In the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year A, Jesus continues what Dr. Nina Heereman calls the “Temple Discourse.” I have never heard anyone call this the “Temple Discourse.” It would amount to when Jesus first enters the Temple in Mt 21:23 through chapter 23. Jesus leaves the Temple to start chapter 24 which begins the End of Times Discourse. This makes sense to call this the “Temple Discourse,” but the Gospel of Matthew has been known to be structured around five discourses (Sermon on the Mount, Mt 5 thru 7; Missionary, Mt 10; The Parabolic Discourse, Mt 13; Church Discourse, Mt 18; End of Times, Mt 24 & 25). Despite the logic, no search seems to come up with a Temple Discourse.
Today’s reading is Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. Frankly I have to admit I have never cared for Matthew’s version. The guest who does not have a wedding garment at the end of the parable is treated unjustly. He was invited to the banquet and is thrown out because he didn’t wear a wedding garment. So the casual biblical reader of which I once was one reacts emotionally. But many parables have a paradoxical moment, a disorienting twist, to make a particular point, and the “unjust” treatment of the guest without a wedding garment is the paradoxical moment. Don’t think of the guest’s treatment as unjust but that the garment symbolizes something in which the guest needed to have. What it symbolizes Dr. Heereman points out. The answer is found in the Book of Revelations, chapter 19.
Then I heard something like the sound of a great multitude or the sound of rushing water or mighty peals of thunder, as they said: “Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign, [our] God, the almighty. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.” (The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.) (Rev 19:6-8)
I’m not going to embed Dr. Nina’s exegesis
but that is most helpful. Though you may
be invited to the Wedding Banquet, but you have to be spotless and worthy. Dr.
Brant Pitre explains it well from my post on this Gospel passage three
years ago, and though he comes to the same conclusion as Dr. Nina, he finds a
different allusion to the garment, this from Isaiah.
I will rejoice heartily in the LORD, my being exults in my God; for he has clothed me with garments of salvation, and wrapped me in a robe of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Is 61:10)
In both allusions what we find is the garment
of salvation are your righteous deeds and purity of soul.
Today’s Gospel:
Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and elders of the people
in parables, saying,
"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son.
He dispatched his servants
to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.
A second time he sent other servants, saying,
'Tell those invited: "Behold, I have prepared my banquet,
my calves and fattened cattle are killed,
and everything is ready; come to the feast."'
Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them.
The king was enraged and sent his troops,
destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.'
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.
But when the king came in to meet the guests,
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
The king said to him, 'My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?'
But he was reduced to silence.
Then the king said to his attendants, 'Bind his hands and feet,
and cast him into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'
Many are invited, but few are chosen."
~Mt: 22:1-14
For today’s exegetical homily, I want to return to Fr. Geoffrey Plant. His homilies run long and they disappear off YouTube after a few years. But he really does a great job, and I will quote the passages that are especially insightful. I especially found the comparison with Luke’s version very instructive.
Fr. Geoffrey:
Today's parable of
the wedding banquet has a close parallel in Luke's Gospel.
Comparing the two
versions helps us to appreciate the distinctive emphasis of each
evangelist. So let us now place these two versions of the
parable side by side and notice how they differ.
The first difference
is the setting. In Matthew, Jesus tells this parable in the
presence of the chief
priests and elders in the Temple on the Tuesday of Holy Week. In Luke, it is told much earlier, while Jesus
is still making his way towards
Jerusalem.
The banquet itself is
also different. In Matthew, it is a wedding banquet given by a
king in honour of his
son. In Luke, it is simply a great
banquet hosted by a wealthy man. He is not a king, and the meal is not
connected with a wedding.
In both versions
servants are sent out to summon those who have already been
invited. In both
cases, however, those invited refuse to come.
The excuses are
different. In Matthew, one man goes off to his farm and another to
his business. In Luke, one man has bought five yoke of oxen
and is on his way to try them out. Another
has just been married and says that he is unable to come.
At this point the
stories begin to diverge more sharply. In Matthew the king sends
out a second group of
servants. Perhaps Matthew intends us to see the first group
as the prophets whom
God sent to Israel, and the second group as the apostles
whom Jesus sends out.
Luke has no second dispatch of servants.
Matthew also
introduces a much darker note. Some of those invited seize the
king's servants,
mistreat them and kill them. The king
responds by sending his troops, destroying the murderers and burning their
city. Nothing comparable appears in Luke's account. There the householder becomes angry, but he
does not retaliate.
Both stories now move
in the same direction. Since those originally invited have
refused to come, the
invitation is extended to others. In Matthew, the king orders
his servants to go to
the crossroads and invite to the wedding everyone they can
find. In Luke, the
servant is sent through the streets and alleys of the town to bring
in the poor, the
crippled, the blind and the lame.
In Matthew the
wedding hall is filled with guests. In Luke, however, there is still
more room. The
servant is therefore sent out a second time, this time to the roads
and hedgerows. He is
to urge everyone he meets to come in because the
householder wants to
make sure that his house is full. That is where Luke's version
ends.
Matthew, however,
continues the story. As the king walks among his guests, he
discovers a man who
is not wearing a wedding garment.
To a modern reader, a
wedding banquet may seem simply an attractive
backdrop for a
parable. To a first-century Jew, however, it evoked one of the
Old Testament's great
images of God's final salvation. Israel looked forward to
the day when God
would establish his kingdom, gather his scattered people,
defeat every enemy
and restore creation itself. One of the favourite ways of
describing that
future hope was as a great banquet prepared by God himself.
The classic passage
is today's first reading from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 25:
"On this
mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food,
a feast of well-aged wines..."
This is no ordinary
meal. It is the celebration of God's final victory. Isaiah continues:
"He will destroy
on this mountain
the shroud that is
cast over all peoples...
He will swallow up
death forever.”
That is an
extraordinary statement. The banquet is not simply about
abundance. It is
about the defeat of death itself. It is a picture of the new age
when God will wipe
away every tear, remove the disgrace of his people and
conquer death
forever.
Nor is the banquet
reserved for Israel alone. Isaiah speaks of "all peoples". Centuries before Christ, the prophet already
looks forward to a day when the
nations themselves
will share in God's salvation.
By the time of Jesus,
this vision of the great messianic banquet had become deeply embedded in Jewish
hope. The faithful looked forward to the day when they would recline at table
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in God's kingdom.
The kingdom was
imagined, not as an abstract idea, but as a joyful banquet celebrating God's
definitive triumph over evil and death.
Matthew's story now
presents us with a difficulty—one that has puzzled readers for
centuries. The first
part of the story ends quite naturally. The invited guests refuse
to come. The king
therefore sends his servants into the streets to gather everyone
they can find.
Matthew even emphasises that they brought in "both bad and good,"
and so the wedding
hall was filled with guests.
At that point the
story appears complete. In fact, that is exactly where Luke's
version ends.
Interestingly, the Church's Lectionary provides the option of ending
the Gospel at this
point. The shorter form concludes with the banquet hall filled
with guests and omits
the episode of the wedding garment altogether.
Matthew, however,
continues. As the king walks through the banquet hall, he
notices one guest who
is not wearing a wedding garment. He asks him, "Friend,
how did you get in
here without a wedding garment?" The man is speechless.
The king orders him
to be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness.
This is the only
biblical passage I can remember my late father discussing with me.
He was struck by what
seemed an obvious injustice. The guests had only just been
gathered in from the
streets. How could one of them be condemned for not wearing
a wedding garment? It
is a question that has stayed with me ever since.
After all, these
guests had not planned to attend a royal wedding. They had been
going about their
ordinary business when, quite unexpectedly, the king's servants
summoned them to the
banquet. Some would have been labourers, others
beggars, others
travellers. Was the king really expecting every citizen to carry
around a set of
wedding garments on the off chance that they might one day
receive an invitation
to a royal wedding?
Many scholars have
suggested that Matthew has stitched together two originally
independent stories,
and I find that suggestion persuasive. The first ends quite
naturally with the
banquet hall being filled by those gathered from the highways and
byways. Matthew,
however, also seems to have known another story about a guest
who attended a
wedding banquet without the proper attire. Because both centred
on a banquet, he may have combined them into a single narrative.
Matthew would
probably say to us, however, "Don't become so preoccupied with
the join that you
miss the point of the second story." So what does he want to
teach us? The first
thing to notice is that he says remarkably little about the
wedding garment
itself. Instead, he draws our attention to the man's response—
or rather, to his
lack of response.
"The man was
silent." He does not protest that he has been treated unfairly. He
does not explain that
he had been summoned from the streets without warning.
He offers no excuse,
no defence, no justification.
William Bausch draws
attention to this striking detail: "He was silent, notice. He
had not one word to
say in his own defence, as surely he would have if he were
unjustly accused...
He had nothing to say: no excuse, no explanation, no
protest... His
silence branded him as guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt.” That
silence is the key to
the story.
Donald Senior
suggests that the soiled garment symbolises "a life that has
undergone no basic
change, a life that has not produced fruits worthy of
repentance." In
other words, the problem is not the clothing itself. The clothing
symbolises a life
that has accepted the invitation but has refused to be
transformed by it.
Tom Wright brings the
lesson into our own day: "We would prefer to hear a nice
story about God
throwing the party open to everyone. We want—as people now
fashionably say—to be
'inclusive', to let everyone in. We don't want to know
about judgment on the
wicked, or about demanding standards of holiness, or
about weeping and
gnashing of teeth."
That observation
strikes at the heart of the parable. We rightly rejoice that God's
invitation is
extended to everyone. Matthew himself tells us that the king's
servants gathered
"both bad and good." No one earns an invitation to the
banquet. But
accepting the invitation is not the end of the story. It is the
beginning of a new
way of life. What happens when someone finally stands
before God, looking back over a lifetime?
Now listen to how Fr. Geoffrey ties this with the ending of Graham
Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory.
You can find my
posts on Greene’s novel here.
For the pastoral homily I’m going to turn Fr. Peter Marselek of SOLT.
Fr. Peter:
There is a great wedding feast, but one individual arrives without a wedding garment. He is dressed incompatibly with the banquet and is therefore removed. The wedding banquet represents heaven, communion with the most holy trinity, with God who is love itself. St. Gregory the Great therefore identifies the wedding garment as charity. To be in God's presence means being able to participate in his love. Both receiving that love and sharing in it. This is why the wedding garment is so important. Heaven is not simply a place to which we are admitted. [music] It is a life in which we participate. The very life and love of God. God therefore desires to prepare and transform our hearts now for the fullness of his presence in eternity. Today's gospel tells us that God invites everyone to salvation. The servants are sent out to gather everyone they can find, bad and good alike. God's invitation is extraordinarily generous. But accepting the invitation is only the beginning. We must also allow his grace to transform us. The wedding garment then isn't an arbitrary condition for entering heaven. It represents our capacity to participate in heaven. Faith opens us to God's saving grace, but that grace must bear fruit in charity. Pope Benedict the 16th beautifully describes this garment as being woven on two looms, love of God and love of neighbor.
I like both popes identification of the symbolism: Pope
St. Gregory’s the garment being charity and Pope Benedict XVI’s woven on the
threads of love of God and love of neighbor.
It’s a reminder we should always be wearing this garment.
Sunday Meditation: “Many
are invited, but few are chosen."
“Lead Me, Lord is a beautiful hymn for this Sunday.
Blessed are the poor
in spirit, longing for their Lord,
for God’s coming
kingdom shall be theirs.
Blessed are the
sorrowing, for they shall be consoled,
and the meek shall
come to rule the world.
Refrain:
Lead me, Lord, lead
me, Lord,
by the light of truth
to seek and to find
the narrow way.
Be my way; be my
truth;
be my life, my Lord,
and lead me, Lord, today.
Blessed are the
merciful, for mercy shall be theirs,
and the pure in heart
shall see their God.
Blest are they whose
hunger only holiness can fill,
for I say they shall
be satisfied.
Lead me, Lord, by the light of truth!
