SERMON FOR OCTOBER 11, 2020          TEXT: 22:1-14

        I recently read a first-rate book about interpreting the Bible. This passage from the author’s conclusion really hit home:    “So many modern interpretations of Jesus’s life, teaching, and death are just that, modern. To some degree this is inevitable, but if we truly want to understand why these texts were written and how their authors and earliest audiences might have understood them, we need to use critical and responsible methods of historical interpretation that constrain our own predispositions. . . . [T]he Bible can’t speak for itself. It must be interpreted, and it is in this process of interpretation that modern prejudices are too often granted divine authority.

          “There is much that modern Americans can learn from the New Testament, regardless of their religion, race, or political inclination. The key is to approach the text with an open mind, exercising awareness of the process of interpretation and reveling in the opportunity to learn from, and be challenged by, the diverse ideas, hopes, anxieties, and prejudices of ancient persons who lived in a world quite different from our own.”    [Tony Keddie, Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020) Kindle Edition, Location 3921]

          I feel the presence of Christ in my life every day. I sing praises to him; I pray to him. I sense him just ahead of me, traveling with me as I take uncertain steps into the next season of my life. At the same time, when I read the Scriptures, I am keenly aware that Jesus of Nazareth, whose story they tell, is very far away from me. He was indeed an ancient person. The realities of his everyday incarnate human life are hard for me to imagine. After years of study I know far more about 16th-century Europe than I do about that small corner of the world where he lived over 2,000 years ago. Concepts I take for granted — the separation of church and state, a capitalist economy, free elections, empirical science, equality under the law — were unknown to him as a Jew living in occupied territory in the    Roman Empire in the first century. My understanding of his teachings is shaped by my filters. It can be challenging to sort out what Jesus was trying to say to his original audience from how we might hear him speaking to us today through those same words. For example, what are we to make of the parable of the wedding banquet?

          It appears in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The two evangelists clearly got hold of the same story and then reworked it. Here is Luke’s version (14:15-24): One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’    But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’    Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’    Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’    So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’    And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’    Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

          By the end of his encounters with the unobliging invitees, the host is angry and acts forcefully; he tells the slave to compel people to attend the feast. But in Matthew’s telling, he is enraged, and we are not dealing with just any host, as in Luke, but with a king. Moreover, it isn’t just any banquet; it is a celebration of his son’s marriage. The guests in Luke’s telling offer reasonable excuses for declining the invitation — family obligations, the demands of their work — and they do so courteously. “Please accept my regrets,” they say. But in Matthew’s account the situation escalates quickly and dangerously. A few of the invitees peel off to attend to business matters, similar to those in Luke’s story, but the rest turn violent, abusing and even killing the messengers. Then the king responds by calling out his army to destroy the murderers and their city. Only after taking his revenge does he turn his attention again to the banquet, ordering his slaves to go out into the streets and gather any- and everybody they find to fill the wedding hall. “Both good and bad,” says Matthew, whereas Luke’s host is deliberately socially conscious. He offers his hospitality to “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame,” people whose conditions left them on the margins of their community, overlooked and excluded.

                  Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels for different audiences, and their respective versions of this parable reflect their particular concerns. It is significant that in Matthew’s account Jesus is teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem when he tells this parable, and he directs it specifically to the chief priests and elders. The emphasis on judgment reflects the similar conflict Matthew experienced between Jews who embraced Jesus as the promised Messiah and those who rejected him. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son”: the kingdom of heaven has come to them in the person of Jesus, yet they have refused, even mocked, the invitation to participate in God’s reign and share in its blessings and bounty. They persecute the messengers of the Good News and bring certain judgment on themselves. Meanwhile God makes do without them, extending the invitation to the banquet far and wide to those once considered outsiders, as well as to receptive members of the house of Israel. God creates the kind of community for which Matthew was writing.

          He concludes the parable with the cryptic episode of the guest without a wedding robe, a character who does not appear in Luke’s telling at all. It is not clear who or what this ill-clad figure represents. The king regards his appearance as an outrage. So, on one hand Matthew chastises those who reject the invitation, and on the other he warns those who, while accepting, would fail to prepare as befits the occasion. One should come before God clothed in righteousness and gratitude. Perhaps the warning is: Do what you must to meet these criteria so that you fit in with the company of heaven and can take your place at the banquet table without giving offense. Because impostors will be found out and condemned.

          So what are we to make of this text? Jesus’ face-off with the temple authorities and Matthew’s conflict with the local synagogue are long past. Yet the threat of judgment, of the dire consequences of refusing God’s invitation, continues to hit home. We can’t ignore the reality of judgment, but neither can we overlook the promise here. Whatever opposition God encounters, it does not prevail over God’s hospitality. The wedding feast still goes on. Amen.