Today’s scripture reading is a parable that Jesus shares late in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus can see the writing on the wall. He is not going to get out of Jerusalem alive. He can sense trouble in the air, and he knows what the prophecies say will happen to the Messiah. Even before the last supper, he is thinking about his own death, and the terrible kind of world he lives in that would rather kill a messiah than listen to one. Another person might be filled with bitterness and resentment. What has he done to deserve this? It would be easy to lose all faith at a time like that, to see the world as hopelessly lost.
But that’s where Jesus goes. Instead, he offers this parable. In it, a king is holding a wedding banquet for his son, who is getting married. He invites all of the rich people to celebrate this gran occasion. But they say no - they have better things to do, tending to their farm and business. Now, we should remember, this is presented as a parable, where there are always some impossible details. The kingdom of God is not like our world the way it is. In the real world, no duke or earl says no to the king for something as important as this. But in this parable about invitations from God, the rich folk do say no.
But God doesn’t give up. He tells his messengers, who are slaves, to tell those rich people that :
“Behold, I have made ready my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come to the marriage feast.”
Now, a note about the language Matthew uses here. Any time Matthew uses the word “behold” it means God is doing something astounding and out of the ordinary.
This is not a run of the mill feast, this is a wedding banquet, the best ever, you’d be mad to refuse such wonderful food and celebrations.
And yet, once again, the rich folks say no. They have better things to do, To make matters worse, some of them turn on the slaves, beating them, and even killing them. This enrages the king, who retaliates against them, killing them and burning down their cities.
Whoa - let’s stop there for a minute. This passage seems to imply that people who kill God’s messengers will be killed, and their cities destroyed. And, that interpretation has been embraced by Christians for many centuries. They say that Jesus is describing how Jerusalem and the Jewish people have been sent many prophets, and killed them rather than follow God’s word. And they even killed God’s son, and for that reason, God allowed their city to be destroyed in the year 70. Having rejected the Messiah, God invited non Jews to follow Jesus, and they did. The Jews made a mistake and brought God’s wrath on themselves.
That is not what this parable is saying, but it is how it is often read. This kind of thinking, that Jews killed Jesus, is used to justify the antisemitism that continues to poison our society. Here in Canada, synagogues are shot at, police guarding synagogues are shot at, windows are broken, and Jews live in fear. Antisemitism specializes in accusing all Jews for the acts of some Jews.
When Putin attacks Ukraine, killing civilians on a regular basis, Russians in Toronto don’t have to worry about people shooting at their churches or assaulting them on the streets. We can see that Putin does not represent all Russians, and Russians here do not share the responsibility for what he is doing to Ukraine. The same is true for the war in Iran. Persians here are not assumed to agree with the Iranian government’s actions. We draw a thick line between citizens and the government.
But antisemitism is different. A few Jewish leaders decided to hand Jesus over to the Romans, two thousand years ago. All of Jesus’ followers were Jews. He was not rejected by all Jews in his time. Yet, the decision made by a few temple officials has been used to condemn all Jews, for all time in the eyes of antisemitism. The same logic applies to the war in Gaza. Somehow all Jews are responsible for what the current Israeli government does. That is unjust and irrational. As hate usually is.
Our world is too often defined by hatred. Governments and electorates look to narrow self interest to make decisions. They disregard the effect their actions will have on others. The weakest are usually considered totally expendable, beneath notice. The strong and the rich are given the keys to the world, and everyone else is invited to watch and admire their adventures. When they don’t get what they want, they try to take it. If government get in the way, they try to change the governments, from the inside or the outside. Greed and power have too much influence in this world, as they did in Jesus’ day.
So, facing his own possible execution, he tries to remind people that there is another way. A kingdom not of men, but of God, to which we are all invited. But the people he is talking to have been indoctrinated too, to believe that the rich and powerful have God’s favour. How else could they have gotten so rich? So Jesus tells a parable about the kingdom of God that shows a king at odds with the rich and powerful. Jesus is speaking to Jews who are already following him. His disciples are listening, good Jews who will spread this story and others long after Jesus dies. This is a Jewish story for Jews, not a story about how bad Jews are. And it is a sort for everyone else, including us.
In the story, when the rich people kill the king’s messengers, he is enraged. He strikes back, kills them, even burns down their cities. But note: the king didn’t hurt anyone in this story when they refused his wedding invitation. He sent his messengers twice. The king didn’t give up, nor was he insulted by their refusal. The people who said no and did not hurt the messengers were not harmed by the king. If this story is about God, then God is not insulted when we say no to God. Instead, God keeps sending invitations.
But Jesus says the king killed and burnt down a city. True. But the target of these attacks were the rich people who killed the messengers. Those messengers were slaves. This is another place where we can see that this story is a parable not real life. Slaves were inherently expendable. No one cared much about what happened to them, they were like chairs or cattle, easily replaced. But in this parable, the king does not get mad when rich people refuse the invitation. The king gets mad when the slaves are killed. The king has already been insulted, and has not reacted with anger. But when the slaves die, he reacts.
This parable is saying, that unlike normal life, God cares about the people the powerful think are expendable. You can say no to God, and he will keep inviting you. But if we treat even the least powerful person as expendable, that’s a problem. In this story, which is just a story, the king wreaks revenge when the least of his subjects are mistreated. Jesus is trying to get this message through our thick heads: in God’s kingdom, everyone matters. God will defend even the lowest person against the most powerful rich and wealthy person. That’s the way it works in God’s kingdom, and it is not the way it works in our world. And that’s a problem.
To make this point even more clear, Jesus then ups the ante. He says that the king does not give up. He tells his messengers to go invite anyone, the good and the bad alike. Bring them off the street. This wedding banquet for his son cannot wait. So society’s unimportant people are invited to this lavish banquet. God’s kingdom is for all people, whether you are a saint, a sinner, or something in between, like most people.
Throughout the gospels, Jesus tries to get us to see that God’s kingdom is not a place we go only when we die, or will appear only at the end of the world, but is here now, if only we can see it and appreciate it. It is in every tree that brings forth hundreds, thousands of seeds, nuts and fruit that will be eaten by birds and squirrels. Only one might become a new tree, the rest is a banquet for the rest of creation. A single cob of corn contains hundreds of kernels, each of which is a seed that can create another corn plant. But the vast majority of kernels even in wild corn are eaten by animals. God has created a natural system built on generous abundance. This is a concrete example of God’s kingdom all around us.
In the parable, the feast is not just any old banquet, but a wedding feast for his son. Weddings celebrate the union of a man and a woman, with the expectation that there will be children. It is a feast that gives wealth, but also creates the conditions for creating more abundance in the form of children, who will one day have their own wedding feast. It’s abundance creating abundance.
But in practice, we refuse to believe life could work this way. We listen to the people who say that wealth is rare, and must be fought for. It is to be hoarded by the few, not shared with the many. We live in times when irrational, selfish arguments are presented as common sense. The corporations which want us to adopt artificial intelligence say it is inevitable. We should invest trillions in this new technology even though it takes more water and energy to generate answers than computers needed before. We should invest in it, even though it is often wrong. Even the companies who make it say that it could kill us all. This is utterly irrational. They want to take and take from us and the environment so they can get rich, even if we lose our jobs, even our lives, to AI.
In the parable, after all the good and bad people have come to the banquet, the king walks around. At that time, it was normal for the host of a wedding banquet to give guests a wedding cloak if they did not bring one. So, the king is very surprised to see that one of the guests is not wearing a wedding cloak. He has come to the banquet but refused to honour the wedding by wearing the cloak. He is treating it as just another feast, a chance to eat and run. He is like everyone who treats the world as just resources to be consumed, not regenerated. A dinner to be raided, a wedding to be crashed.
When the king spots the person without the wedding cloak, he addresses him as “friend.” Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding, perhaps there is a good reason for this insult to the wedding. But there isn’t. The man is caught, guilty, unable to explain why he would steal what had been given freely. So the king has him thrown out. Not to punish him, but to send him back where he came from. To the place where cities burn, and the powerful just take and take, first from the poor, and the land, and then from each other.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is another way. A way of living the plants and animals already understand. A way of living based on generosity and gratitude for what God has given to us, for free. Every human being alive is invited to God’s wedding banquet. A dinner which will do more than keep us alive, it will fill us with the joy of a wedding feast, where there is singing and dancing, toasting and laughter. Where everyone is invited, and everyone is treated as a full human being. God knows we will ignore this invitation at first. So God will keep trying until we join in this fertile feast. When we will wear that wedding cloak in the hall of gladness. Amen.
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