Matthew 22:1-14
Outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth… I love this story. It is not as simply understood as you might think. Really all of Jesus’ parables have a twist to them, because Jesus doesn’t think the way we do. This is the story of an incredible party to which we are all invited. Who doesn’t love a party.
This parable is addressed to the Pharisees, religious leaders in Jesus’ time. The verse preceding the parable states it explicitly. The Pharisees heard his parables and perceived that they were speaking about them. He is addressing the Pharisees, he’s challenging the way they look at the world, and their belief systems. Jesus is saying that they have poor vision—the inability to see what God is doing in the world. Their eyes are so clouded over with all the things THEY think are important, that they are blinded to e the Kingdom of God and its presence right now. That’s what the Pharisees struggled with. They couldn’t see it. They didn’t understand it. They focused only on what they perceived to be worldly injustices. Jesus said if the Kingdom of God is here right now, then we ought to show it by living grateful joyful and appreciative lives.
This is a parable full of ironies. We have the Christ of "love your enemies" telling about a king who takes revenge on his enemies. The invitation to the King’s banquet declares that everyone is welcome, "both evil and good." But after the ragtag guests assemble, someone is by no means made welcome. Quite the opposite. The guest is "bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness." His offense? Not wearing that well-known wedding garment. A friend of mine says this proves that there were gay folks in the Bible, because clothes ARE everything. Naw, that’s just a sterotype.
There are two kinds of people spoken of in this parable. Those who should have been at the banquet and weren’t; and those who are at the banquet and shouldn’t have been. The timing of the story seems really muddled. We are told that a banquet was "all prepared ... everything ... ready." But the first invitation goes nowhere. Those summoned "were unwilling to come." A second squad of slaves is sent out to find guests, but those who were invited paid no attention and went their way ... Others turned murderous; they seized his slaves, mistreated and killed them.
At first glance it seems to be the same old world with scores to be settled. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You provoke me and I will retaliate. What happened to the Jesus of turn the other cheek and love your enemies? Eventually, to fill the banquet hall, the streets are scoured for guests. The parables of Jesus, even the innocent, pastoral, tender, innocuous-seeming ones, conceal just below the surface a whiplash which turns conventional expectations upside down.
When the King came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man with no wedding garment’ and he said to him, Friend, how did you git in here without a wedding garment? And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." That’s clear enough. If you believe the Messiah has come then the appropriate dress is joy, celebration. Your life ought to show that.
But this is also a judgment parable. The king returns to see who has accepted the invitation, finds somebody there who seems to have missed the whole point. He’s there but he’s not celebrating. Like an old grouch dragged to the party by his wife, and whose expression and demeanor throughout the party lets everybody know he doesn’t want to be there. "How did you get in here?" the king asks. If you are going to persist in seeing that life is a burden to you, then you might as well go to hell, because that is where people weep and gnash their teeth.
Jesus is saying that if the God is in charge, and that Messiah has come, redemptions, and salvation have come through him, then why aren’t we all wearing the wedding garment. Why don’t we look as if we are celebrating God’s victory over sin and death. We are not in charge anymore, we are forgiven and redeemed, it is not our world but God’s world. As Nietzche once said, "The Christians ought to look more redeemed."
I was talking to someone this week, who said that their partner cannot seem to see everything that is good and right with their relationship, instead the partner focuses on all the little things that go wrong. This is a trap so many of us fall into; whether it is in our relationships, or our jobs, our volunteer activities or our jobs. It isn’t that we don’t hold ourselves to a high enough standard, its that we hold ourselves to an impossible standard. The real truth is that we want to be perfect, and we want to do it ourselves. This perfectionism is the modern Pharisaism. Perfectionists and Pharisees. Perfectionists see life as something they have to earn, or an obligation to be performed. Some see it as a sentence that they must endure. Jesus came to show us that life is a banquet that you can celebrate. In life, or in death, in joy or in sorrow, there is a celebration going on.
The secret, the New Testament says, is in seeing. Seeing that God has taken human form and lived among us in the Jesus – its like a king holding a marriage feast for his son. The purpose for sending Jesus into the world was to get us to celebrate the life that we have received. And even when the son is killed that purpose is not thwarted, because he is resurrected. And then the real celebration begins. Then we see nothing can stop God’s purpose for our lives now. I tell you, if you can see that, then you can see that anything can happen in your life. If you can see that, then you can see that the ground of this world is gracious, alive, forgiving—so anything is possible, even resurrection. Not Jesus’, but yours. And not just at the end of your life, but right now.
Those who followed Christ, eat at the banquet table. Their feasting did not change the world. The world remained the same. The celebration of forgiveness of sins changed them, they were lighter, freed up, full of the love of God. That’s the difference, the difference was that they saw things differently. Jesus opened their eyes. Dress for a banquet, expect that no matter what happens, no matter what you think you’ve done according to the world’s standards, in the eyes of God you are clean, his righteousness is our robe, our wedding garment.
The church is the gathering place of those that have answered God’s gracious invitation. Holy Communion gathers us every week in anticipation of the final gathering at the great and promised heavenly feast. Episcopal theologian Robert Capon may well be right when he points out that the true message in this parable is possibly, that only an idiot would choose hell over a free feast with free clothes.
United States president James Garfield was a lay preacher and president of Hiram a Disciples of Christ College. His discipline was classics. They say he was ambidextrous and could simultaneously write Greek, with one hand and Latin with the other. In l880, he was elected president of the United States, but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness.
At the hospital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He couldn’t find it, so he tried a silver-tipped probe. Still he couldn’t locate the bullet. They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. He was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over.
In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was working on a little device called the telephone, to see if he could locate the metal inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he too failed. The president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally died—the sad part was, he did not die from the wound, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man, eventually killed him..
So it is with people who dwell too long on their sin and refuse to release it to God. They weep and nash their teeth in a hell of their own making. Some years ago C. S. Lewis was at a conference in which the question was asked: what makes Christianity different from all the other religions of the world? Some of the participants argued that Christianity is unique in teaching that God became man. But someone objected, saying that other religions teach similar doctrines. What about the resurrection? No, it was argued, other faiths believe that the dead rise again. The discussion grew heated.
C. S. Lewis, a strong defender of Christianity, came in late, sat down, and asked, "What’s the rumpus about?" When he learned that it was a debate about the uniqueness of Christianity, he immediately commented, "Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace."
The very heart of the gospel is the supreme truth that God accepts us with no conditions whatever. Although we are helplessly sinful, God in grace forgives us completely. Amen.