Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
12 March 2023
12 March 2023
Matthew 22.1-14
Isaiah 25.1-9
I don’t know what sermon you were expecting to
hear on this passage this morning,
but
possibly it might have gone something like this:
God’s kingdom is like a wedding banquet
which
is he throwing for his son, Jesus.
Those whom he first invited, the oh-so-religious
and pious Jews,
have
declined to attend,
and
have even killed the messengers that God has sent to invite them.
So God has sent his messengers to the highways
and byways of the world
to
invite everyone else to the party instead,
from
tax collectors to prostitutes,
from
riff-raff to nobodies,
from
the blind to the lame;
God
drags into his party the people who thought they’d been forgotten.
However, whilst God may have invited everybody,
this
isn’t a no-strings-attached invitation.
Because whilst God loves everybody,
he
doesn’t want them to stay as they are:
after
all, who would want the serial killer to get in
without
him changing his behavior?
The invitation might be for all, but people
must still accept it,
and
must behave appropriately if they are to stay in the party.
So a person who comes, metaphorically speaking,
in the wrong clothes,
who
doesn’t clothe themselves with garments
of
love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness,
is
in effect saying that they don’t want to stay at the party,
and so they are thrown out into the
outer darkness.
That’s
the sermon I’ve heard preached on this passage before;
it’s the sermon with the established
weight of interpretation behind it;
and I think, frankly, that it’s a
terrible sermon.
Let’s
think for a moment about where this sermon takes us,
if we follow it through to its
logical conclusion.
Let’s
start with the king,
the one who is focussed on throwing a
wedding banquet for his son.
What
do we know about him from the parable?
Well, to start with, he’s
pathologically obsessed
with giving his son a
magnificent party.
It doesn’t seem to matter who the
guests are,
just so long as the
party is good.
He
also keeps some very dubious company:
let’s not forget that his preferred
guests for the party
are themselves hardly the nicest
people:
they are, we are told,
arrogant, landowning businessmen,
with a tendency towards
murderous violence.
The
king is also a military man of means;
we know that he has slaves, and that
he has troops,
and that he is ready to use this
power to its full capacity.
So
he thinks nothing of putting to death anyone who slights him,
and he’s happy to send in the troops
to burn an entire city to the ground
if they don’t give him the respect
to which he believes himself entitled.
He
is, in short, a military, self-aggrandizing,
capricious, despotic, dictator.
He
looks very much like the Herods of the early first century,
or possibly the more psychotic of
the Roman emperors.
What
he doesn’t look like, if we’re honest about, is God.
Or
perhaps he does look like God,
if you’ve got an image of God as a
military, self-aggrandizing,
capricious, despotic, dictator;
which is exactly how some people do
picture God.
There
are many who believe that God is just waiting to catch them out,
to throw them out, to cast them into
the place of darkness,
where there is weeping and wailing
and gnashing of teeth.
There
are many who believe that God’s gracious inclusion only goes so far,
and that if we don’t respond
properly,
we’ll find ourselves on the
receiving end of his sacred violence,
levied in judgment on us
and the rest of the sinners.
But
I want to suggest something
which by now may seem obvious: this is not God.
What
this is, is a huge case of mistaken
identity.
So
I’m going to suggest that we try to set aside
the sermon we thought we might get
on this passage,
and
we try to put out of our minds
the sermons we’ve heard before on
this parable before,
and
that we try reading it afresh,
to see what might emerge from it if
we read it a bit differently.
What
if the king in Jesus’ parable isn’t God?
What if his son isn’t Jesus?
What
if the first-invited guests aren’t the Jews?
What if the forced-in guests aren’t
grateful to be there?
What
if the man with the wrong clothes on isn’t a sinner?
What
if people have been reading this parable wrong all these years,
because they have been reading it
through the lens of a wrong view of God?
What
if God isn’t a violent dictator after all?[1]
Let’s
try and her the parable as those listening to Jesus might have heard it…
‘There
was a king who had a son,’ Jesus begins…
And his hearers would already have
been nodding along:
‘Wasn’t there just!’
we can almost hear them thinking….
Herod
the Great had been appointed ruler of Judea
by the Romans some seventy years
previously,
and
after a reign of nearly half that
had died and handed over the kingdom
to his descendants,
the Herodian dynasty, as
they became known.
Through
a careful series of strategic marriages,
he and his descendants had ensured
that they were able
to continue their despotic rule of
Israel for generations.
And
there’s nothing like a royal wedding to reunite the population
behind the fading appeal of an aging
monarch, is there?
And
royal weddings, as we all know, lead to royal babies,
and so fresh life is breathed into
the tired old family firm,
and everyone is won over for another
generation.
Or
at least, that’s the theory.
Some of us are not so easily
seduced.
But that’s another story…
The
Herodians had been ruling Judea for generations,
their power-base carefully propped
up by strategic alliances and marriages,
supported by the world class Roman
military,
and legitimated by a
string of propaganda exercises
designed to keep the
people happy.
What’s
interesting, in Jesus’ story,
is that the invited guests to the
latest Royal Wedding choose not to attend.
We
know what kind of people they are:
they’re exactly the kind of people
you’d expect to find at a Herodian wedding
– one of them owns a farm, another one is a
businessman.
They’re the elite, and they’re
turning against the king.
Perhaps
his popularity is running out, perhaps it’s time for a change,
there’s always a pretender to the
throne waiting in the wings
if the current incumbent oversteps
the mark.
The
king pushes them a bit harder, and they push back,
seizing the king’s slaves and
killing them.
It’s
insurrection time, civil war is only moments away now…
So
the king sends in the crack troops,
to utterly destroy those who have
defied him, burning their city.
A
response worthy of any dictator in any age.
But
there’s still a party to have.
There’s a succession to secure.
There’s a population to be wowed
with wedding cake and bunting in the streets,
and God help anyone else
who doesn’t want to play monarchist.
‘Come in, come in, come to feast…
And don’t you dare say that you’ve got somewhere else to
be…’
This
is political royalist propaganda at its most blatant.
And,
of course, the people play ball.
I mean, who wouldn’t?
Everyone
loves a royal wedding,
if they know what’s good for them.
Except
for one, who doesn’t play ball at all…
He’s there, along with everyone else
who’s been forced to the party.
But he’s not joining in.
He’s
wearing the wrong clothes,
he’s silent when he should be
singing,
he’s still when he should be
shouting.
He’s
the party-pooper,
he’s the one who makes everyone else
feel uncomfortable,
because he’s showing their forced
jollity for what it is:
a lie inspired by fear.
‘The
kingdom of heaven is like this…’
said Jesus, introducing this
parable.
And
we may well now ask,
‘In what way is this story like the
kingdom of Heaven?’
After
all, we’ve just established that the Kingdom is not the banquet,
and the king is not God;
this
is a very earthly story,
one familiar not just to those
hearing it from Jesus,
but to those in any generation who
have looked at their ruling elite
and seen self interest
and violent corruption.
So
where in this parable is the Kingdom to be found?
The
Kingdom of Heaven, as we know from some of Jesus’ other parables,
is not always to be found in the
places one might expect.
Sometimes
it’s a mustard seed, small, almost invisible,
fragile, and waiting to be
discovered in the most unexpected of places.
I
think it’s there in this parable,
we just need to look for it…
When
faced with a murderous regime or a despicable dictator,
this parable points us to three
possible responses.
The
first is
the path taken by the initial guests;
it is the response that plays the
political game,
which seeks to effect regime change
and resorts to violence if necessary.
The
problem with this, of course, is that not only is it a high-risk strategy,
as the landowning
businessmen in Jesus’ story discovered,
but even if it is effective, you
only end up replacing one Herod with another,
and so nothing really
changes.
This
is the path that will most readily appeal
to those with a vested interest in
the status quo,
to those who have previously been
cozying up to the dictator
and diligently attending
all his parties
right up until the moment when the
wind changed against him.
The
second
response is that taken by those
who actually ended up at the feast
thrown by the king,
and this is the path of
least resistance.
It
is the path that says,
‘I know he’s a dictator, but what are
you gonna do?’
It
is the path taken by those who feel disempowered,
by those who live in fear or apathy
or both,
who just want to be left alone and
allowed to live their quiet lives.
If
others take a stand and die for the trouble,
that’s very sad, but at least we
still survive for another night.
And
really, is there anything so wrong with a bit of partying on demand,
an extra bank holiday weekend to
enjoy the monarchy,
even if it does represent capitulation
to state propaganda?
The
third response is that taken by the man in the corner
who is wearing the wrong
clothes.
In a world of violence and enforced
capitulation, he stands apart.
This,
surely, is the kingdom of heaven personified.
This is the kingdom of heaven as the
suffering servant (Isa 52.13-53.12),
the one who remains
silent before his accusers
and who goes to his
death in defiance of the forces
that seek continued
and unfettered reign
to diminish,
distort, and demean humanity.
In
the world of the prophetic book of Isaiah,
written some six hundred or so years
before the time of Jesus,
and speaking to a time of military
occupation and enforced exile
at the hands of the
Babylonian empire,
we
find the origins of this suffering-servant counter-testimony
to the ideology of empire.
The
Babylonians had declared that the world must bow down before them
or else face terrible consequences.
Nebuchadnezzar,
the king of the Babylonians,
had declared that all must worship
him, and him alone.
And
it was in the midst of this world
that Isaiah started to articulate
the dream of a new world.
In
the midst of oppression, Isaiah wrote of a hopeful future,
of a time and place where tears
would be wiped away,
and people would be free to feast
with their God
in joyful celebration of their
liberty from subjugation.
The
kingdom banquet dreamed of by Isaiah
is a world away from the wedding
banquet of the king in Jesus’ parable.
But
there is a common thread…
and it is the figure of the
suffering servant.
The
insight of the prophet Isaiah was that the new world of justice and equality
could only come into being through
the suffering of the innocent
who take their stand
in defiance of the
inequalities and violence
that otherwise dominate
the world.
So
Isaiah personifies the nation of Israel as the servant of the Lord,
and speaks of the people of God as
the faithful servant
who is wounded and marred and killed
for the sake of the new
world that is coming into being.
In
Isaiah’s time, this was clearly referring
to the sufferings of the nation of Israel
at the hands of their Babylonian
oppressors.
And
of course the New Testament writers
used this same ancient image of a ‘suffering
servant’
to describe what they
saw in Jesus,
who went to his cross to take upon
himself the violence of humanity,
opening the way through death
to resurrection and new life for all.
And
it is this figure of the suffering servant
that we meet in Jesus’ own story of
the wedding banquet.
The
silent man, who has refused to put on
the appropriate garments of
celebration for the royal wedding,
is
seized by the king’s attendants, bound like a sacrificial victim,
and thrown into the outer darkness.
This man is the suffering servant, he is John the Baptist, he is Jesus,
and he is all those who take their stand for the kingdom of heaven.
This
is the crucial moment in the parable,
and it is here that the Kingdom of
Heaven finally comes into view.
The
guests at the banquet in the parable are in all sorts of trouble.
They live in world of violence and
fear,
they are asked to accept
propaganda
that legitimates their
own oppression and coercion,
and they are in no position to
challenge the king,
because those who have
already tried that are now dead
with their
city burned to the ground.
The
guests at the king’s banquet are a people with no hope.
And it is to those who live in the
land of darkness
that the unrobed man
comes.
Standing there in their midst, one
of them, yet not one of them.
With them, but not the
same as them.
He takes onto himself the wrath of
the king,
and becomes the
sacrificial victim.
He
interrupts their victimhood
by making himself the victim for
all.
So
what about us… ?
We,
like the prisoner-guests of the tyrannical king,
live in a world of violence.
There
is horror being played out before our eyes in Palestine and Ukraine,
and in so many other places.
And
our leaders don’t know how to respond
except by trying to bring peace by
violence,
which
just perpetuates the suffering to another generation,
or at best deferring it for another
year.
And
we might well ask, in the midst of the complexities of war and suffering:
Where is the kingdom of heaven to be
found?
Where
is the counter-testimony to the dominant ideologies
of retaliation or compliance?
Where
is the Kingdom
when those who were once our friends
are now our enemies?
Where
is the Kingdom
when those who were once our enemies
are now our friends?
Where
is truth and justice
and righteousness and forgiveness
and peace
in a world of terrorism, war, and
bloody murder?
Where
are those who are taking a stand?
Where are those who will not bow to
the king?
Where are those who will not comply?
Where,
in the midst of the spirals of violence that define our world,
is the kingdom of Heaven to be
found?
Where
in a world of dictators and despots,
of ideology and propaganda,
is the kingdom of heaven to be seen?
Many
Christians, in so many places around the world,
have chosen to stand with the
suffering servant,
to
stand with the quiet man in the wrong clothes
at the wedding banquet of Jesus’
parable.
And
they are bearing the marks of suffering in their own bodies,
for their refusal to join the party
of capitulation to the dominant ideology.
And
by so doing they are bearing faithful testimony, even unto death,
of their refusal to be conformed to
the demands of this world.
They
are refusing to be intimidated by the violence of the king,
refusing to bow down to the system
of domination that seems to control.
They
are holding fast to the cross of Christ.
And,
Jesus might ask of us:
Where will we be found standing at
the king’s banquet?
Or,
to put it another way,
where are we going to take our
stand?
[1]
See Marty Aiken "The Kingdom of Heaven Suffers Violence: Discerning the
Suffering Servant in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet.” http://girardianlectionary.net/res/innsbruck2003_Aiken_Paper.doc
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