The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith: Kingdom Hope
I don’t know how to make sense of the events of this past week. The violence we have witnessed and the evil that has been perpetrated against innocent men, women and children is almost beyond belief. I have to admit that right now I feel too raw to do anything but hang my head in sorrow and sadness. And yet our lessons for this morning talk about the promise that one day God’s Kingdom will come and it will be like a great and joyful feast, where everyone is invited, and where death is swallowed up forever. How can that be? In the past week it seems like there is very little we can point to in this world of ours deserving anything but God’s wrath, much less a feast. In the sadness, tragedy, and outrage of events in Israel and Gaza, we have witnessed unthinkable acts of carnage – rape, murder, kidnapping, and the killing of innocents. We have seen hatred so deep that somehow Hamas finds it acceptable, even praiseworthy, to commit the unspeakable against women and children. We have witnessed raw evil up-close. And having seen what we have seen, we have been forced once again to confront the reality that human beings can be monsters. Yet, still, this morning, Jesus tells us that God’s kingdom is coming and that everyone is invited. What are we to make of this lesson?
The first thing to remember is that while this is one of Jesus’ parables, it is being told by Matthew years after Jesus’ death. As such, it not only reflects Jesus’ teaching, but it also reflects Matthew’s experience as a Christian in the 1st century. Second, this lesson is best understood as an allegory rather than as a parable. In this way, the King who gives the wedding banquet can be understood as God. The banquet is the Kingdom of God, described by Isaiah in our first lesson this morning as a great feast where death is swallowed up and God wipes away all human tears. The invited guests are the people of Israel. The servants sent out to call the guests are the great prophets of Israel’s history who were rejected over and over again. The servant who was killed is Jesus who was crucified. The destruction of the guests who reject the invitation and the burning of their city, is most likely Matthew’s interpretation of recent events in his day when the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, some 30 odd years after Jesus’ death. In the end, the new guest list for the great feast of the Kingdom of God now includes everyone, both the good and the bad, as Matthew says. This parable was intended as a rebuke of the religious authorities in Jesus’ day who thought that only the religiously observant and the ritually pure could be included in God’s Kingdom. It is also a reminder to all of us to remember that we too are called to respond to God’s invitation to be a part of the Kingdom.
For my purposes this morning, I want to focus on the last part of this lesson – the guest who responds to the King’s invitation and comes to the banquet but who is thrown out because he doesn’t have the right clothing. What is that about? What is going on here?
In the New Testament putting on new clothing is often used as a metaphor for spiritual change. Paul uses this metaphor often. In his letter to the Colossians he writes, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. . . Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” In this sense, just responding to God’s invitation to come to the great feast, saying yes to a life of faith, is not enough. We have to do more than just show up, we have to be willing to change, to let go of our old life and clothe ourselves in God’s life. We have to respond to God’s invitation by wrapping ourselves and our lives in kindness, compassion, humility, meekness, patience and love, as Paul says.
The guest who was rejected showed up for the party, but he refused to change. He wanted the feast, but he was unwilling to take on the responsibility that comes with it. It’s been said that 80% of life is just showing up. Jesus wants us to know that being a part of God’s great work requires more than showing up – it requires a willingness to grow and change and become the people God intended us to be. It requires letting go of our old garments and putting on God’s. As G. K. Chesterton used to say, “Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.”
My friends, this is one of the great mysteries of our faith. Yes, everyone is invited to the banquet, everyone is included, no one is excluded from God’s table. But at the same time, for those of us who choose to pursue a life of faith, showing up is not enough, we have to be willing to do God’s work in the world. We have to be willing to go from this place and take Christ with us.
Where in and among the priorities of our lives does each of us hold the invitation of God to take part in the great feast of his Kingdom? Is saying yes to Christ’s invitation a priority, or do other opportunities demand our attention and push it aside? Often the things that make us deaf and blind to the invitation of Christ are quite mundane. They are the routines of our lives, the day-to-day demands of our jobs, the needs of our families, the expectations of our friends. It is easy to be so busy with the things of time that we forget the things of eternity. To be so preoccupied with the things that are seen that we forget the things that are unseen. As William Barclay says, “(We) hear so insistently the claims of the world that we cannot hear the soft invitation of Christ.” God says to each of us – “Are you listening to me? Do you know the great opportunity I hold out for you? Come and feast in my Kingdom.”
I love Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Scrooge through the 3 Ghosts of Christmas is shaken to his very core. He is dragged from his bed in the middle of the night and taken on a startling journey. He has his life laid out in front of him, the choices he has made, the opportunities he has missed, the opportunities he has taken advantage of, and the person he has become. In so doing he is forced to see that his life is out of focus. By the end of the story, he is brought to his knees in front of his own gravestone only to realize almost too late the really important things in life. By examining his past, his present, and his future, he is forced to see that he has lived a life of refusal to God’s invitation, a life of confused priorities and bad choices. But, in the end he is given a second chance, and he latches onto the great opportunity of Christmas. He chooses to love, to hope, to pray, to live joyfully in the knowledge that Christmas Day has not passed him by. It is a profound story.
Ask yourself; where do I hold the great opportunity of the Good News? Where in and among the priorities of my life do I hold God’s invitation to his great feast? Do my worldly pursuits and noble goals shut out my spiritual opportunities? Am I missing a deeper presence in my life?
My brothers and sisters, the table is set, the invitations have gone out, each one of us has been invited to sit at God’s table. If we accept this free invitation, then let us also be willing to be clothed anew. Let us be willing to take off our pride, our ego, our self-centered preoccupations, and put on the identity that God has prepared for us, because it isn’t enough to just admire Jesus, we must desire to be like Jesus.
What are we to do in the face of the evil we have witnessed this past week? Where does our hope come from? My hope comes from the promise that God’s Kingdom will come, that this broken world won’t always be this way. My hope comes from the Easter promise that, in the end, sin and death are defeated. The promise that, in the end, love wins.
What can we do in the face of all that we have witnessed this past week? It is easy to feel helpless. We can’t stop the killing. We can’t heal all the broken hearts. We can’t bring about peace in the Holy Land. But we can decide who WE are going to be and how WE are going to live in the world. So let us clothe ourselves in Christ so that Jesus’ willingness to forgive others becomes our willingness, so that Jesus’ compassion for others becomes our compassion, so that Jesus’ love for the least and the lost becomes our love. The Kingdom is coming, that’s the promise of our faith. Our job is to proclaim this good news and to work as hard as we can to speed its arrival.
“On this mountain,” Isaiah says, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.” May it be so. Amen.