PROPER 23, YEAR A

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Sts. Matthew & Mark Church, Barrington, RI

Isaiah 25:1-9

Psalm 23

Matthew 22:1-14

During this time of pandemic and social distancing, one of the things I’ve missed most is the opportunity to gather in large groups on celebratory occasions involving food and drink. The last big dinner I attended was my mother’s ninetieth birthday party in Philadelphia on March 7, just as we were all about to go into lockdown. I suspect many of us have experienced similar feelings of social deprivation.

For many Christians, moreover, it’s been difficult to do without the Eucharist. I applaud all of you for making the effort to be here for Morning Prayer today; and I admire the way you’re clearly doing your best in spite of trying circumstances to make a fitting offering of worship to God. It’ll be a great blessing when we’re able once again to gather safely in our churches and partake of the spiritual food and drink of the Lord’s Body and Blood.

Somewhat poignantly, then, today’s readings invoke the image running throughout the Sacred Scriptures of God’s Kingdom as a great feast. The prophet Isaiah proclaims: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” In the beloved words of Psalm 23, the psalmist addresses the Good Shepherd: “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.” And in today’s Gospel, the Lord tells the parable beginning, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.”

Whatever else we know or don’t know about the life of the world to come, these passages and many others like them suggest that eating and drinking together will be a key component of what goes on there. This insight suggests in turn that our celebratory meals here on earth, both sacred and secular, serve in their own ways as pointers, anticipations, and foretastes of the joy that awaits us in eternity. Heaven is like a great party—more enjoyable and fulfilling than any celebration we can experience or even imagine in this life. (And even if you’re an introvert like I am, don’t worry—there’s a happy and rewarding place in the party for us too!)

Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven not just to any feast, but specifically to a wedding banquet that a king gave for his son. Commentators down through the centuries have suggested that the wedding symbolizes the joining of the divine and human natures in the Person of Christ, or the nuptial union of Christ and his Church, or the marriage of heaven and earth in the Kingdom of God—or perhaps, indeed, all of these at once.

So, the good news is that God is giving a party and we’re all invited! The not-so-good news is that not everyone comes to the party or ends up staying once they’ve arrived. As the parable unfolds, some of those originally invited refuse to attend when the time comes. They self-select out. And then, after the king sends his servants into the streets to gather in all whom they find to fill the wedding hall with guests, not everyone gets to stay. When the king enters, he notices one of the guests without the proper wedding-robe; and when the man is unable to answer why he’s not properly attired, the king orders him bound and cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This twist in the story has always struck me as being a bit unfair. After all, these guests have just been gathered from the streets into the wedding hall with no prior warning. How can anyone blame them for not being properly dressed for a wedding? To answer this question, we need to delve a little deeper into the parable’s symbolism.

One venerable tradition of interpretation suggests that the wedding hall represents the Church on earth. The servants—that is, the apostles and evangelists—have been sent out to gather in all whom they find, both good and bad. The Church is thus a mixed body comprising both saints and sinners. The key point is that neither the servants nor the other guests get to decide who’s worthy to enter or indeed to remain once they’ve come in. The king’s entry is an image of the last judgment, when the king and no-one else will be able to see who’s properly clothed and who’s not. In the meantime, we’re all gathered, good and bad alike, into the wedding hall waiting for the king to enter and for the feast to begin.

What, then, are we to make of the wedding garment? Down through the centuries, commentators have advanced various interpretations of what it might symbolize. Saint Augustine suggested that it represents the virtue of love or charity, without which any other gift or virtue we may have is worth nothing; Saint Hilary, that it represents the Holy Spirit; Saint Jerome, that it represents the life of obedience to God’s commandments, by which we are clothed in righteousness.

All that leaves us with the question: Assuming that we accept God’s invitation to the banquet, how do we ensure that we’ve clothed ourselves in the proper wedding garment so that we’ll be allowed to stay when the king enters? After multiple cycles of reflecting on this Gospel every three years when it comes up in the Sunday lectionary, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only satisfactory answer is that it’s nothing we can achieve on our own. Whatever the wedding garment represents, it can only be something that God makes freely available to each of us simply for the asking. Indeed, some commentators suggest that in ancient wedding feasts, everyone was offered the appropriate item of clothing on the way in. In that case, the man without the wedding garment was either too proud or too stubborn to accept the free gift of God’s grace, adopting instead the posture that if you want me here, fine, but you’ll have to take me on my own terms. And we see where that attitude got him.

In a few minutes, we’ll have the opportunity to meditate on the lyrics of Hymn 487, a wonderful poem entitled “The Call” by the seventeenth  century Anglican priest George Herbert. The middle stanza speaks directly to the question of who’s worthy to attend the wedding banquet: 

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength

Such a Light as shows a Feast,

Such a Feast as mends in length,

Such a Strength as makes his guest.

These lines feature the triple images of light, feast, and strength. The light of God’s Word invites us to God’s feast. The feast in turn mends us, healing us of our wounds and infirmities, at length—indeed for eternity. And it is God’s strength, not our own, that finally makes us into guests worthy to partake of his heavenly banquet.