19 Pentecost

“What a horrible parable! This is the (quote) Old Testament (unquote) God, not the God of Jesus!” I’ve heard many people say that, and while, like many who say this, I probably fall into the category of liberal Christian, I can’t at all agree with the folks who say that.

It’s certainly possible that people say this in response to parable being used to justify a lot of harm in Christian churches. It’s been used to justify who is in and who is out gatekeeping. It’s been used to threaten people with hell. It’s been used to suppress people with purity nonsense. I have no patience for any of those interpretations, either.

So let’s look closely at this parable from a different point of view; a point of view that recognizes that Jesus does not present a different God than the God of Jewish scripture. Much of what Jesus says actually is direct from Jewish scripture. And that God is a God of love and mercy.

We tend to think of love as sentimental. It is not always so. The King in this parable is clearly not sentimental. He does not spare people from the consequences of their actions. I will argue, though, that he is loving in that he invited the good and the bad to an extravagant wedding feast.

I’m surprised at how many people think the King killed all the people who refused his invitation. He didn’t. He only killed the murderers who killed his messengers. Yet this conclusion was jumped to time and time again in a Bible study I was at despite being reminded again and again what the text actually said.

Now to a conclusion I jumped to when reading this parable in light of the Gentile controversy. The invited were the chosen people who didn’t hear Jesus and the good and the bad included the gentile Christians. Now I didn’t see this as triumphalism, because I see the gentile controversy as a story about accepting the outsiders and the impure. Clearly others see it as we gentiles have the goods and the Jews lost out.

Of course, though, my assumption was corrected when I remembered that Matthew’s community was a Jewish community, not a gentile one. This is likely more a story of inclusion or exclusion of Christ’s Jewish followers who would not have even called themselves Christians. Matthew’s Jesus was angriest at the scribes and Pharisees, so there’s something there, no doubt, whether or not the expulsion from the synagogues is true.

The most puzzling thing for me was the question of what the wedding garment was all about. It’s clearly not about good or bad behavior, because both the good and the bad are invited but only one person was ejected due to not wearing a wedding garment. 

I’ve seen commentaries that suggest wedding garments were provided, so the man refused to put it on. Other commentaries suggest that there’s no evidence of that, however a wedding garment merely means clothes that were cleaned. Personally I don’t think the wedding garment has anything to do with proper attire.

It’s hard for me to not think of the garment given at Baptism that we’re to make sure is “unstained.” However that leads to thoughts about only the baptized are chosen. Which could be the case, but I don’t like that idea. Nonetheless, I offer it as a likely interpretation.

Even if that is the case though, I do NOT believe the chosen in this parable are the ones going to heaven when they die. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven he is speaking of how God wants this world to be. He’s trying to get people to think outside the norms of human society and imagine a better world. And THAT is the banquet.

I think when we hear this parable it’s too easy to try to think about what the king is doing and not what the people are doing. And I think we do that a whole lot. Leave things up to God. God is good and merciful; God will take care of things.

I think this is a parable about ways people can refuse an invitation. There are the people who don’t show up, there are the people who respond with violence, and there are the people who show up but refuse to participate.

You don’t have to be a Christian. Some of the folks who declined just went about their business normally. If you do choose to accept the invitation, though, there are demands made on you. The yoke may be easy, but it is a yoke.

Remember that in Matthew’s last judgement no one is asked about their purity, the good and the bad are invited alike. No, the yoke is about easing suffering in this world.  It’s about loving God and each other. In many ways that’s easier than following 613 commandments, certainly less of a burden in the sense of policing purity. But it is a very demanding commandment, one as a Christian we are obligated to do our best to follow.