Word to the Wise
Sunday, October 11, 2020 - 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time - A
[Isa 25:6-10a; Phil 4:12-14, 19-20; Matt 22:1-14]'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...." On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the seb that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face.....[Isaiah]
In God's providence, the gospels were addressed not only to a particular community at a given moment in time, but to all Christians and people of good will for all ages. The vision of Isaiah speaks of a banquet for all people of all nations. With that in mind, the parable that forms the gospel scripture for today from the Gospel According to Matthew has much to say to us.
There are three "contexts" at work. Matthew wrote for a community of Christians who were mostly Jewish converts. The time of the gospel was after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The particular setting, however, is just before Jesus is arrested in Jerusalem. The host of the banquet is God. The servants who were sent are Moses and the prophets. The invited guests are the chief priests and elders who rejected and continued to reject the invitation. However, by that time, Gentiles were also being invited. (The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike.)
Thus, context #1 was Jesus' situation confronting the leadership of Judaism at the time. (The very next chapter, Matt. 23, is a terrible indictment. Context #2 was the community that Matthew was addressing: Jewish converts and Gentile converts as well. Context #3 is all of us today who read this gospel and are challenged to understand it in our time. It is the last part of the parable, which may get omitted if the "short form" is read, that aims at us.
We may consider ourselves fortunate to be believers in Jesus and heirs to the kingdom of heaven. But that does not give us the right to take it for granted. The guest who came without a wedding garment discovered that the invitation also meant responsibility [wedding garment], which, in the Gospel According to Matthew, is clearly laid out in the parable of the Last Judgment [Matt. 25:31-45]. We are invited to the banquet but not on our own terms. This parable should give us all a lot to think about. Do we have something to wear? AMEN
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