Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from October 09, 2005

by

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Exodus 32:1-14

Matthew 22:1-14

I begin this morning with a confession of sorts—in almost 30 years of preaching, I have never preached this text.  In fact, I have worked pretty hard to avoid it.  Something about it, most everything about it, seems harsh. 

Have a party, nobody comes, invite a bunch more people and, while waiting for them to show up, go burn down the houses of the first people who didn’t show up.  Then when the second batch of guests shows up, one of them gets thrown out for not wearing the right clothes.  The final blow is the seeming capriciousness of who’s in and who’s out.  The “many are called, few are chosen” verse is regularly taken out of context as to argue about who “should” and “should not” be welcomed into the church.  It just doesn’t seem quite right. 

I have long thought God wanted spiritual fruit and not religious nuts, but this texts suggests that, maybe, the right-wingers have some purchase in the interpretation of Christianity that boils down to:  Think like this, walk like this, talk like this, look like this, be like this, or you’re not part of the club. 

Rather than try and figure it all out, I just avoided the text.  Depending on how this sermon goes, I may wish that I continued that 30-year practice.  The commentaries I consulted, for the most part, supported a traditional reading of the text, which goes more or less like this: 

“The king introduced at the beginning of text is understood as a reference to God, and the violence the king calls down on the unrobed man is understood as sacred violence levied for the man’s absolute recalcitrance in accepting God’s invitation to the Kingdom.” (Marty Aitken)

Most commentators understand this text as allegory, and work to soften the edges and make it less offensive.  A few voices and my own study pointed in an undeniably different direction.  Bear with me as I try and paint a different picture.  I warn you ahead of time, this is very chewy stuff.

It all hinges on how the passage is translated.  My Greek is, admittedly, lousy but struggling with original language, in this instance, really paid off.  It also made me wish I paid more attention in Greek class, which met at 8:00 on Monday morning….

Where the NRSV translated, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son…”,  the Greek actually reads “The Kingdom of heaven may be made like a king.”  The difference is in the declension of the verb, but I will not bore you with that.  This difference opens a world of possibility for new meaning.

Rather than making violence an inevitable by-product of not measuring up and having God chuck people into eternal darkness for not looking, acting, being the “right” way (of course as defined by who is the rub), it suggests that God’s realm could be corrupted by violent rivalry. 

In Jesus’ time the rivalry was between the non-political kingship of Jesus and the King, in the literal sense, the politician of the moment.  For the people of Jesus’ time and through the first century, it was Herod the Great, Herod Antipas and all the other Herods.  The religious leaders of Jesus’ time were enmeshed with the political leaders and, to that extent, Jesus’ words of judgment fell on them as well. 

Political leaders were troubled because Jesus challenged their earthly authority.  Religious leaders were troubled because Jesus exposed their hypocrisy.  When you stop and think about it, what got Jesus into trouble was his ability to cut through the social, political and religious hubris of his time.  

As Daniel Berrigan, Roman Catholic Priest and prophetic voice for things just, notes:

“The parables of Christ, even the innocent, pastoral, tender, innocuous-seeming ones, conceal just below the surface a whiplash, a shock, a charge of dynamite. The stories set conventional expectations, whether concerning God, religion, politics, vocation, status and class, utterly off-kilter.” 

The parable of.the king's banquet is brutally secular.  It tells of the domestic misbehavior of the powerful and the victimizing of the powerless, of war and retaliation.”  It tells of the capitulation of religious leaders to brutal social and political practices.  Berrigan goes on to note that outcome and its implication are left to us.  Like most parables, we are to interpret them for our times.

I am always baffled when people say that religion has nothing to do with politics and they don’t want bring religion into politics.  I wonder what Bible they are reading and how they understand what happened to Jesus in the context his first-century citizenship in Roman-dominated Palestine.

Religion and politics are very much entwined in Jesus’ life and ministry, and in a profoundly different way than what we see happening in our time.  Jesus stood outside the dominant religious culture and, in true prophetic form, challenged the religious voices of the day that condoned the brutality of the Romans for their own gain.  In that sense, religion and politics not only made strange bedfellows; it also makes for blasphemy of the first order.

There is a parallel for our times.  I don’t know about you, but I am increasingly troubled, frightened and angry that the Christianity I celebrate, preach and try (for better or worse) to live is co-opted into narrow, intolerant, judgmental and war-mongering rhetoric. 

I am angry that the God I discover anew every time I search the Scriptures and every time I break bread at this table and share in the sacrament of baptism, the God I see reflected in the faces of this community who work to ease the suffering of others is silenced by the increasingly dominant voices of religious intolerance, narrowness and bigotry.

This parable gives me hope.  The writer of Matthew’s gospel speaks across the centuries to such a time as ours with the powerful lesson that God’s realm can be corrupted by violent rivalry.  This is parable about bowing at the wrong altars, violating at least a couple of the commandments—like having no other Gods before God for openers and not making graven images.  Berrigan goes on to suggest that to fully understand this parable (or any parable), we must consider a situation close at hand.  He invites us to imagine (though it is no fantasy) that something known as national honor or national interests have been violated.  The reaction is sure—it must be vindicated.

“As 10 years ago, or 20 or 30.  As in Vietnam and Panama and Kosovo and Iraq.  As in Guatemala and Salvador and Nicaragua. Whether or not the enemy is unseated or otherwise disposed of, the innocent are murdered.  Host a dinner and make war.  This is the mode of empire.  The dinner softens the horror of the war. “  (Berrigan)

The writer of Matthew’s gospel has Jesus poking at the Romans, and across the centuries poking at anyone who corrupts the realm of God with violence or co-opts the message of Gospel which calls for justice and peace with anything less.  I’m not sure that this reading of the parable is any more comfortable or comforting than the common reading where those who don’t measure up are cast into eternal darkness, except for the hope that we have that we will be in that number when the saints go marching in and not in the company of those who gnash their teeth.

At this point in my study and preparation I was asking if it might be easier to go with the allegorical approach but the text calls us on.  Remembering that this banquet is hosted by a secular host in this new interpretation, then it stands to reason that this host invites those whom he sees fit—those who look “right”, act “right”, toe the party line:  in short, the powerful and prestigious.  It’s his party; he gets to make the rules.  History bears truth to the fact that it is a very conditional invitation.  Historically, women have not been invited,  neither were people of color, the differently abled,  and the very old, not to mention gays and lesbians. 

The clincher that led me further in this new and challenging look at the parable is at the end—the unnamed wedding guest who is cast out.   Marty Aiken notes, “Jesus makes the introduction and the death of the unrobed man the most visible act in the parable.”  

The unrobed man certainly becomes the focus of the king’s attention, and our attention naturally follows the king’s concerns.  The unrobed man has so large a claim on the king’s attention because he appears to unite in one place, and defy as one man, all the king’s obsessions: the wedding banquet and guests who are willing celebrate the wedding.  When questioned about his lack of a wedding robe, the man is speechless; a more accurate rendering of the Greek is silent.  This silent figure, who in most interpretations is the poster child for religious reprobates, is in truth someone far different.  

Here’s where it all comes together. The silent, robeless, nameless guest who captures the energy and attention of the host, the humble silent figure who challenges the brutally secular protagonist of the parable with the eternal message of justice, peace and love, is the Suffering Servant.  The robeless wedding guest is Jesus who, in the time of his earthly life, challenged the rulers of his day who corrupted God’s way and erected false altars for the frightened to bow at.  The robeless wedding guest is the eternal Christ.

And so we are left to amend the close of the story.  It is not God who utters the words “many are called but few are chosen”.   It is the secular king who utters those words. 

Again, Marty Aitken notes, “In our story, our Host enters the banquet hall to approve, rejoice, include, welcome. All -- and sundry are included. Ourselves. Nothing of the truculent, blind striking out of the king against a poor, speechless, anonymous guest. Just as gently but firmly, we amend the story's conclusion. In its original form, the words that sum up the parable belong to the king who judged so harshly, who confused his status of host with his black mood of condemnation and retaliation. It is the king who says to himself in dour satisfaction, invulnerable and vengeful, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’"

These are not the words of Jesus.  They are the words of the worldly host and warrior, the one given to eviction and slaughter.  There is a far different summing up, according to the heart of Jesus.  To the banquet, to life, to love, to justice, peace and wholeness, all are called, all are chosen. 

In his silence, the rejected wedding guest speaks the truth.  In his unwillingness to join the party at the expense of his own integrity and faithfulness, he speaks a prophetic word to the powers and principalities of his time.  He takes his place with Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah in prophetic witness to God’s truth that everyone is welcome at God’s banquet.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather have the words, “many are called, few are chosen” come from a secular king from whom I do not necessarily expect just actions than from God.  It’s a new and challenging way of looking at this text, but it comes closer to the heart of God from whom Jesus came and to whom all of Jesus’ life points.  Amen.

Sources:

Aiken, Marty:  the Kingdom Suffers of Heaven Suffers Violence:  Discerning the Suffering Servant in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet

Berrigan, Daniel:  National Catholic Reporter 2001