When Peter (not the disciple) had the opportunity to meet with this young man privately (well almost privately, ‘cuz I was over in the corner), Peter asked him, “I’m glad you always know that God loves you and forgives you, but do you really hear that in every sermon I give?” The young man sat silently for a few moments and then said, “I really don’t know what you are talking about most of the time. I just keep writing the same thing every week hoping it’s true.”
This week’s parable in Matthew 22:1-14 is “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to ….” I’ll explain later why it reminds me of the sermon notes of that young man.
So many times, we find that we are not listening properly with our ears. The words, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to …,” gets heard as, “The kingdom of heaven is equal to ….” We hear something more like a mathematical equation with an understandable solution on the bottom line, or maybe even an allegory (not the critter in the Florida swamps), where everything needs to line up with something else. That is not the way that parables work. Parables, like the present political climate in Israel, are complex and not always easily teased apart.
To begin with, let us understand that Jesus does not use parables to prosecute the Jewish people. He uses them to challenge the authorities of the day and the powers that prevail. This parable, in particular, promulgates a king who is not regarded with respect. Those who are first invited to the marriage feast deem the invitation as being insignificant. When they are reminded, they conspicuously disdain the invitation. Some indicate it is not as important to them as their landholdings or pursuit of business. Others respond with contempt. They replace the priority of cultural hospitality with shameful treatment, beatings, and death. The king responds to this violence with an escalation of violence. He sends his soldiers (army?) to destroy them, burn their city, and declares them unworthy of his protection and concern.
If the first part of the parable is not a prosecution of the Jewish people, then the rest of the parable is not about the gentiles. The command to gather the street people (the bad and good) into the proscenium revealed to us as the banquet hall is nothing more than a show of power and a command performance. The king is uninvolved with these guests until he espies a person without a wedding garment.
This, of course, raises the question of how others received a wedding garment and from whence that wedding garment appeared? 2 Kings 5 offers a potential explanation. In the story of Naaman and Elisha, we learn that presenting garments that have been worn by the king is an honor and a sign of favor from the king. Therefore, when Elisha refuses the king’s garments, Naaman perceives the prophet as being impudent, imprudent, and unresponsive.
For the rest of that story, you can read it for yourself. What we are left with here in Matthew is that either there seem to be many people basking in the favor of the king and one who is not, or that the planned providence of the king has not anticipated the preponderance of people to be provided for.
Into this parable which portrays “honor and shame”, power and punitive puniness, with capricious violence, we are confronted with the possibility of hospitable hospitality, “Friend, let’s get you one of my garments that will honor you and is appropriate.” Or we can hear the words presented here. “Friend how did you get in here like that? Bind him hand and foot, then throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Indeed, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to power, capricious violence, and judgments of worthiness, but that is not the kingdom of heaven that we, as Christians aspire to. So, where is the hope? Where is the good news? Where is the subversive possibility of promised paradigmatic potentiality?
If we perceive the casting-out-place as being the place of permanent punitive imprisonment without the possibility of parole, then I cannot offer the discovery of good news here. If the casting-out-place is a place of penance, I am also challenged to be able to pronounce good news. But, if that casting-out-place in the outer darkness can place a person in the midst of God’s creation workplace and those weeping and gnashing their teeth is also the place of those who have been cast out, ignored, shunned, displaced, dispersed, dispossessed, or otherwise purged from polite society, then maybe, just maybe, we can hear the cries of God’s people, share the tears of prejudice, join in the gnashing of teeth in the presence of injustice, and begin the process of building, living into the kingdom place of new creation peace.
“Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish philosopher and astronomer wrote, ‘The whole object of prophets is to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt.’…Human reason, Maimonides is arguing, can only take us so far. Then, at that point, holy irrationality must…take us beyond it. It takes us beyond a profit driven world in which only those who work have the right to eat.’” (The Time is Now, Joan Chittister, 2019) It takes us beyond the parable of the marriage feast through a wormhole in the time fabric of this narrative into the place where the dross of society (those wearing inappropriate apparel) dwell—into the place of holy, irrational, new creation community. This then may be the revealed kingdom of heaven—that place where we know that God loves us and we know God’s grace, God’s new creation, sustains us, just like that catechism student from years ago wrote each week.
Your pal, Nicodemus
Editor, Theologian, Counsellor, Mouse
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