For Max Schultz’s fifteenth Birthday his parents decided to treat the young lad and some of his friends to an evening in Philadelphia that included an overnighter at the upscale Sheraton Society Hill Hotel. By all account Max and his friends all behaved admirably.
Several floors below however, in the hotel’s atrium lobby a hockey game quality fight broke out between two wedding parties. It was reported that one of the weddings booked at the hotel that evening had a cash bar while the other did not. One does not have to have a degree in hotel/motel management to wonder how that turned out. When it was discovered that guests from the " cash bar" wedding were availing themselves of the free libations offered just in the other room more than fisticuffs erupted. It was a full-blown battle royal involving more than 100 guests from both weddings.
Some of us have seen this because Max did what any fifteen year old, but no adult that I know of, thought to do. Max grabbed his cell-phone, and started the video recorder app, and then posted it for everyone to see on YouTube™ . He captured a scene of pure pandemonium that, were it not for Max’s play-by-play, could have been right out of a Hollywood comedy.
Men in suits and tuxedos, women in formals were involved in this " bench-clearing-brawl." The police rushed in batons and tazers. Some punches missed by miles but some landed. One in particular caught Max’s attention, causing him to exclaim, " Did they just deck the bride?" Indeed Max was right as a woman in a white wedding dress took one to the chin and fell to the floor.
It is quite a video and while it made tens of thousands of YouTube viewers, including myself, laugh out loud I am sure than none of the guests at either wedding, especially those arrested, were laughing or have laughed about it even to this day.
Jesus might have been a little proud of this wedding because he once created a story, right off the top of his head, about one that was just as crazy.
It was our Gospel reading for today and I have to quickly point out that this wedding never actually happened, it was the product of Jesus’ fertile imagination.
Biblical scholars, who have nothing better to do with their lives, have spent enormous time speculating about whether this is a parable or allegory. Without turning this into an English literature class, you all remember that in an allegory all the characters or details represent something else.
So, in this case the king would be God. The banquet would be life in God’s kingdom given in honour of his son, Jesus. The messengers would be the prophets who issue invitations to the perennial fall guys – the scribes and the pharisees – who turn them down. The allegory breaks down for me when those invited kill some of the messengers who bring the invitation and in an act of obvious over retaliation the king sends in troops and burns their town to the ground. Finally, God seems to be acting more like " The Godfather" when he takes one of the guests and throws him out with the trash.
I think this is a pure parable because, where it an allegory it would be a terrible one and it would leave us off the hook. And, as I have said to you many times, Jesus does not leave us off the hook. This is a parable and it is a parable that is as perfect for our day as it was his.||
For instance, most recent polling done by the Pew Research Religion and Public Life project found that: "Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. And most people who say religion's influence is waning see this as a bad thing."1
While in the same report and increasing number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.
This means that every week, in countless places and countless ways, the king is giving a banquet, and people have better things to do.
We know who they are and what they are doing. They’re bowling, or boating, or golfing, or fishing, or sleeping, or immersed in the Sunday political talk shows all the while bemoaning the fact that religious influence is waning.
Do you see the same inconsistency here as shown by those invited by the king in Jesus’ story? They had other things to do. They had more pressing business to carry out. The invitation was an imposition. Their lives are full of more personal concerns that they think are more important than the king’s invitation. It’s not that they can’t come it is just that they don’t want to. But by not coming they dishonour the king.
It has been speculated that perhaps the king was unpopular and this was a way to get back at him. Most of us could understand this.
There is always a tendency on our part to try to get even by staying away. Something has happened to make us angry with another person in the church so we lock ourselves behind our doors and really do say to ourselves, " Boy those people at the banquet must be having a lousy time because I am not there. I wonder if they are wondering where I am?"
Or, and this is the saddest thing of all. Troubles come to our lives and we decide that we’re not going to have anything to do with God or God’s banquet anymore. " We’ll show, God. We’re going to be mad at him and stay away from this banquet God throws for us every week because we’ve been hurt or are hurting and we want God to know it."
Wise people do just the opposite. When disaster strikes their lives they don’t move away from God they move toward God. Maybe they turn back to the faith that they once held, never really lost, but also never really maintained. Maybe they show up at the banquet hall and are treated like the long lost friends that they are as they feel the warm embrace of a new community or old friends who really do love and care about them.
What we cannot miss in Jesus parable is the absolutely crazy part of the kings invitation. He scratches out the words, " black tie only" and tells his servants, " ‘ Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’
" So the servants did, and brought in all they could find, good and bad alike; and the banquet hall was filled with guests."2
This new invitation is issued to everybody both good and bad.
Those people who never thought they would see the inside of a king’s banquet hall in a million years were welcomed. And the good? Maybe, some of those good people where ones who had turned down the king’s original invitation but had a change of heart. Maybe they looked back over the totality of their life with the king and said, " Hey! The guy wasn’t all that bad. Let’s give him a second chance." And when they did, they were welcomed with open arms and open hearts.
But, there is always one wiseacre is every crowd, and even he is addressed by the king as " Friend." This guy got his invitation and didn’t even bother to put on his wedding garment.
I could quote boring theologians at length about what this is all about but instead I will share a brief internet conversation between Lowell’s cousin, Aaron Wester, who writes a fashion blog called " The Modern Otter" and his mother.
His mother bragged on her Facebook page that she had worn her pair of Converse tennis shoes to the Symphony and " when it came time to walk home I felt like a woman 20 years younger than myself. Practically running past those women teetering on little heals and grimacing in pain"
To which her younger and much hipper son replied, " I don’t believe it is right ... there are certain institutions that should be elevated. There is a certain respect due ... the work happening on the stage."
Aaron got it right. To wear a t-shirt and dirty jeans to a party thrown by a king shows no small amount of disrespect to the host – especially if the party is in a palace and the host is a king.
But I don’t think that Jesus is trying to make a fashion statement here. I don’t think he’s talking so much about what you are wearing on the outside but what you are wearing on the inside.
If you show up at the king’s castle looking for a fight. If you show up, like a guest at a Philadelphia wedding, waiting for something to happen so that you can turn a banquet into a brawl then you are always going to be on the outside looking in. You are always going to be on guard for the slightest slight, the minor misdeed, that can turn a person who is so kindly disposed to you that they call you " friend" into an enemy. And the weeping and gnashing of teeth will be your fault, not theirs.
The good news is that those of you who have gathered this day is that you have accepted the king’s invitation. And even those of you who are watching on your computers or reading these words via our weekly mailing are acknowledging that you need what the king has to offer.
You may have been battling God for awhile. You still may not be sure about him. You may wonder if you even have a place in his banquet hall anymore. But the assurance is that if you want it, it is still there. There is room for everybody at God’s great banquet.
And Saint Paul might just give us the best clue of all about what your wedding garb should look like. He isn’t talking about your shoes, or your shirt, or your blouse or your tie. He’s talking about your mind set. Don’t think about something that happened so long ago that you can hardly remember the details. Don’t think about all the trouble you might have had in your life. Rather, Saint Paul suggests: " Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about."3
Or, if you can’t remember all that, remember what Auntie Mame once said, " Live! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"
Christ doesn’t want you slugging it out in the lobbies of life. He doesn’t want you " weeping and gnashing your teeth" out by the trash. He doesn’t want you to " starve to death" emotionally and spiritually. Christ wants you to live!
And to do so all you have to do is accept his invitation to come inside. Come to Christ’s banquet and live!
Thanks for listening.
_____________________
Endnotes:
1, Pew Research Group, " Public Sees Religion’s Influence Waning." September 22, 2014.
2. St. Matthew 22:9-10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]
3. Philippians 4:9. (TLB)
No comments:
Post a Comment