'Once more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”'
There is an old proverb found in many cultures that highlights one key difference between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdom of this world there is a great banquet, filled with all sorts of succulent foods. People of all kinds are gathered around the table at this banquet, only there is one problem: the spoons and forks are 3-feet long. The people grumble and complain, as they try to use the extended utensils to feed themselves, finding it utterly impossible to do so, as they hit each other in the face with the elongated utensils. Meanwhile, in the kingdom of heaven, there is also a great banquet, filled with all sorts of succulent foods. People of all kinds are gathered around the table at this banquet, only there is one problem: the spoons and forks are 3-feet long. The people, however, look across the table at one another and laugh, and then use those extended utensils to feed one another. To which banquet, it is often asked, do we find ourselves? Depends on how we use the utensils provided.
The imagery of a banquet or great feast has long been associated with the coming of God’s kingdom. The prophet Isaiah, preaching in the midst of exile, foresees a day when God will make for all peoples a banquet of rich foods and well-aged wines, as God wipes away the tears from all sorrowful faces and takes away all shame. In the parable we just heard from Matthew’s Gospel – the last of three parables Jesus has offered in as many weeks – the kingdom is compared to a banquet to which those who were invited didn’t show up, but the king – God – is determined that the hall should be filled, and has attendants to go into the streets to bring in every kind of person, “good” and “bad”, all to enjoy the feast.
For the earliest Christians the banquet wasn’t just an allegory for the kingdom but an integral part of their own communal identities. Hal Taussig in his book In the Beginning Was the Meal points out that the worship we would come to call the Eucharist, Communion, and the Liturgy, was a continuation of the Greek symposium, the dinner parties that were regularly conducted among groups of like-minded individuals. What made the Christian version different was that, as Dr. Taussig puts it, the presence of poor and hungry people at meals was clearly a deeply held position in the Christian communities, and as folks of from every walk of life ate together, they prayed and told stories and worshipped God until, eventually, we get something that looked an awful lot like what we do today. Simply put: this right here is a banquet hall, and this is the feast to which all are invited, the feast of the world’s redemption.
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The Greek symposium depicted on an ancient vase.
Knowing how important the banquet meals were can help us understand why it matters that Jesus uses this imagery to talk about the kingdom. We had a mini-Bible study around this Gospel at a clergy gathering last week, and I’ll be honest, many of us really struggle with this story. Why does the king have to be so harsh? What is with all of this talk of being cast out, with the weeping and gnashing of teeth – Matthew loves that, for some reason? Who’s the guy without a robe? And why does that even matter? Where, O where, is the Good News?
What we are seeing in these parables over these last three weeks is the nadir, the low point of a family feud between the religious authorities and Jesus. The severity of the language being used in the Gospel can be linked to what was going on in the real world when the Gospel was written – namely that the Temple and Jerusalem had been destroyed and folks were angry, scared, and looking for someone to blame. Matthew’s Gospel, unfortunately, tends to read as if the Jewish authorities, and thereby the Jews themselves, were the responsible party, even though this is a gross misunderstanding, albeit easier than trying to explain the complexities of the situation.
And, again, I’ll be honest. As a preacher I find it downright irresponsible to not somehow address what we have all witnessed going on in Israel-Palestine and the Gaza Strip over the past week. Some, in order to avoid explaining the complexities of that situation, might offer some grossly misunderstood reading of Israeli-Palestinian history. If you’re looking for an easy explanation from me, I don’t have one, and I sincerely believe anyone that says they do don’t really understand the situation. We are seeing, as in the days of Matthew writing this Gospel, the nadir, the low point of a family feud between our siblings in the Abrahamic traditions. While it is perhaps an oversimplification, this is a part of the world that, for the better part of ¾ of a century has looked like the banquet where the folks have tried to use the 3-ft. spoons to feed themselves, resulting in a lot of frustration, heartache, and death.
Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason’s for. John Prine sang that, and he was a preacher, albeit an itinerant one. And while I agree with the late-great Mr. Prine, I also know that it is certainly not the place of Christians to tell our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers that Jesus has the answers, but it is to Jesus that we are drawn to seek for ourselves some kind of solace, some kind of meaning in the absurdity of what is happening – certainly this is what our Palestinian Christian family members are doing right now, particularly at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and suffered a horrendous attack that killed 500 people this past Tuesday evening. Where is Christ? Where is the banquet? What do we do?
It's important for us to always remember that Jesus is right there in the midst of suffering. Jesus is the first to cry when a building is toppled onto a house or a rocket smashes into a school. The crucified Christ took with him all the sufferings of the world, not only up onto the cross but down into hell itself, which is precisely why we find him in our own moments of suffering, our own personal hells. Not necessarily fixing the problem. But suffering alongside. And it’s important to keep in mind that while preachers – myself included – have equated the banquet in the parable with Sunday morning church worship, and the person who doesn’t put on the wedding robe with the person or persons who think all they need to do is just show up and not actually take responsibility, Jesus wasn’t talking about church attendance. He was talking about the kingdom, that’s what the banquet in the parable symbolizes, and just like the early Christian banquets emphasized the welcome of the poor, the hungry, the outcast, God will bring everyone – Israeli, Palestinian, Jew, Muslim, Christian, agnostic, “good”, “bad”, us, them, everyone – into the joys of that kingdom, that banquet that cannot be halted by bombs or rockets.
As we say where I come from, y’all means all…y’all, and all y’all have a seat at that banquet, even the ones you might be surprised to see there, and the ones who might be surprised to see you.
This past Sunday our lectionary selected Psalm 23, which we read together. How fitting! No doubt, at the same time that we were reading and praying that Psalm, there were folks hunkered down in Gaza and Israel-Palestine doing the same. Right there in the literal valley of the shadow of death, people were praying to remember that God is their shepherd, that God has set a banquet before them, even in the midst of their troubles, hoping to recall God’s mercy all the days of their lives. We hold them all in our hearts. The parish in which I serve opened its doors all day on Tuesday to observe a day of fasting and prayer at the urging of the Archbishop of Jerusalem. And so we gathered and prayed together. Saint Augustine of Hippo said that we should pray as if everything depended upon God and work as though everything depended upon us. What is the work before us? I don’t know for sure, perhaps it is to pray, to listen, to educate ourselves, and emphatically call for an end to the killing. Maybe if we, as Desmond Tutu said, do our little bit of good in our little corner, we can somehow make this world look more like the banquet where we use those elongated forks and spoons to feed not ourselves, but each other.
