Sermon on October 11, 2020: 19th Sunday after Pentecost
Today’s Gospel reminds us that when we read the Bible, we are playing with fire. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, and they contain all things necessary to salvation. And oftentimes, that means being saved from the presumption that we know what they are about. Sometimes the Bible makes it plain; other times, the truth hides, and the plain sense of the words is not the true sense of the words. Sometimes we project ourselves into scripture, rather than allowing scripture to project itself onto us. We can be sure that God is in the Word, but we cannot always be sure where. For example, if you read the Old Testament books of the kings of Israel and Judah, it is not entirely clear where God is in these histories, or how God is at work. Many of the kings were bad; a few of the kings were good; some of the kings were good, while still doing quite a lot that was bad. And when you read these stories, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they are telling the history of God’s will—that whatever happened happened because God willed it. But that would be a dangerous assumption to make, because it assumes that God is always at work in historical events, and never in spite of them.
To read the Bible is to play with fire. We can’t just take it at face value, if we know what’s good for us; we cannot just read it: we must read it slant. We must turn it and turn it and keep on turning it, until it glows and gives light. And sometimes, we must wrestle it to the ground before it will give us its blessing.
Today’s parable of the wedding banquet must be wrestled to the ground. When we read the parable, we need to keep our guard up. Parables are often allegorical, and so when we hear that a king gave a wedding banquet for his son, our first thought will be that the ‘king’ represents God the Father and that the ‘son’ represents Jesus Christ. This framework will then determine the rest of the way that the parable is read, and the way that the parable is read will reinforce our picture of God—our understanding of who God is. And that would be a rather dangerous thing.
But before we go down that road any further, let’s first recall to mind what we know of Jesus. We know that Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh. We know that we was a faithful Jew, and that the good news he preached was rejected by the religious authorities of his day. We know he instructed his disciples to reject violence—to turn the other cheek, and put away their swords. We know that he stood speechless before Pilate. We know that he was falsely accused of fomenting rebellion, and was tortured and murdered by the state. We know that even as he hung upon the cross, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
These are just a few things that we know about Jesus, but we are going to need them as we turn back to today’s parable. A king throws a wedding banquet for his son. But no one cares; no one wants to come. He sends invitations; they are rejected. Eventually he gets so upset that he sends an army to kill the people on his guest list, and burn down their city—they really should have “saved the date,” shouldn’t they? And then, he sends his slaves to compel everyone else to show up for the wedding: “both good and bad,” whether they want to come, or not. Finally, he sees a wedding guest who was not appropriately dressed for the occasion; but instead of offering him a robe, he orders that the man be bound hand and foot and thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Knowing what we know about Jesus, and having heard again the details of the parable, I ask you: does the king represent God? Is the king of the parable who God is?
Let’s put it another way: what does the king of the parable have in common with the shepherd of the 23rd Psalm? What does the king have in common with Jesus, the Good Shepherd?
Very little, in fact, and this should be a big bright red flag, that waves us away from thinking that God is a god of brutality, and who is vengeful and merciless. For we have seen what God is like: One who does not return violence with violence, who is gentle and lowly in heart, and who demonstrates an endless capacity for forgiveness.
Truth be told, the king of the parable has a lot in common with the evil kings of ancient Israel, and his behavior shows striking parallels with modern-day fascism. Which is why this parable is so dangerous, when it is read in the wrong way. If we aren’t careful, we will end up with a picture of God as a cosmic tyrant, who is more akin to a despot, than the loving, liberating, and life-giving God we see in the person of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, in order to describe what something is, it is easier to describe what it is not. In the Christian tradition, this is called the via negativa—the “negative way,” the way of saying who God is not, which is perhaps easier than saying who God is. In the parable of the wedding banquet, Jesus wants us to understand the kingdom of heaven by helping us to see what it is not. In the kingdom of heaven, Jesus is the king—and his rule puts the proud and the mighty to shame. Because the kingdom of heaven is not ruled by a tyrant, but by the Good Shepherd, a shepherd who is also the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. The crucified God, who remained silent before his accusers, like the wedding guest—undressed, undocumented, unchosen. Un-personed, un-made, as he hung upon the cross—and it is the cross which is the outer darkness, the place of weeping, and gnashing of teeth. That’s where God goes—into the outer darknesses, where many others are found. He keeps company with them. He is found in their midst.
And so the kingdom of heaven is astonishing, because it is a radical departure from the kingdoms of the world—kingdoms which cannot help but secure their rule through violence. The kingdom of heaven is bad news for those kingdoms, but it is good news for those who have found themselves thrown into the outer darkness, because that is where the presence of Christ is found. A crucified God among crucified peoples. A light, shining in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.
May we be guided by this light, the light of Christ, even in a time such as this, so that we would have the eyes to see his presence, and his kingdom at work in the outer darkness. So that we may accept his rule, and become a people who are capable of loving our enemies. So that we may place our hope not in kings and rulers, but in the King of kings, who is the Good Shepherd, Jesus, the Son of God.
I have spoken these words to you in the Name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.