Readings: Isaiah 25.1-9; Matthew 22.1-22
The beautiful cadences of the prophet Isaiah! A song of praise to the salvation the Lord God promises and accomplishes for the poor and needy, all who are oppressed! A feast of rich food, and well matured wine for all peoples! And the words so familiar to us from the Book of Revelation: The Lord God will wipe away tears from all eyes! Death shall be swallowed up for ever! Is your heart feeling warmed, reassured? Communal feasting was Israel’s traditional celebration of God’s blessing and plenty, joy and fulfilment in life! And the symbol of a great banquet, potent portent of blessing to come! The people – we – may rejoice!
The banquet, potent symbol also used by Jesus, as in our gospel this morning. However, hearer beware! Things are not quite this simple! An ice-bucket challenge awaits us – as perhaps you have noticed already!
Encouraging as these words of Isaiah are, they are not the beautiful and heart-warming cadences of Second Isaiah which we know so well from Handel’s Messiah. For although in the text part of First Isaiah, they are, as Jesus’ parable, also warning, and belong to later apocalyptic writings of the time following Israel’s return from exile. Prophetic visions of the end of time, and God’s judgement of the earth. Such literature emerged as earlier prophecy promising full restoration of Israel to her land, was not fulfilled. Apocalyptic literature looked forward to a time when faithful Israel would indeed be vindicated in the age to come! Though the individual might perish amid the disorders of this world, such prophetic writing taught that the righteous person would indeed receive the rewards of righteousness in the Messianic kingdom – or in heaven itself. The people of Israel need not fear 0that in their contemporary lack of true autonomy and independence God has abandoned them, a vassal state, first under overlords who were heirs of Alexander the Great, and later, under the Roman empire.
Our Old Testament passage is part of Isaiah’s apocalypse chapters twenty-four to twenty-seven, where he foretells the utter devastation of the land in God’s impending judgement of the wickedness of the earth. -480Yet the Lord God will be vindicated! And ultimately, Judah and Jerusalem herself! Defeat of their enemies. Judgement on those who oppress their neighbours. Justice achieved!
And now, Jesus’ rather fiercesome account of God’s table, the king’s wedding feast, and invited guests who not only fail to turn up, but murder the bearers of their invitations? A table at which we too, are invited to partake, will later partake.
What is Jesus saying to us? Here in this parable, he is certainly not, gentle, meek and mild! In fact it all sounds a bit steep! A city destroyed for want of courtesy on the part of guests invited to a wedding! How can it be that those, simply getting on with living their lives, getting on and minding their own business, have become ‘murderers’? And where does this leave us ? Are we listening, are we ready? Or are we also, deep down, too busy with other things? We have been called – and here we are, yet we may still not be chosen. What can this mean?
The story is of course again warning! A warning to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. A warning to those Jews who would expel the first Christians from worship in the synagogues. And a warning to us! The servants who are killed represent those first evangelists who took the gospel out into their Jewish communities, only to be rejected and persecuted. These self-righteous citizens will find their faith hollow, all they are trusting in, destroyed. The rag and taggle wayfarers who eventually come to the banquet, are the gentiles who do indeed embrace the way of Jesus with joy and commitment!
Jesus often spoke with the driest of wits – a wit we today lack the background knowledge to catch. Here he speaks in earnest. Now is not the time for messing around.
Jesus’ harsh words are there to goad the people into action. For if they do not heed his words, there will be horror to come. It takes strong speaking to shake us out of our blindness when we think we know it all. To those first hearers of this gospel, that apparently simple statement spoke to a terrifying reality. By the time the Gospel of Matthew is written the ‘king’s armies’ so to speak, the king’s armies in the shape of Roman soldiers, had already descended upon Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple for the city’s rebellion. Those first hearers of Matthew’s gospel know immediately that Jesus’ story is not a threat, it is simply what happens – what happened. It is not God’s intention to destroy, this is simply how the realities of the world work. This is what happens when we fail to open our lives to God’s love, God’s call to live with justice and compassion together.
Jesus is warning us precisely because, whatever our failures or successes – wherever we are in life, whatever we have done, Jesus calls us and chooses us, desires us to be with him, feasting with him at his table, desires us to enjoy fullness of life.
But this is not quite the end of the story. Matthew adds a shocking sequence to the same story in Luke. A guest called in from the street but not properly attired is to be thrown into outer darkness! What sort of justice is this! How could our poor guest have done otherwise, invited to the feast off the street?
Jesus is making a powerful point here! First we need to remember, that teaching in Jesus’ day was offered through story, story told in hyperbole, put in the extreme case. Having arrived, entered and sat down, we are not now to be cavalier about our place at the table! We are called – but have we been chosen? Gentiles we may be, riff-raff even, but something is required of us! We may not simply come in without recognising the significance of the occasion! Presume that our demeanour doesn’t matter. Just a couple of chapters on in Matthew’s gospel we have the famous parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats, sent by God to right or left on Judgement Day according to whether they have succoured the needy.
Paul may claim salvation by faith alone, Matthew does not. We do need to be suitably attired in wedding garments, the garments of our care for others, our work for justice in society. This powerful parable presents us with an important double message: all are invited to God’s wedding banquet – those who have failed in life, and those who have succeeded in life. But we also have our part to play in making the occasion.
In 2008 in the wake of the most devastating financial crash in living memory, I was hopeful that our developed world might truly have arrived in a new place, a place where we must and would do things differently.
Organise our financial and business affairs with a new ethos on a different basis. Organise our lives otherwise, as was the challenge to those latterly invited guests in our gospel this morning!
In our greed we have kept our eye on the supply and price of oil, turned our eyes away from perceiving what was really happening in the Middle East. Incredible wealth alongside gross lack of education, appalling poverty, and the rise of fundamentalism which inevitably accompanies these things. Are we not staring at outer darkness right now in the colour and ferocity of Islamic State?
Last week was Dedication Sunday. During the month of October we reflect on what we might wear for Jesus’ wedding banquet. We take action to acquire our wedding attire. Amen.