Sermon for 17th after Trinity

12 October, 2014 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
17th after Trinity
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-10; Psalm 22 (23rd)
Epistle: Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14
“Many are called but few are chosen”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.

A family with five children moved into a town in the American South. The children enrolled in school and the teacher saw that they were neatly dressed but their clothing was a bit shabby. She was a Baptist, so she talked to her church group and they collected nice new clothing for the whole family. The teacher visited them, gave them the clothes, and invited them to church on Sunday. They eagerly accepted the clothes and said that they’d be there.

On Sunday the teacher watched out for the family, but they didn’t attend. After church she visited them again and said, “We were expecting you at church this morning.” The father replied, “We were going to go to the Baptist church today. But when we dressed in the new clothes you gave us, we looked so fine that we went to the Episcopal Church instead.”

I have always found this Gospel story to be a problem for me. In the rest of this Gospel, and indeed in the rest of the New Testament, Jesus preaches a good news including everyone. He eats meals with the lowest of the low in his society: prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners generally. His apostles were chosen from all ranks of society—indeed, Matthew himself was a tax collector.

So why, in this story, does the king require wedding garments to be worn by those whom his servants have chosen to attend the wedding banquet? Jesus in other Gospel passages ignores or disobeys Jewish dietary laws. Had synthetic fabrics been invented at that time, would have happily worn a polyester blend robe. He said that the Sabbath was invented for people, and not people for the Sabbath.

The only possible answer is that the “wedding garments” are something other than clothing.

The beginning of this story recounts the king who was about to throw a wedding feast for his son. Those that the king invited refused to come, and mistreated or killed the messengers that the king sent with invitations.

Classically this has been read as a repudiation of the Jews of the 1st Century, who did not recognise Jesus as the Messiah. I reject that interpretation as narrow and bigoted. Instead, all of us should consider ourselves invited to Jesus’s wedding banquet. He has laid on a celebration with fine wine, great food, and “fine strained wines”, as the passage from Isaiah says.

Wine in Biblical times was quite different from the wine we drink today. It was more like low-quality port: very sweet, and with a lot of sediment. If a host was lazy, he would serve the wine as it was, without straining the sediment out. A good host, solicitous of his guests, would have the wine strained during pouring, so that the sediment didn’t get into the cups of the guests.

At St Matthew’s we have a silver flagon that was used to pour out the wine used at the old Holy Trinity Church near the Borough. This flagon has a strainer built into the lip to strain out the sediment in the sacramental port that was used in earlier times at the earthly banquet that is the Eucharist.

So we are all invited to this banquet, and Jesus offers us the best food and drink. But there is a price exacted for the banquet.

The host of a Jewish wedding banquet in Jesus’s time would have given each guest outer clothing to wear so that they would look spiffy participating in the festivities, which could last up to a week. The guest who wasn’t wearing them in the Gospel story wasn’t being thrown out because he didn’t have wedding garments. He was thrown out because he refused to wear what the host had provided for him.

God has given us many gifts—our lives, our food, clothing, shelter, families and friends. There are intangible gifts that we get from God as well—we call them “grace”. The grace of faith; the grace of happiness; the grace of charity and hope; and finally, the grace of a happy death. I like to think of the wedding garments in the story as these intangible gifts that God gives us. We can accept them, refuse them, or even misuse them.

The Gospel tells us that refusing the gifts we are given from God means that he can exclude us from that heavenly banquet he puts on for everyone who accepts and employs his gifts for good things. God doesn’t wish to exclude us; he invited us in the first place. It is our free choice as to whether we will accept his invitation and his gifts, or refuse them.

Have we accepted God’s invitation to the banquet of life, but refused or misused the gifts he’s given us? Would it be better if we took the grace God offers us and put it on over the grubby attitudes that life in our world today offers us?

Therefore to the One whose wedding banquet gives us the opportunity of wearing the garments of grace, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.