Pentecost 20A, Lectionary 28
Matthew 22:1-14
Epiphany, Winnipeg
First, a little note about where this story is located. It’s in Matthew Chapter 22, when Jesus has entered Jerusalem one last time. Although right now we’re close to halfway between last Easter and next Good Friday, the story we hear today is told just a few days before Jesus’ arrest and execution. You’d think he’d be laying low, trying to stay out of trouble, but instead he tells stories about how the powerful and respectable ones, the ones who want to see him killed, will be the last ones to enter the kingdom of heaven, if they even enter at all. To use a more modern expression, Jesus is poking the bear. And the bear’s getting mad. He’s not telling a story today to teach us a simple religious truth. He’s telling a story that will only upset the ones who have the power to decide who’s in and who’s out, and they definitely want him out. And he’s telling a story that will be good news for everyone.
I was at a wedding last weekend. Not just any wedding, but my son’s wedding. Now there was a time when it would be expected that any man going to a wedding would wear a suit and tie, but that’s all changed and shifted and now a tie’s not required, so even the father of the groom waffled back and forth about whether to wear a tie. I finally decided that I would, which meant that I spent 20minutes trying to remember how to tie a Half Windsor knot and get all the ends to hang just right. And once it was just right, if I do say so myself it looked pretty sharp. It was just the right thing to wear to a wedding.
Both sets of parents had fresh new outfits, purchased just for this occasion. Suits and dresses and fancy shoes. But the wedding wasn’t all just suits and dresses. There were jeans and cords and Blundstones and Doc Martens eight eye combat boots, skateboard shoes, and a certain groom’s burnt orange shoes, which I think were probably the coolest shoes ever. There were more tattoos and piercings than I’ve seen at a wedding before…and there were a lot of regular wedding outfits as well.
It was a really fun mix, and nobody anywhere looked out-of-place. Even on the dance floor, there were us over-fifties (and over sixties) on one side, and thirty-somethings on the other side, and we all cheered together when a fouryear old did the splits right in the middle of us all. It wasn’t like one age belonged and the others did not. An eighteen-year old on the dance floor with us didn’t even notice what sides we were on; They just looked around and said, “This is intergenerational dancing! It’s so cool!”
Jesus tells a story about a wedding today. A king invites his friends, and you might imagine who the king’s friends would be. He’s used to a certain class of people: the strong, the righteous, the wealthy and famous, the ones comfortable with their own wealth and with the king’s own wealth and power. A royal wedding banquet will have the best of everything, but everyone just ignores the invitation. Don’t you just go when the king calls? But they don’t, so the king invites them again, and they refuse again. Some of them go back to work, because it’s better to work than go to a party, right? The invited guests who don’t go back to work just…kill the slaves who deliver the invitations. And you heard it:it gets weirder: When the king’s friends do that, the king kills those old friends and burns down their city. And maybe the weirdest thing of all: the remaining slaves are sent out to gather up everyone they can find, just people out on the streets, the good and the bad and everyone in between, and that’s who gets to sit at the feast in the king’s big banquet hall.
The first ones who were invited would have shown up dressed in all their finest, with ties properly knotted and all. But they didn’t want to go. Now the tables are filled with the strangest mix of wedding clothes. Use your imagination: who would you and I find if we were sent out to sweep the streets and bring in whoever we met for a wedding banquet? What would their wedding clothes be? Worn-out jeans, the ones bought looking worn out, or the ones that are worn and torn from a long life; they’re irreplaceable because there’s not enough money to replace them. There’s someone wearing three shirts and a jacket in the middle of summer because they have nowhere but their own bodies to hang the only clothes they own.
There might be drag and business power suits at the feasting table over there, or at that table over there there’s whatever was on top of the pile when someone got out of bed that morning. There are the hi-vis vests of a few construction workers, maybe a few clerical shirts and a few people dressed in other gang colours and looks. Some peoples’ wedding garments are uniforms that show rank and order, and some wedding garments are leather and spikes and studs.
There are those operating room scrubs - someone’s just come from doing hours of surgery - and if you look around you’ll also see a few unfortunates whose wedding outfits are those awful hospital gowns that you just can’t get tied up in the back. There are outfits meticulously curated from the most expensive places, and there are looks meticulously curated from Value Village and Salvation Army racks.
Jesus tells this story with all these people gathered in from whatever they were doing. None of the guests got out of bed that morning expecting to be at a King’s kid’s wedding party later that same day. But here they are, filling up all the tables: The good and the bad, and you just can’t tell which is which. Nobody even checks.
It’s all good news for anyone who’s felt like they’re left out of the party or who’s always the last picked or the one not picked at all. Maybe sometimes that’s you, maybe sometimes that’s me, maybe sometimes that’s anyone. If the realm of God which has come near today, is a royal banquet, the host who calls us together isn’t looking for just the right people who look just the right way. The host just wants us at the table. The host has room for us all.
The story takes its weirdest turn right at the end. There’s one guest who is not wearing a proper wedding robe. What is that? I don’t know. Maybe it’s more like a garment you wear inside, deep inside here; it’s a way of seeing and living that wants all the garments to be the same and all the guests to be dressed the same way and be all the same sorts of people. The non-wedding robe is the one that is glad to be let in but wants to leave the others out, the one that only wants to be with the right kinds of people, whoever they may be. The wrong wedding garment is the garment that wants to live in that outer shadow and gloom of a world where limits are set and only some are invited, and the Half-Windsor knot better be tied perfectly.
The wedding clothes at the royal feast are all a mix, matched and mismatched. In the realm of God, there’s no proper wedding outfit at all, or if there is it’s just an outfit that speaks right out loud of welcoming and being welcomed. The wedding garment reaches out and gathers in, the wedding garment is whatever the guest happens to be wearing. The wedding garment is justice and compassion and room for all the looks and the lives in the room. The wedding garment honours the poor and is the poor; the wedding garment is worn by the meek and by the ones who pray for their enemies – Jesus said something about all that more than once - the wedding garment is all kinds of people gathered for the feast of the king.
We’re called to this royal feast. Every day we’re called into the royal feast of life in God’s world. Today we’re called to a royal feast that we sometimes call the Eucharist, which is a fancy Greek word for Thanksgiving, and thankfully this Thanksgiving happens more than once a year.
The host at the feast is one whom we sometimes call a king, but not a king who kills the ones who won’t come, and who burns down whole cities when he’s had a really bad day. The host at this feast reigns from a cross and then from the dewey morning lawn out in front of an empty tomb. The host has gathered us here today from all over, in wedding garments that look an awful lot like whatever you’re wearing….or whatever your neighbour’s wearing, even if it’s something you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing yourself. Whatever you’re wearing, even if you wish you’d worn something else. People all over the world are gathered with us for this feast today, dressed in all kinds of everything, because that’s what a wedding garment is at this feast: At this feast of thanksgiving that gathers us in; this feast of generosity where everyone is fed; this feast that sends us out with food and thanksgiving and generosity for all.