The Gospel reading for today –
We have a matched set here of two parables folded into each other,
particularly nasty stories with gruesome outcomes.
This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like?!
What IS this about?
Why in the world would the lectionary have a reading like this?
First let me say something about the role of the Bible
in the Episcopal Church
as a context not only for this tough Gospel,
but also for addressing the larger issue
about how to read and interpret the Bible.
The Episcopal Church is a Bible Church.
We take the Bible seriously.
We say we believe that
the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
to be the Word of God
and to contain all things necessary to salvation.
Our liturgy, the words of our worship, the prayers,
are full of biblical references and direct quotes.
The lessons we read each Sunday come from
an expanded three year cycle of readings designed to cover
all the Gospels,
most all the Epistles,
and as much of the meatier parts of the OT as possible.
We don’t allow a casual selection of just those portions of the Bible
that are pleasing to the eye.
We do read the beautiful comforting passages,
but we also read the confronting, cold-water-in-the-face,
wake-up-call passages
that push us out of our comfort zones.
We take the whole Bible seriously.
So here we are with appointed readings for the day
first with a story of a king and his subjects
-- and something is wrong in their relationship.
When the king has a wedding banquet for his son,
the heir to the throne,
his subjects choose to ignore the summons
preferring to go back to work
than to go to a big royal wedding with a free feast.
They are so alienated that they prefer not to go
if they have to be in the king’s presence.
When the king pushes the issue with his subjects
he is clearly revealed as a despot:
things turn nasty, and there are murders and burning cities.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like this?!
Now what I am going to say may be different
from what you may have heard before about this passage.
I’m not going to talk about allegories,
or suggest that this story is a warning about what might happen
if people don’t accept the invitation to come to Church!
Instead I want to put this reading back into its context,
look at what comes before and what comes after in Matthew’s Gospel,
for that is the way we understand scripture in the Episcopal Church –
we look at the whole of scripture
and the consistent witness throughout.
In Matthew’s Gospel this reading is part of 5 chapters
of parables and teachings that Jesus gave in the Temple
in the time setting between
the triumphal entry into Jerusalem – Palm Sunday –
and Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion on Good Friday.
Last Sunday’s reading immediately preceded today’s reading.
Just to refresh your memory, for those of you who were here,
last time the Gospel was the parable of a landlord
having trouble collecting the rent from the tenants in his vineyard.
It was a story aimed at the chief priests, Pharisees and religious leaders,
about their rejection of the One whom God had sent.
They wanted to arrest Jesus,
but feared the crowds because they held Jesus to be a prophet.
It is an understatement to say that there was a lot of alienation
between the religious authorities and leaders, and Jesus.
So for them the invitation from God in the form of Jesus,
the invitation into the transforming life
of the Kingdom of God,
is seen as a threat to the way they lived out their religion.
For them what Jesus was revealing to them about God
was a radically different perception
that made all their admirable religious observance moot.
It wasn’t, Jesus was saying, a matter of keeping all the rules,
or being morally respectable, or living a successful life.
It was a matter of recognizing the condition of the heart that needs
the grace that flows in abundance from the Creator to all beings,
providing life in abundance, eternal quality life.
This life is a free gift that liberates us from the illusions we have,
illusions that have lead us into dead end paths
of trying to be self-sufficient without God,
or worse yet, before God,
for that is like saying to God no thanks to the mercy and grace.
“I got this – I can do this on my own.”
This is trying to be our own gods.
Does this come closer to home now?
So in today’s parable Jesus was reflecting to the Pharisees
and all those comfortable in their own opinion of themselves,
their condition of alienation from the Creator
and the One whom God had sent
in this story about subjects extremely alienated from their king.
This parable therefore is full of irony and is provocative.
Those hearing it, the religious know-it-alls of their day,
could see themselves left outside the Kingdom of Heaven,
and the riff-raff off the street get in to take their place.
“For many are called, but few are chosen.”
There is a warning for us in all this.
Now there is the second parable tagged onto the first,
tucked in before this final verse of called and chosen.
This parable is about someone without a wedding garment
someone who is speechless when interrogated
about not conforming to the dress code,
someone who is silent before his accuser.
He is bound hand and foot,
and cast out into the place of weeping and mourning,
and the place of angry gnashing of teeth,
outside the city wall in the darkness.
There is an eerie parallel here, a shadow of familiarity,
and since this Gospel event comes as it does
between Palm Sunday and Good Friday,
during the time when all this conflict comes to a head
and precipitates the final playing out of the scene with Jesus’ death,
one may wonder if maybe, perhaps, this is another foreshadowing,
that Jesus may be alluding to himself. Compare Isaiah 52 and 53.
Jesus did not present himself in anything he said or did
as the religious leaders did.
Instead Jesus served,
he took on the role of a servant.
Jesus took off his robe and laid it aside to wash his disciples’ feet.
People came to hear him:
he preached and taught and told stories – for hours, all day.
People got hungry: he fed them.
People came to be healed:
he healed them, every one of them,
even those not specifically asking to be healed,
and those who wouldn’t ask directly
but would reach out and touch his clothes
-- and here we come to the absolute core of our faith;
this is the big deal.
His ultimate act of service and self-giving
was the complete self-giving of his life, even to the extent of death.
And then his serving did not stop even there with death,
but went right through death,
to Life, Resurrection Life.
And this Resurrection Life was not even for his own benefit,
as if he might say, “Oh, relief, now I’m alive again!”
No, his coming to life again was for the purpose of
continuing to serve by bringing life to all beings.
Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled…
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If it were not so,
would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And…I…will take you to myself,
so that where I am
there you may be also.”
Jesus speaks of undertaking death
when he says that he goes to prepare/create a place for us.
The place is in him as Resurrection.
Where he was going to prepare the way for us was through death,
so that in the Risen Life he could be in us,
and we in him, and he in the Father,
and so we would become the dwelling places themselves,
the Father’s house.
The ultimate service of love and devotion
expressed by Jesus to ALL of us
is this sacrifice of himself, this total self-offering
that we might have Life that is full,
rich with peace and love
and the tremendous sense of being all right with God,
of full unconditional acceptance,
of heart-piercing blessing.
And he himself, Jesus, is the Door,
the servant holding the door for you to pass through
into this Realm of abundance of Life,
the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is another wedding feast in the Bible,
an ultimate wedding banquet,
the one the Father is preparing for his Son,
the marriage Supper of the Lamb of God,
the One who offered himself as sacrifice that all might live.
Here is a wedding invitation you wouldn’t want to pass up,
an invitation for all who hunger and thirst for authentic spirituality,
for real life,
for a quality of relationship
that is compassionate, mutually supportive and loving.
Everyone gets invited and included at this banquet:
the rich and the poor,
the prominent and those unknown,
the healthy and the sick,
the good and the bad.
And it’s here – at this Holy Table.
And here is the surprise -
Who wears the wedding garment?
We all are the bride, each of us is the Beloved.
Welcome to the Supper Table where all are included,
where we are clothed with Christ himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment