Readings of the day: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Philippians 4:12-14,19-20; Matthew 22:1-14
If you were able to attend a lavish banquet free of charge, invited by the host, would you say, “Sorry, I have better things to do than attend the banquet”? I would probably not say, “I have better things to do,” even if I did; “I have better things to do” would sound very rude to the host, even if this were true. And, if I had a reason not to attend the banquet, it would have to be a very good reason. I simply like food too much to miss a banquet that good, especially the food promised in the banquet we hear about today from the Book of Isaiah: “A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” As our Fr. Jim says when he anticipates that a meal will be especially tasty: “Yum, yum, yum”!
But that is precisely what the guests invited to the king’s wedding banquet in Jesus’ parable do: They refuse the king’s invitation, not once but twice in today’s Gospel reading. The king sends his slaves out a second time after his original guests refuse to attend (or maybe even to RSVP) after the first invitation. And the king’s second attempt to invite the original guests is even less successful than the first. The original would-be guests make light of the king’s invitation. One goes “to his farm, another to his business, while the rest” seize, mistreat, and kill the king’s slaves.
If I were the king in Jesus’ parable, I would almost certainly say after the first unsuccessful attempt to invite guests let alone the second: “Well, those people are not worth the trouble of inviting. They are rude, they make fun of me, if they are not downright evil.” I would have gone straight to inviting people from “the main streets”—from the highways and byways—“the good and the bad” to the banquet. I would have saved a few of my servants from being mistreated and murdered in the process! But I am not the king in Jesus’ parable. The king in Jesus’ parable, God, is far more patient and richer, even more extravagant, in graciousness and mercy, in second chances and beyond, than I think any of us is. And there are many very patient, gracious, and merciful people in this chapel right now; I know this first-hand, so I do not intend this as a slight against any of us.
It is easy for us, I think, from today’s Gospel reading to find points to dispute the richness, the infinity of God’s (the king’s) patience, grace, mercy. After all, why would the king, if he is so infinitely patient, gracious, and merciful, ever become so enraged that he would send his troops after the invitees who refused two attempts to invite them to the wedding feast and mistreated and killed the king’s slaves, destroy them, and burn their city for good measure? I have difficulty imagining God readily punishing even the worst sinners. I prefer to think that we have the freedom to refuse God’s grace, mercy, patience, love, salvation as definitively as God offers these gifts to us; as definitively and purposely as God invites us to the wedding banquet. We are free to bring eternal punishment upon ourselves. Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once said that this is why he had to believe that hell exists: We are free to accept or to refuse God’s invitation to the heavenly banquet, once, twice, forever. But von Balthasar (and I agree with him) hoped very few people if anybody had refused God’s invitation so definitively.
Still, why would God (the king in Jesus’ parable) destroy the invitees to the wedding banquet, even if they had killed his slaves? And our Gospel parable becomes even more troublesome if we consider the end of it: Of all the guests from the streets who show up at the wedding feast—we might think, understandably, that the important thing is that they show up at all; they are already better than the earlier guests who refused the king’s invitation twice—one is not wearing the wedding robe provided him by the king. So the king throws him out “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Again, why would the king throw this poor guest, who had already gotten into the banquet hall and possibly ordered his complimentary drink at the bar, out of the hall?
I think that, at this point, we need to accept to some extent that Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet is a story. It is a condensed account of how many times would-be guests could dishonour the king at a royal wedding banquet before being punished. There are cultural elements at play in Jesus’ parable, too: Guests at royal weddings in Jesus’ time, even if one were a lowly person who managed to be invited to the feast by default, would be provided a robe by the king. To refuse to wear this robe was a supreme insult to the banquet host. And Jesus was not beyond using a little exaggeration to make a point.
The point of Jesus’ parable today is, I think, this: God or the king is indeed infinitely patient, gracious, merciful with us. As Hans Urs von Balthasar says, the freedom is ours to refuse (even definitively, finally) or to place limits or obstacles before God’s invitation to the wedding feast of heaven. The freedom is ours to refuse to do God’s will by being kind, just, patient with one another in this life on earth. And our actions—either accepting or refusing God’s invitation to the feast—have consequences. Our Gospel says, “many are called, but few are chosen.” Sisters and brothers, we have all been called by our baptism to the king’s wedding feast, the feast to celebrate the mystical marriage of the king’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and his bride, the Church. But the freedom is ours to RSVP or not, to show up or not, to wear the wedding robe the king gives us or not. God will not stop us if we do not wish to attend or wear the robe, although he might try a few times (at least twice, according to the parable) to send servants—our fellow sisters and brothers in faith—to invite us to the feast if we do not accept the invitation right away.
I do not wish to discourage us. But please let me suggest that the ways in which we can refuse God’s invitation to the wedding feast can be much subtler than refusing to show up at the banquet, much less committing murder, as the first invitees do in our Gospel reading today. It is possible for us to be admitted to the banquet hall even if, like the poor guest at the end of today’s Gospel, we are not wearing the king’s issue wedding robe.
One way I think we find ourselves admitted to the wedding feast, or at least this sacrament of it, without (figuratively) wearing our robe is if and when we overestimate the gravity of our own sin or, we may think of it this way, when we underestimate the infinity of God’s mercy. There is a whole concept of what (or who) the Church is, a whole ideology of the seriousness of human sin and modern societies’ failure to account for it, at play here. So I will not dwell too much on this right now. But I only want to say how much it saddens me profoundly when somebody denies her or himself communion at Mass unless they are (and this is up to the person’s conscience, which I cannot judge) truly in a state of very serious or mortal sin.
Our Gospel reading today says that, after the first guests refused the king’s invitation outright, the king sent servants to call in “the good and the bad” from the streets to fill the banquet hall. If any of us is, according to your conscience, among the “bad,” please remember this: You are here, attending this Eucharistic sacrament of the king’s, God’s, heavenly wedding banquet. Wear your robe! If the sin on your conscience is less serious, the Penitential Rite at the beginning of Mass solves that problem. Less serious sins are absolved, forgiven during the Mass itself. Do we not acknowledge, just before receiving communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.”
The Lord says to us, “Good, then. I will invite you under my roof, to my sacrament, my Eucharistic feast.” Please never turn down the Lord’s invitation to this celebration under God’s roof! Please wear the robe marked “redeemed sinner” that God has given each of us at our baptism! And if you have committed a truly serious or mortal sin, the sacrament of reconciliation will solve that problem. Please resolve to go to confession as soon as possible. As a priest, I personally have never and will never turn somebody down who asks me for the sacrament of reconciliation! We will wash your wedding robe, with a few generous squirts of stain remover, dry clean it (figuratively) if we need to and, Voilà, it will be as good as on the day of our baptism!
God’s mercy, God’s generosity, God’s loving kindness, God’s salvation are infinite. It is up to us to RSVP, to attend, to wear the robe when we receive God’s invitation to the wedding feast, in heaven and sacramentally here on earth, in this Eucharistic celebration. Take up, sisters and brothers, God’s invitation to eat and drink without reservation of God’s “rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” Or as Fr. Jim would say to that offer of eternal salvation, “Yum, yum, yum”!
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