Proper 23 A

Proper 23A

Transcribed from a

Sermon given by

Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

October 9, 2011

Philippians 4:1-9

Matthew 22:1-14

Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say rejoice! This is one of the most wonderful things, I think, that Paul wrote. Rejoice always! Always!

Paul was already at the wedding banquet. He knew that his relationship with Christ meant a joyous celebration. And he was inviting all of his readers to live a life of celebration, knowing the joy of the relationship with God, knowing that the kingdom had come near and was part of them.

Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say rejoice!

We are at the wedding banquet. The wedding banquet is an image used over and over again in scripture to describe the relationship between God and God’s people - as a wedding. The imagery of wedding is rich and full and complete. After all what is a wedding but a celebration of a relationship, the celebration of a relationship of love and mutual commitment. It is a celebration of the whole community. It is a welcoming of everyone.

We know that, but we don’t do wedding banquets the way they did it back in Jesus’ time. They knew how to do a wedding banquet. A wedding banquet back then was not an afternoon affair where you had some cupcakes and tea. This was a week long, at least days long, sometimes week long feast. They had meat, and food, and drink, and song, and celebration, and dancing and everything joyous. It was a time when the whole community came together. It served a number of purposes, one of the purposes for the wedding banquet had to do with feeding. People at that time, even the rich, did not have an overabundance of food. The poor lived on very little, and they didn’t get to have meat very often. So when you had a wedding banquet it was a chance for the wealthy, or even the not so wealthy, who did the best they could, to share what you had with others. It was a feasting and sharing. It was a bringing together of the community, of the whole clan. In fact it was the bringing together of two clans, because often it was a matter of the husband and wife representing two different clans coming together to make one.

This was especially true if it was the wedding of the child of the leader of the clan. Which is what this king probably was. This doesn’t sound like a high king in charge of a whole area like David or Solomon. Jesus is probably referring to a king over a couple of cities or a clan, or an area. You have got to remember that this is a tribal area. It still is a tribal area and sometimes when we see what is going on in the news it is hard for us to wrap our minds around that because we don’t live as tribally. But the relationships and the interweavings based on blood relationships was very important then. So, if a leader of an area, let’s say a tribal leader, has a son getting married this was often used to cement relationships or to make a treaty. The son might be marrying the daughter of another tribal leader and the two tribes would become one, would have a relationship. If you remember studying your European history, that’s what the kings in Europe did for many years.

So this wedding, this wedding that Jesus is talking about is much more than just a celebration. It’s about relationship, it’s about bringing people together, bringing the whole clan together. It’s a time to see people you haven’t seen for a long time. It’s a time to be reconciled with people you may not have talked to. Maybe many of us have been to a wedding where there was some cousin you hadn’t seen for a long time and you weren’t too sure whether you wanted to see them, but you worked things out. Well if you have several days of eating and drinking there’s a good chance you are going to find an opportunity to make up. It’s about that relationship that celebration, that joy.

One of the ways that scripture has been thought about, meditated upon, is by taking all the characters in the story and imagining yourself as each one of the characters. So in this story the first character we have is the king. Now I’m going to ask you to think about how you might be that character and I’ll sort of reflect on my thoughts.

So the first one is the king. I have had two children get married, so I know what it is like to send out those wedding invitations. You go through who do we invite and who do we not invite. And sometimes, if it is a small wedding, you only have a certain number of invitations and you spend a great deal of time trying to decide who to invite. So coming from the parent’s perspective it is  a very special thing to invite someone to come to your child’s wedding. And you are so happy when people say yes. And you are disappointed when they say “no.” Now sometimes they have a good reason for not being able to be there and you understand that, but there is still a feeling of disappointment. But if there is a friend or a cousin that doesn’t come and doesn’t explain why, maybe doesn’t even respond to the RSVP, that relationship is kind of severed. You feel like that person doesn’t really care about you. Maybe you aren’t as close as you thought you were. So for this king sending his servants to go invite these people it was an honor, it was something special. Please come. Join in the celebration.

Well the next characters to consider are the first two people invited. It turns out that they are too busy. One has to go to his office the other has to go to his farm. They can’t come to the wedding. I think most of us have at least once in our lives been invited to something that had to do with relationship. Been invited to deepen a relationship with someone and have decided that we are too busy - that we just don’t have enough time to spend to go and be with this person. We’ve all had to make those choices. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes we really want to spend time with this friend or relative or child but other things are calling us, and we feel torn. We know what that’s like. And we also know what it is like in terms of deciding about our relationship with God. Do we have enough time to go on retreat because there is all this business to do. The to do list is too long to take the evening off. We all have to make those decisions about relationships and our responsibilities. It is interesting, these first two are not particularly condemned. They have just chosen not to be in relationship with the king.

The next group of people that were invited are ones who get angry at the servants that are sent to them, and they beat them up and they kill them. Now imagine that you are the head of the clan and you run a couple of cities, and perhaps the reason this city has been invited is that your son is marrying a daughter of that clan and you are inviting the whole city so you can establish a deeper relationship.  And they make light of you. They make light of you so much as to even kill the servants you send. Like we don’t think you matter. Can there be a more direct way of saying, “You are irrelevant to me. You are weak; it doesn’t matter. I don’t owe you anything.” So you can understand that the tribal leader sent his guys and we have to show this group that we are powerful, but it was their choice not to be in relationship.

And then the next thing that happens is the servants are told to go out and invite everyone. Good and bad. Everyone! Everyone! What a generous, welcoming thing to do. To say “I have all this feast, come and share it with me. I don’t care. I want a relationship.” That’s the action of someone who really wants relationship - with everyone. And everyone is invited.

Imagine being invited and not expecting to be invited. It would be like a few months ago when there was that big royal wedding in England one day going to your mailbox and having an invitation to the royal wedding. Wow! I’m invited! It would be exciting. You would be thankful, be all set to go. Which brings us to the next character. The one who showed up at the wedding without a wedding garment. Now a wedding garment back then was not something real fancy. A wedding garment was basically clean clothes. Generally if you had two sets of clothes, one you used for work, the other you used for special occasions. To show up at a wedding without a wedding garment on would be like having a wedding on Saturday afternoon and beforehand you changed the oil on your car and you got oil all over your hands. You have your overalls on and you haven’t brushed your hair and you show up.  What does that say about how you feel about the person who is putting on the wedding? What does that say about how much you value the relationship? It’s obviously not terribly important to you, you didn’t even brush your hair, you didn’t even put on some clean clothes. If I got invited to that royal wedding you darn well know that I’d go out and buy something new - even if I had to go to a thrift shop to find it. And I might even get one of those silly hats. I wouldn’t show up in my jeans, or my short shorts. Or whatever it would be. (God help me if I showed up in short shorts.) But this guest chose not to take the wedding banquet seriously.

You see in the imagery in scripture the wedding banquet is not between two other people, the wedding is between God and the person who shows up. At the end of the parable it says many are called but few are chosen. I would put that a different way. Many are called, but few chose to be in relationship. Because you will notice in these stories the ones who aren’t there all chose to not be in relationship with the king. There were good ones and there were bad ones who were there because they chose to come. It is the ones who chose not to be in relationship that are not at the wedding.

And there is one more character or person in the parable that I haven’t mentioned. Anybody think of who it is? The servants. There’s a group of people. The Greek word is doulos  (δοῦλος) and doulos has often been translated as servant. In the New Revised Standard Version it’s translated as slave. And that is probably a more accurate translation. Because what it means in Greek is someone who has given themselves totally to serve someone else. They’ve given themselves up totally to the other person, which a slave would do. And what the servants do is they go out and they invite people.

I would say that here we are. All of you were invited to the wedding banquet and you’ve shown up. Showing up is a large part of it. How did you hear about it? And now that you’re part of the wedding banquet, now that you are able to rejoice and celebrate the great joy of your relationship with Christ, the next step is deepening that relationship - of offering oneself totally to serve the other - to become servants of Christ. And what is it that servants do? They go out and they invite everybody to come to the wedding.

Amen.