At the beginning of my reflection on this Sunday's readings, I think it's important to note that tomorrow, 11 October 2020, marks the 55th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. While it is nothing more than circumstance, I take some joy from the fact that the Council opened one month to the day before I was born! Among the many gifts of the Council is the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum. In addition to providing sound general guidance on how to read the Sacred Scriptures, Dei Verbum encouraged all Catholics to read, ponder, and pray with the Scriptures, to diligently study them. To read the scriptures is to drink from the fount of divine revelation.
As someone who preaches, even as a preacher who is taking an indeterminant hiatus, it's important to preach the scriptures. The beauty of blogging something akin to a homily is that only those who want to read it will read it. There's great freedom in doing this, a freedom I need presently.
Preaching should consist of more than sugar-coating the challenging messages with which the Sunday lectionary frequently presents us. It is tempting to attenuate what we hear proclaimed for a variety of reasons, not all of them bad. The approach taken depends on certain factors, not least of which is considering to whom you are preaching. When taking a straight-forward, expository approach to challenging readings, God's mercy and fidelity should always be kept in the frame.
As we approach the end of this liturgical year, the readings from Saint Matthew's Gospel are tremendously challenging. This Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time is no exception. As I reflect on the challenges presented in light of my own life, I am sometimes tempted to despair. But God is good and actively seeks to save me. If I know one thing for certain it's that I need God's help.
I urge people to attend closely whenever a Gospel parable or narrative begins with the words "the kingdom of God is like," or, as with today's Gospel reading, "the kingdom of God may likened to..." (Matthew 22:2).
Looking at stories and parables that describe God's kingdom, for the coming of which we continually pray, it becomes quickly apparent what a different reality the kingdom of God is. Very different from our own experience of society, family, work, and even church. Of course, in this portion of Matthew, the inspired author has Jesus addressing "the chief priest and elders of the people." This is important. Matthew's largely Jewish Christian community, which is beginning to experience an influx of Gentile converts, a situation that, as the Gospel is being written, produces a bit of a crisis, has some beefs with Jews but none with Judaism. For the most part, Matthew's antagonists are the Jewish leaders.
Though narratively linked, today's Gospel features two parables, not one. The first parable is another way to illustrate the same point as the parable in last week's reading. God invited Israel to the feast of salvation. Not only did they not accept the invitation but, at least in some instances, they beat and killed those who were sent to issue the invitation. Those who were beaten and killed were, once again, the prophets.
In this parable, the invitation is also issued to the mass of Jewish people who, while not mistreating the messengers, still choose not to attend the banquet. The banquet is the one described in our first reading from Isaiah: "the eschatological banquet which God prepares for his Son, to be celebrated at the end of time" (John P. Meier, The Wisdom of Matthew: Christ, Church, and Morality in the First Gospel, 153).
Wedding Feast at Cana, by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1561
When the invited guests refused to come, an invitation was sent far and wide, extended to anyone who would accept it. This is where the really problematic part of the Gospel comes and where the transition from one parable to the next occurs. One of the guests who accepted the invitation turns up improperly attired. He is not asked to go change clothes or simply asked to leave. He is tied up and thrown outside into the darkness. At this point, both parables reach the same conclusion: "Many are invited, but few are chosen."
I don't know about you but this strikes me as a bit scary. What is going here? Especially to our contemporary sensibilities, which countenances turning up to weddings and funerals in very casual clothing, this seems frighteningly harsh. Could it be that even someone who accepts God's gracious invitation is rejected by God? I thought God was kind, merciful, and all that jazz. What's going on here?
A very narrow reading of this might result in a homily that insists on the necessity of dressing up to come to Mass. I've heard these kinds of homilies and have generally succeeded in stifling the impulse to roll my eyes and groan.
The second parable is about the Church, not Israel. The point is that, like Israel, the Church remains subject to judgment. As Fr. John P. Meier, a deeply respected New Testament scholar much of whose scholarly research has focused on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, notes: "The boor without the clean wedding garment is the Christian who may have accepted the missionary call to Christianity but who has not earnestly prepared himself for the eschatological banquet by repentance and a life filled with fruits of repentance. He has no excuse for his sordid state; he is as unworthy as were the Jews" (The Wisdom of Matthew, 153-154.)
In the Rite of Baptism, the celebrant presents the newly baptized with a clean, white baptismal garment with the words:
You have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.Call it political if you like but, as Jesus insisted in last week's Gospel, the Church must be the people who produce the fruits of the kingdom. Producing the fruits of God's kingdom is a metaphor for living according to Jesus's teachings. In Matthew's Gospel these teachings are summarized in the Sermon on the Mount and, in an even more concentrated way, in the Beatitudes. If I am going to get "political" for a moment, I think what is important is for Catholics is to look at politics through the lens of the Gospel and not vice-versa.
See in this white garment the outward sign of our Christian dignity.
With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.
God isn't simply merciful. "Mercy is the expression of [God's] divine essence" (Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life, 51). We can always repent, turn our lives around, and use every opportunity to follow Christ by living according to his teachings. When saying the Act of Contrition after confessing our sins and before receiving absolution, we pledge: "I firmly intend with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin."
Maybe what binds us and puts us in the dark is not God's angry wrath. "God's wrath," Cardinal Kasper points out, "does not mean an emotionally surging rage or an angry intervention, but rather God's resistance to sin and injustice" (Mercy, 53). Perhaps it is our sins, which amount to our reluctance or outright refusal to accept God's invitation to live his kingdom as a present reality, that bind us. Again, in the Act of Contrition, we acknowledge that "in choosing to do wrong and failing to do good I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things."
In and through Christ Jesus, God seeks to unbind us. To live in sin is to live in the dark. Jesus is the light of the world. May we always walk as children of light as we continually pray "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
Doesn't it defy our expectation that it is our Old Testament reading and Psalm that provide us hope by describing the beauty and desirability of living solely under God's reign? God's kingdom, it bears noting, is not imposed. It is a banquet to which you're invited. Will you attend?
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