October 15, 2023, What to Wear to a Banquet, Matthew 22:1-14 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ October 15, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The outline is below.

I just wanted to start with a sort of pre-sermon word: Our eyes and ears and minds and hearts have been bombarded this week by the violence and suffering of the people in Israel and Gaza. The wrath of the king in this parable, burning the city to the ground, is way too close for comfort to our lived experience right now. The clear message of Scripture is that God’s heart is with the oppressed, with the suffering, with the helpless, with the despised – and they are to be found on both sides of this war. It is so hard to know what to do, in the face of the horrors we hear about every day. We need to be diligent in prayer for an end to violence, for voices of reason and compassion to prevail, and for the protection of all innocent civilians. We need to give, as we are able, for the relief of those whose lives are hanging in the balance. And we long, more than ever, for the fulfillment of the promise of Isaiah, who holds before us the promise of healing and comfort at the coming of God’s kingdom:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

When the king in the story finds himself with a feast and no feasters, he sends his servants out to bring in everyone they can find to fill those empty seats. They go along the main road that cuts through the heart of the city and they bring in the beggars and the craftsmen, the children playing on the street corner and the prostitute selling herself in the alleyway. They bring in the pickpocket preying on his innocent victims in the market and the mother hanging our her laundry. The good and the bad alike, rich and poor, local yokel and immigrant, the servants invite them all; they are all welcomed, wonderfully and unexpectedly, to this glorious banquet of the King’s Son.

And that is a very good picture, I think, of us, of the Church. Here we are, a mixed bag of bad and good and everything in between, each and every one of us. We have been invited into this community, not because we are special or particularly deserving of recognition, not because we are of any particular race or social class, not because we have deep understanding or perfect morals, not because we know the secret password and follow the rules, but purely and simply because we have been brought in by the grace and mercy of the king himself. We are the lucky rabble.

One of my favorite Scriptures is in Paul’s first letter to Corinth, where he wrote: “Think about who you were when you were called, my brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many of you were powerful people, not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…”

But that brings us to the really troubling and bewildering part of this story, when the king comes in to see all of his guests and there among them is one man who has no wedding garment on. The king says to the man, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” Jesus says the man is speechless; he has no excuse to make. And so the king calls security and has this unfortunate man handcuffed and thrown out. In the blink of an eye, this story seems to go from a moment of the most wonderful grace, to the most inexplicable condemnation.

And the appropriate response to a passage like this, a hard passage, is to be troubled by it, to let it stop us and make us think about what on earth is going on here. We know that that the king’s banquet hall is full of people who have no reason to be allowed in other than that they were invited by the king himself. Jesus told us, the servants were ordered to bring in everyone, good and bad, right off the street, to fill up the hall. What could it possibly be that this one man was lacking that everyone else had, from the poorest beggar to the most respectable citizen?

Saint Augustine gave a sermon about this parable:

“What is the wedding garment?” Augustine asks. “Let us search for it in the Holy Scriptures. Without doubt it is something which the bad and good have not in common; let us discover this, and we shall discover the wedding garment.” And his search brings him to the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

The apostle Paul said: “If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal… If I have the gift of prophecy and, with full knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” If, says He, I have not love, nothing profits me. See the wedding garment; put it on, you guests, that you may sit down securely. Do not say; we are too poor to have that garment. Clothe others, and you are clothed yourselves. It is winter, clothe the naked. Christ is naked; and He will give that wedding garment to anyone who has none. Love,” according to Augustine, “that is the wedding garment. Examine yourselves: if you have it, then come to the Lord’s banquet with confidence.” That is an excellent answer for the mystery of the poorly dressed wedding guest. But maybe we can say more.

There is a traditional hymn that starts, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” The last verse goes, “When he shall come with trumpet sound, O may I then in him be found. Dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” Isaiah writes that all our human righteousness – all our attempts at proving ourselves, all the things we do to show everyone that we are good people – all that, says Isaiah, is just filthy rags. It is a powerful picture. We dress ourselves up in our most admirable works, our generous donations, our charitable work, our tolerance. We dress to impress. But when we stand before the mirror of God’s perfection we are speechless, like the man at the wedding banquet, because suddenly we see ourselves as we really are, wrapped in the most pathetic of filthy rags. The righteousness of Jesus Christ, we could say, that is the wedding garment. If we are clothed in his righteousness, then we can indeed come to the Lord’s banquet with confidence.

The answer, I think, is all of the above, and more. As unworthy guests at the wedding feast of the Son, what we need is to be clothed with the Son himself, to put on Christ.

Paul wrote to the Galatian church, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” In the early church, the tradition was for people to be baptized naked. Men and women would be baptized in separate locations. They would enter the water naked, and when they came up out of the water they would be clothed in a spotless white robe. That was the sign and symbol that they had been clothed with Christ himself, clothed with his love, wrapped in his righteousness, united with the Son in his belonging to the Father. And that is what happened to every one of us at our baptism. That is who we are, each and every one of us, the lucky rabble who have been brought in off the streets, and wrapped in the Son.

When I get ready to celebrate the Mass, I put on all these beautiful garments. This chasuble goes over everything else. The word “chasuble” means “little house” in Latin – when I put it on it symbolizes being set apart from the world. The stole is a symbol of a yoke – a reminder that I was yoked together with Jesus when I was ordained. The rope belt is called a cincture. It symbolizes the humility of Christ, when he wrapped the towel around his waist and washed the feet of his disciples. And the robe is called an alb. Alb is just Latin for “white” – it symbolizes purity and righteousness – not my own, but the purity and righteousness of Christ.

But I am fully dressed without any of these special vestments. You are fully dressed without your best clothes or your graduate degrees or your most admirable good works. Christ himself is love. He is righteousness. He is all we need. When we put on Jesus Christ we are fully dressed, ready to come to the banquet in all confidence. +