Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The Rev. Kim Reinholz - Oct 12 2014






Kimberly Reinholz
Sunday October 12, 2014
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Proper 19 A

1Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 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.' 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8


We’ve all heard that saying – it looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck then it must be a duck.

Well today’s Gospel looks like a single parable about a wedding feast, and while it might look like a duck, but in reality it’s not.  In reality it’s two ducks, or rather two parables strewn together over the course of creating our canon because they are both set in the same context of a royal wedding banquet. 

If we were to break today’s reading into the two distinct stories the first dealing with the invited guests and the second dealing with the inappropriately attired guest we can see this selection in a much different light.  Especially if we consider the context in which the Gospel of Matthew was written.   A context of complicated social responsibilities and expectations not easily translated into our modern mainly middle class American culture. 

It is believed that the author or authors of Matthew’s gospel survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and accordingly the author and those who followed blamed the Jewish leaders for their complacency in the Roman occupation. 

The parables of Matthew indicate over and over again an understanding that while the Israelites were the chosen people, they denied their esteemed status as the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah.  Those who were the rightful heirs of the Kingdom of God were cast aside by their own choices.

This is what Matthew is attempting to prove in having Jesus tell parables where those who were invited deny their invitation by choosing what appeared to be the good alternative options –one went to his farm and the other to his business.  Later in the same parable, these invited guests assault the slaves who come to escort them to the festivities. 

It can be understood that the slaves are an analogy for the prophets whose lives are recorded in scriptures, they were those who served the King without distraction, without differentiation.  They were not slaves to the land or to the economic pressures of the world.

Matthew’s author continually derides the Pharisees for their inability to see that the Kingdom of God is greater than the Kingdoms of People and this parable is no different.  He casts the light in such a way that the Pharisees neglect to see that they are being honored as guests at the King’s wedding feast, instead they are choosing to focus on earthly matters instead of heavenly things.

Only after those who had initially been invited are destroyed and their city burned do they realize that they have chosen unwisely to focus on their work rather than their life.  Some bible scholars claim that this is an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem and use it to base their understanding of the time in which Matthew’s gospel was composed.  But the destruction of the farms and the business could also be an allusion to the temporary nature of the human world, and the understanding that the Kingdom of God is eternal where the kingdoms of humanity are fragile.

The second parable – the “what not to wear” parable is a little more complicated.  It seems that the King has prepared a feast, but the guest whom he invited, the Pharisees, who are distracted, are unworthy of their invitation.  Instead the adopted heirs, the sinners and tax collectors, who have no right to even be invited to the wedding banquet, are now given the place of honor at the table. The Pharisees are the same but the context of this parable is different, the guests in the first parable would rather farm or sell wares, but in this parable, they are deemed unworthy of attending the event for some unknown reason. 

So instead of having unworthy guests at his table the King casts a wide net out into the community inviting all who the slaves encounter on the street into the wedding feast. 

Upon entering the feast the King finds the ragamuffin crowd of guests, including the one who is inappropriately attired and the sentence for this fashion crime is being gagged, tied and left outside of the city walls where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I thought Joan Rivers was a tough fashion critic, apparently this King is even more judgmental. 

But as with all parables there is exaggeration and hyperbole present in the images.  The message is extreme but there is a lesson to be learned in this parable as well.  And I believe the message is you better be prepared.

Now I have a bit of a confession to make, I am a HUGE fan of Rupaul’s Drag Race and also Project Runway so when I hear this parable I imagine the King looking at this wretched individual like Rupaul and tell on of the drag queen contenstants to “sashay away”. Or Heidi Klum “auf wiedersehen -ing” another designer whose outfit just didn’t pass muster.  

But the problem is that the man on the street wasn’t planning on coming to a wedding that day, he wasn’t planning on meeting RuPaul, or Heidi Klum, he was planning to just run to the store.  I feel like it's the first century equivalent of showing up to class in your pajama pants, or running to Wawa for a quart of milk with your grubby sweats on. 

So why is the King so judgmental?   What does it matter what the unintended guest is wearing?  Shouldn’t we all be received and accepted as we are, aren’t we a come as you are kingdom? 

I think that the point isn’t as superficial as it seems.  The point isn’t that the guest is dressed in white after labor day or seersucker before memorial day.  The fashion faux pas is an example of how one ought to constantly life “as if” and be prepared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

We shouldn’t live our lives in the “good enough” realm.  At a certain point in my life I lived by the motto- “done is better than good” and how many of us can relate to that feeling.  When 7 million things are pulling us in 7 million directions when our lives are out of control we sometimes feel like our “C game” is good enough.  This is what Jesus is warning us against in the second parable. 

We always ought to bring our “A Game” – we always should be ready to serve God when the call comes, we should always be ready to follow the commandments, and if we come up short there will be judgment. 

However, there is one aspect of this parable that I think is missing, or at least it is not directly mentioned, the Tim Gun character, the mentor, the advocate, the prophet, the dare I say it, the messiah (the savior) who stands before us and teaches us and helps us to do our best with what we have been given.  The person who tells us to “make it work” when what we are working on isn’t quite up to snuff, and that person isn’t the slave who will bind us and throw us into the darkness, but that person is Jesus who is telling us we have to be prepared- which is not a new theme for the parables in Matthew- who shares with us many times, the message of being prepared for the coming of the Kingdom.  Proof that Matthew and those who followed him believed that the Kingdom was coming eminiently.

For us 2000 years later the immediacy of the end of days doesn’t seem so inevitable in our lifetime.  We tend to live our lives not as if the invitation will be coming soon rather we tend to focus on our day to day life and loose track of what is truly important.  We tend to get comfortable and complacent and figure that getting by is good enough.  But what we are called to do as Christians is respond to the invitation the opportunity, the chance to take risks and fulfill our calling to Love God and love our Neighbor in all places and at all times.  What we as Christians are called to do is be prepared at all times to fulfill our baptismal vows to: observe the sacraments; preserve the prayers; resist evil; proclaim the Gospel; seek, serve, and love our neighbors; and strive for justice for every human being; not some times, not when it is convenient, not when it suits our agenda, but at all times.  

Jesus teaches us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like so that we won’t miss the invitation, and we won’t show up unprepared.  He wants us to make it work.  But it’s up to each of us to make the choices to respond, to show up and not skate by.

Amen.

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