Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22: 1 -14

When I read what others have written about this story of Jesus, the king in the story usually stands in for God.  The wedding guests who at first humiliate the king by claiming they had something trivial to do and then the later ones who react with violence to his invitation nowadays stand in for people who reject the Church; either because of indifference or because of actual opposition.  Of course in the olden days, the ones who rejected were the Jewish people.  Maybe we’ve made a little progresso.  And then we come to the actual guests, who are rounded up from unlikely places; when this story is told by Luke, the king has to send his servants out a second time to the hedgerows and the alleys -- and we are those guests, we gentiles, we who are in the church, we who take our religion seriously or at least semi=seriously.  

But maybe there are problems with this standard interpretation.  One of them is that the king is certainly not like the God that Jesus preached about.  He is vain, easily offended, given to violence -- after all he burns a city down because of a few people who treated his servants violently.  And then after he finally fills his banquet hall, he kicks out one of the guests because he isn’t wearing a wedding garment -- not only does he kick him out, he does so after binding his hands and feet.  Is that how you imagine God?  And yet, I think that’s the way my grandparents imagined Him, and that wasn’t so long ago.  The idea that God is hot tempered, violent, and easily offended lurks in the back of our minds, I think.  

As I said before, we tend to see ourselves as the wedding guests who have been rounded up and brought to the banquet, wearing a garment given to us by the king.  But who else might we be?

I ran across an article about Amy Comey Barrett who has been nominated for the Supreme Court.  The article began with the statement, “I am a Catholic” and went on to say that her views were not Catholic; she was against abortion and euthenasia, and more than 50% of Catholics are not’ she opposed artificial contraception; 70% of Catholics see nothing wrong with it.  She believed that marriage was between a man and a woman; and about 50% of Catholics think that same-sex marriage is not a problem.  He went on to list a number of other Catholic ideas she had that many Catholics don’t.  Of course anybody who is adequately catechized could see how ridiculous this serious person was.  The beliefs of the Church, derived from it’s founder, from scripture, from tradition, and from the teaching authority of the Church which we believe is protected by the Holy Spirit, are not based on polls.  And maybe those who ignore the king’s servants, or do violence to them -- maybe those people and you and I have a bit in common.  We don’t mind being subjects of the king as long as we don’t have to do what he tells us to do. 

Or maybe we are the king.  Maybe we are easily offended because our self-image is fragile, or perhaps misguided.  We all start out life thinking we are the center of the universe, and some of us never move beyond that point.  But even if we do, it’s easy to give in to our instincts, which still tell us that.  And when we are offended, when we are dissed, or disrespected, maybe we resort to violence, perhaps only in our minds, but violence nevertheless.  And when we are disrespected we tend to overreact, just like the king who burns down the village, or throws out the man who refuses to wear a wedding garment.  Maybe we still need to work on virtues like humility and charity even toward our enemies.  

Or maybe we are the man who has been bound and cast into the darkness because he is not wearing a wedding garment.  Or maybe that is Jesus, who ultimately was stripped naked and nailed to a cross because he did not conform.  He resisted the authorities of his time, not in a violent way, but by pointing out where they were wrong.  He stood up to power and didn’t concern himself with the consequences.  He spoke the truth people didn’t want to hear.  And I guess I am not that person; I’m not brave enough.  But at the same time, maybe Jesus tells us about this man because he hopes that some of his followers will imitate him, even to accept martyrdom.  Because truth needs to be spoken, even when everyone else is lying. 

When Luke tells this story, there is nothing about the man who is thrown out.  The king does not commit violence.  It’s very different and seems to have a different point.  And I think that when Jesus told his stories, he wanted his listeners to think about them.  Our reaction to these stories is usually to grasp what we think is the point and go on from there.  But when you carry one of his parables around with you all week long, you come up with many different ideas.  So I am sharing some of mine with you.