Sermon - 19th Sunday After Pentecost (10/11/2020)

Is. 25:1-9; Ps. 23; Phil. 4:1-9; Mt. 22:1-14

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a human king who gave a wedding banquet.”

This is a difficult passage. Where is God in this terrible story? Usually it is assumed God is the king and there are things in the story about the king that make us think of God. For example, the king invites everyone to the wedding feast, good and bad alike, just as God’s grace invites us all into the celebration of God’s love. But some of the things this king does just don’t sound like God – when the first invitation is rejected the king kills the original guests and then burns their city, which seems excessive. And then there is the poor guy at the end of the story who isn’t properly dressed and so the king throws into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This king displays a level of vindictiveness that is hard to attribute to God.  And I know some Christians even today portray God as petty and vindictive in this way – God sent hurricanes or plagues or 9/11 to punish America for allowing gay marriage, or whatever.  It won’t surprise you that I don’t think God is like that.  Not just because I don’t think God is upset about gay marriage – I think God is happy when we allow everyone to experience and express love and commitment in the way that is right for them.  But even if God doesn’t approve of every policy our nation adopts, I don’t believe God punishes innocent people (or even guilty people) to pay a country back for ignoring God.  That’s not the God Jesus came to show us.

So if the king in this parable is not exactly like God, where is God in this story?  I spent a lot of time this past week trying to figure this out. And doing some reasearch, I learned a few things that have helped me. Let me share them with you.

First, royal weddings – William and Kate, Henry and Meghan, even Charles and Diana – we think of these as being very popular events. We have never heard of a royal wedding that everybody refused to attend, let alone a royal wedding that led to violence and destruction.  However, the people to whom Jesus was speaking actually would have been very familiar with an actual real-life royal wedding that very closely tracks the parable Jesus tells.  We know it from other historical writings from the time of Jesus. And if we assume that Jesus told the parable in a way that was intended to remind his audience of that infamous royal wedding, the parable actually starts to make a lot more sense.

The royal wedding that I’m going to propose that Jesus was thinking about here was the wedding of the original King Herod, the King Herod of the story of Christmas and the Wise Men.  Herod was only half Jewish, but he had been a successful general in the Roman army, and the Senate in Rome decided, rather than appointing a foreign governor like Pontius Pilate to run Israel, they first ought to try appointing somebody who was more or less Jewish to run Israel as a king under the Roman Emperor. Herod is chosen by the Senate in Rome for this job. So Herod returned from Rome, with his army of course, and he’s thinking to himself, “I’ve got to get people to accept me as a legitimate king and not just a Roman puppet, which is what I really am.” His idea was to marry the granddaughter of the high priest at the Temple.  It would be a grand event. The wedding of Herod the general turned politician, and his future wife from the family that led the Temple. This, Herod thought, would be the ceremony that united God and Caesar together.

As it turns out, the people of Jerusalem were very opposed to this wedding, and at first they refused to allow it.  And since Herod was known to have an army with him, things got tense in Jerusalem.  Some people said, politics has gotten too intense, too stressful for me, I’ve got a business or a farm to take care of, leave me alone.  I don’t know if any of you can relate to that feeling.  Others engaged in rioting and violence, and Herod responded in kind with violence. He set the army loose in Jerusalem, which led to great destruction, fires, and deaths, and the wedding happened anyway.  And so the family of Herod, which worked for Rome, and the family of the high priest, which ran the Temple, were brought together in a web of mutual corruption, at a royal wedding that nobody wanted to attend.

So when Jesus told a parable about a royal wedding nobody wanted to attend, I’ll bet that this is the story most people immediately had in mind. Especially when you remember where Jesus tells this parable – he is actually in the Temple. He is speaking to the Temple officials who have challenged his authority to have cleansed the temple, after Jesus had entered Jerusalem like a king riding on a donkey to the acclaim of the crowds.  By what authority do you do these things, they asked Jesus.  Jesus responds with three parables.  Two we read the last two Sundays – one about a son who said he would work in the vineyard but did not, one about wicked tenants in a vineyard who rebelled against the owner.

And now Jesus says, to the Temple authorities and to the watching crowds, who have never liked the Herods or the Temple authorities who are quite literally in bed with them, Jesus says, what is my kingdom like? What is the kingdom of heaven like?

Well, once upon a time, you know, there was a king who wanted to have a royal wedding and nobody wanted to come.  And it all turned violent and destructive.  Then the king sent his slaves and made everybody participate in the wedding whether they wanted to or not.  It wasn’t an invitation, they were out in the streets because their homes were on fire from the violence, and they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse.  You all know how that goes, Jesus said, to people who knew very well how that goes.

But then, Jesus said, when the king arrived he found one guest who refused to put on the wedding costume.  Maybe he had been dragged to the wedding against his will, but he was just not going to put on the robe. He was just not going to participate in this wedding he didn’t want to attend. Call him – I hesitate to use the phrase, it’s taken on a life of its own lately – but call him a peaceful protestor.  When confronted on his lack of a wedding costume, he says nothing – his refusal to wear the costume, his refusal to go along with this sham of a royal wedding, he lets that it speaks for itself.  And so the king, who – as we know from the Christmas story, Herod is the insecure and vindictive type – the king sends this man into the outer darkness.

So if Jesus is trying to explain who he is and why he has come to Jerusalem as if he were a king, and why he has come to the Temple to challenge and purify it. And to explain, Jesus tells a story about a royal wedding that is remarkably like the royal wedding that led to the Temple authorities getting all involved with Rome and the Herods and all kinds of bad things. If that’s what’s going on here, then I return to the question with which I began – where is God in this story?  Where is Jesus in this story?

I think it’s pretty clear that the Temple authorities understood that Jesus didn’t think he was one of the enthusiastic participants in the royal wedding.  And the crowds may have been disappointed that Jesus did not seem to identify himself with one of those who led violent resistance to the proposed wedding.  Nor did Jesus start a religious business that people could attend to while ignoring the wedding invitation as much as possible.  I think Jesus intended us to see him as the man without a wedding robe.  As the one who would, within just a couple of days, look high priests and kings and Roman governors in the eye and say not a word in his own defense, for his actions spoke for themselves.  As the one willing to be cast into outer darkness rather than let himself be drawn into our power plays and our fears and our tit-for-tat violence and hate.

Herod thought the outer darkness was a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But on Easter Sunday, God said that’s where I have been all along – in the outer darkness, with those who have been cast into the outer darkness. With those who have had it with the kingdoms of this world, and are ready for a completely different kind of kingdom.  And now that kingdom is here.

This is who Jesus is.  This is who our God is.  This is who God has always been, as the 23rd Psalm so beautifully puts it.  Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, though I be cast into the outer darkness, I fear no evil, for you are with me.  Herod may throw a wedding party and make you an invitation you can’t refuse; but the Lord prepares a table just for you, in the face of the enemies who have thrown you out of theirs.  Human temples of stone come and go, but those who follow Jesus are formed into a living temple, the living presence of the God who dwells in outer darkness, and in us.  Blessed are those who have confidence that no matter what calamities may befall us, goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.