in all the badness. That the Kingdom of Heaven is here in our mess.
Maybe Jesus would like to disturb people with this image of the Kingdom of Heaven, to alert us to our present mess. Maybe Jesus would like us to think, “No thanks!” and then realize that so often we behave in ways that end up letting the king burn down a city or take someone to outer darkness.
No one in the story objected to the King’s or the original invitees’ violent actions.
If I were a slave here, I would be living in such a state of fear that I wouldn’t know how to resist the King’s orders. Likely some of my friends or family members already died or were mistreated while trying to invite the first round of “acceptable” guests who didn’t respond correctly. I would probably feel resigned to my fate and the fate of those around me. I would likely not see any way around the status quo.
And if I were the King, who would I have to check my power? I have been taught my whole life that I am a powerful King, and that everyone should want to come to a wedding banquet, and how dare they not come correctly? I have not been taught to listen to my slaves, I have probably been taught that slaves are less than a whole person.
But to God, isn’t all of creation equally loved? Equally valued? Don’t we have scriptures that tell us that God loves the sparrows and the lilies of the field? Do our scriptures tell us that God loves Kings more than God loves us? That God loves men more than women, that God loves the Jews more than the Gentiles?
In present day, do people have equal rights? Not really. Does our land and creation have any rights at all? From my perspective, I notice a lot of destruction and broken promises.
Sometimes we can’t even see who we are leaving out and why we are leaving them out. Is the Kingdom of heaven even somewhere behind ignorance? Buried in someone who is leaving someone out? Is it buried somewhere under our shrouds of ignorance and death? Is it buried somewhere in the King’s fires that he sets? Is it there even when people are killing each other?
There is a temptation to only read the texts that show us the possibility of a future without the shroud of death, with feasts, and rain, and shade, and the pleasant possibilities of a community of God.
But here in the text, we are reminded about a present mess. I wonder, if we were not having violence today, would we wrestle with this text still, or would we be able to read it and smile, because we know that the past was wrong and we have totally learned better now and don’t have to worry about that anymore?
Am I upset about this text because I see that it still happens? Am I upset by this text because violence continues and I don’t know how to stop it? Am I upset by this text because there are still gifts given with strings attached? Gifts given that must be properly received or you are cast away? The man who wasn’t wearing the robe didn’t ask to be there, he was even an afterthought. Then he was cast away forever? That isn’t fair.
Maybe I am upset that God would even suggest that this horror of a party is the Kingdom of heaven. I read this passage not as an aspirational look at the kingdom of heaven but as a mirror of the Kingdom that we are currently operating in.
Yes, God is here in this Kingdom of Heaven. God is here even in this place. But is this the one you want? What amendments would you make to this Kingdom of Heaven? We need to see exactly what muck we are operating in in order to make any kind of change. We must be able to accept humanity and our propensity to fall into the guck and lies of our ancestors, but with different branding.
Our brothers and sisters and siblings overseas are involved in violence. And if we lived where they do, with the history and conditions they are operating with, we would be involved in that violence, too. That we are no better than this king, that we are no better than this slave, that we are no better than the guest who didn’t wear the robe.
Can we look at this and find compassion for that King, that slave, that man who didn’t wear the robe, and the partygoers who said nothing. And the community members that declined in the first place, and the ones who were killed and burned in the process. Can we have compassion for Jesus for speaking this parable into existence?
The Kingdom of heaven is not easy. The Yolk of God is easy, and the Kingdom of God is not easy. Because we have inherited a mess. We have also inherited the Yolk of God, that is loving, that loves all beings, that is able to love all beings, even beings who are perpetuating violence and beings who are ignorant to the violence they perpetuate silently.
What if, together, the partygoers decided that they didn’t want to cast someone into outer darkness, and they all said, “No King, let him stay. There has been enough violence.” What if they could find a way to agree to a better alternative?
Maybe there were slaves that tried to convince someone to wear a robe in order not to be killed and cast away. Maybe the King learn from his actions after this story? Did anyone learn to be better because of the failures of the characters in the story, did the violence spur any kind of learning and changing? The story doesn’t end at the end of this story.
The Kingdom of heaven is being able to look at this passage and know that even here, love exists, and that however we carry on, there is the love of God there, silently. And maybe if we let ourselves be silent long enough to find that love, and to accept that yes, we still live in a world with violence, we would be able to slowly dismantle systems that are killing ourselves and our co-species.
I invite you to take a moment of silence with me now. And I invite you to hold someone in compassionate thought. It could be yourself, it could be a character in this gospel story, it could be a soldier or a citizen or a refugee, it could be an animal. Who do you feel called to hold in a mental space of unconditional, healing love? I will watch the time for 20 seconds of silence.
This is the kingdom of heaven, that we can look at ourselves and still Love as God loves us all. Together we can practice holding this love for longer and longer until we won’t feel so afraid anymore.
At Luther House Chapel in Malaysia we ended sermons with prayer, and I think it is kind of nice, so please pray with me now.
God of mercy, you tell us that all are invited and that few are chosen. You give us peace that passes understanding and yet your words have often been used in ways that perpetuate fear and violence. Have mercy on us and remind us of your love that is present behind that fear. Help us to make the love clearer and louder than the fear. Amen.