October 15, 2017
Matthew 22:1-14
The nurse said he wanted to see me before he was sent home to hospice care. She said he wanted me to come and pray. When I entered the room the morning sun was bathing him and he looked radiant. Smiling, he asked me to pull up a chair like usual. He said, “ We don’t have much time before my wife gets back from the cafeteria. I want you to read Psalm 23; you know the one about the shepherd, the still waters, and the table. I sat down basking in this glow of morning light and a man coming to terms with his own mortality with such grace. After I said, “Amen”, he closed his eyes and said, “ I will save you a seat.”
A bit dumbfounded and not sure what he was referring to I cocked my head and looked at him quizzically. He continued, “ I will save you a seat at that table because I will get there before you. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I appreciate all that you have done for m my wife and me. I am going home today to die soon. “ His eyes were smiling but moist. I teared up in response. I am not only a wounded healer but also a weeper. I cry easily when someone else cries.
We sat there for a while, me holding his wrinkled hand free of the pulled tubes picturing this big table with all kinds of wonderful dishes, trying to see all the people I have known. Who was there? Who wasn’t?
I must have prayed Psalm 23 a few times a day with patients almost as much as the Lord’s Prayer but never had I took it to heart, literally, never had I imagined that I would be invited to sit at that banquet table.
I have thought about the table and feast metaphorically, an open table where everyone is invited just like Jesus’ radical hospitality on earth where all the outcasts were welcomed-- -sinners and saints alike. I have thought about how African Americans sing with such longing about the Welcome Table where they will finally gonna get a seat and how they are gonna tell God how they were treated, how “All of God’s children are gonna sit together, one of these days.”
Like Rabbi Brant Rosen from Chicago I have also thought about my life as a feast, “You set my life before me as a sumptuous banquet.”
I have not, however, been successful in thinking about why my enemies need to be invited. Am I supposed to share my feast with them?
Finally, like the African American Welcome Table where everyone is accepted, I understand the importance of inviting the poor, the disenfranchised. Black Lives Matter and so do the poor at the table of faith. Listen to these lyrics from the Salvadoran hymn, Vamos Todas Al Banquete.
God invites all the poor,
to this common table by faith,
where there are no greedy hoarders,
and no one lacks anything.
God commands us to make this world,
a table of fraternity,
working and struggling together,
sharing all the goods and property.
I have always loved the idea of a heavenly banquette which even has good wine according to Isaiah 25:6 but I never quite imagined myself as an invited guest by a man dying of pancreatic cancer.
A few weeks later in the ICU where I was the primary chaplain I went to have a final meeting with a man who had ALS, Lou Gerik’s Disease. His muscles for speaking had deteriorated so he spoke by spelling out words on a cardboard card with a hand written alphabet.
Every time I visited he would spell out, “Can I have some orange juice, please?” He was diabetic and the nurses would not give him OJ. I think he thought I didn’t know that or was a soft touch or both.
On this, our final visit, I talked about moving to Minnesota and that this would be our last time together. I had hoped I said to follow him all the way to the end. I was sorry I couldn’t do this now. He spelled out, “I am crying.” He had lost the muscles to cry.
I told him about how some have found comfort in Psalm 23. He asked me to read the prayer. Afterwards I told him about my visit with the patient dying of cancer who invited me to the table. He spelled out on his worn card, “Can I sit on the other side?” And just as I started to tear up again he spelled out, “And can I finally I get some damn Orange Juice?” And then his eyes blinked for the first time and I laughed out loud, “Yes, you can drink as much damn orange juice as you want.” So now I had two dinner invitations and all the wine and orange juice anyone could ever want.
It is from this perspective that I come to our Gospel text this morning about how the kindom of God is like a wedding banquet. On first reading I don’t know what to make of the violence in the parable. What didn’t make sense to me was the interpretation that God was like this awful violent King or that we should all dress properly so we can be chosen. This didn’t square with my idea of who either Jesus was or what God’s essential character was. He is not a violent tyrant.
Then I discovered Nadia Boltz Weber’s sermon, The Worst Parable Ever. Nadia is a well known Lutheran pastor in the United States. She pastors a church called Saints and Sinners and has written many books based on her inclusive and often hilarious theology and sermons. Nadia’s interpretation of what happens in this parable helped me understand what Jesus was trying to say about what the kin-dom of God was like and also most importantly what it was not like.
Listen to her paraphrase or summary and tell me if this helps you:
A king throws a wedding banquet and invites the other rich, slave-owning powerful people. Seemingly unimpressed by the promised veal cutlet at the wedding feast, the elite invitees laugh at the invitation and proceed to abuse and then kill the slaves of the king. Well then the king kills them back. But he doesn't stop there, not to be outdone, he burns down the city… and it is there amidst the burning carnage of the newly destroyed city he sends more slaves to go find whoever they can to fill the seats. After all…the food is ready and he has all these fancy robes for the guests. All he cares about is having every seat filled at his big party. But who is left? He burned the city. The rich and powerful have been murdered so it's the regular folks wandering the streets looking for their dead, picking apart the charred debris of their burned city who are then told that they have no choice but to go to the party of the guy responsible. And it's already been established that he doesn't respond well if you turn him down. So the terrified masses show up and pretend that this capricious tyrant didn't just lay waste to their city. Out of fear they all dutifully put on their wedding robes given them at the door and they pretend. Slipping on a gorgeous garment was what you did for a king's wedding feast. And the guests got to keep the outfits, just a little souvenir of the king's generosity - and a reminder to keep in line. You don't get anything from the empire without it costing you a bit of your life. Well, our story ends with these well-dressed survivors looking on as the King spots the one guy at the banquet who isn't wearing a wedding robe. And when the innocent man has nothing to say for himself the king has this scapegoat hogtied and thrown into the outer darkness. Many are called but few are chosen he says.
What Nadia’s interpretation does is to invite us to think more deeply about the guy who refuses to wear the king’s wedding robe. What if the kin-dom of God is all about that guy who says no to imperial authority? What if the kin-dom of God is about a guy who gets scape- goated and hog tied because he doesn’t conform? What if the kin-dom of God is about a man who ends up wearing a loincloth on a cross?
God clothes us with Christ’s own self as we learn in Galatians 3 or in Julian of Norwich’s Book of Divine Revelations, “Our good Lord is our clothing that, for love, wraps us and winds us about, embracing us, all beclosing us, and hanging about us for tender love.”
Dear Ones, how are you stripping off the wedding robes of empire? In what outer darkness are we willing to be cast into so we can be changed?
God is not an imperial king, therefore God’s kin-dom will not look like it does here where you must be an elite to get on the A list or come and conform if you are on the B list. However, it is true if you refuse to submit to imperial authority you may indeed be cast into the darkness because of your refused to wear empire’s finest finery.
You can, however, chose to wear the sun like Mary, the queen of heaven, or you can don a long white robe with a golden sash like the Son of Man. You can put on the armor of God or simply allowed yourself to ‘beclosed’ in Jesus’s tender love.
Dear ones, this is the good and bad news. God will garb you but it will cost you. There will indeed be a heavenly banquet, a feast where everyone is invited. There will be strained wine and enough orange juice for all including your enemies.
I invite you then to allow yourself to be invited, to be open to who asks you to sit with them. I invite you to disrobe, to lose empire’s straightjacket of dos and donts and garb yourself in the One who has always loved you, accepted you just the way you are. And finally, don’t just refuse to be enemies with your enemies invite them also.
