Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, `Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, `The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

My brother was getting married, and I was thrilled. Neither he nor his fiancé were church-goers but, at my encouragement, they sought out the rector of an Episcopal Church in their neighborhood to explore the idea of a church wedding. Within weeks, much to my surprise, my thoroughly agnostic brother and his fiancé were scheduled to be married in one of the loveliest, most formal liturgical spaces in San Francisco.

This was when my real headaches began, for now as a prospective guest at the wedding, it would be my task to shop for, dress and accompany my rough-and-tumble four-year-old son Evan to the wedding—Evan who had never worn a coat or a tie or even a button-up shirt with a collar in his life.

And so Evan and I went on a shopping trip, and after unsuccessfully attempting to coax him into trying on a little suit, what we came up with for the wedding was a pair of small khaki pants, a little button-up oxford cloth shirt, a child-sized blue blazer, a little pair of dress shoes and a tiny clip-on tie.

I will not recount all that happened the day of the wedding and the reception—all the twisting and turning and fidgeting, all the encouragements, promises and threats. Instead, here’s a picture: At the reception in what was then one of San Francisco’s finer hotels, complete with sumptuous food and the delicate strains of a harpist in the background, there was Evan: jacket off, tie gone, shirt-tail out. There was Evan: in his little stocking feet under a fancy table making loud automobile noises as he ran one of his small cars along the floor.

You might say that I had a child who couldn’t behave or that I was a parent who couldn’t control her son. You might say that a four-year-old couldn’t be expected to behave as an adult would on an occasion such as that Or you might say that even as a four year old, Evan’s attitude toward his clothes disclosed who he was at the core—a no-nonsense human being who was unimpressed with all that was fancy and high-falutin’.

If we take this last idea—the idea that what we wear or what we don’t want to wear says something about who we are and what we value or do not value, where we are at a given time in our lives—if we take this idea, it gives us a window onto the rather disturbing gospel I just read.

In this gospel Jesus tells a parable of the kingdom in which a king invites a group of people to his son’s wedding, an event that would have carried enormous political implications. To be invited and to have attended such a wedding would have meant to acknowledge the authority of both the king and the heir to the king’s throne. Accordingly, to refuse to come to such a wedding would have meant the opposite—a refusal to count oneself under the authority of the king or the king’s heir.

But in our parable those invited will not and do not come, and so the king gives orders to invite others, both the good and the bad, and they do come. This is when we run into the disturbing vignette about the expulsion of the guest who’s not dressed in a wedding garment. To us this vignette may seem like a case of kingly overreaction to some poor man who simply doesn’t understand the dress code. Within the world of the parable, however, his actions are probably meant to suggest something else.

In the ancient world, when you were invited to a wedding, the expectation was that you would wear a long white robe that covered your everyday attire. Those who could afford it, would wear a separate garment just for occasions like this made of costly white cloth. Those who couldn’t afford it, washed what they had or, in some cases, borrowed a robe that was as close to white as possible. Wearing such robes was a way of honoring the event and participating in the joy and renewal of life that weddings were all about.

And so within the world of the parable, our speechless man is not just forgetful. He’s one who will not or does not or cannot put on the garment of joy and gladness in the midst of the wedding feast that this kingdom of the kingdom asserts is all around him. And so while in the parable, the king is the one who orders the man thrown into the outer darkness, you might say that this man goes into the outer darkness because that’s where he’s been all along.

In this parable, then, life in the kingdom is a like a marriage feast we come to not by our own effort or worthiness, but by God’s persistent invitation.  But just coming to the feast is not enough. An accompanying response must be made for us to participate. Our parable’s image for this is the willingness to put on a garment, a garment that matches the invitation, that says: “I’m willing to be here and to do what wedding guests do—to feast and celebrate here and now, no matter what I may be feeling, no matter what kind of clothes I may be wearing under this robe.”

When God’s invitation meets this kind of human willingness, the kingdom of God flashes into view—a kingdom that’s here and now no matter what else political, economic or personal is going on—a realm that has the power to free us from the grip of these things and to renew us and to inspire us to acts of renewal in the political, economic and personal world we live in.

What might I mean by this?

I mean that despite all the evidence to the contrary right now, the defining reality of our lives is that you and I are invited guests at a wedding feast, not just this morning but every morning. And you and I have a choice—we can put on our wedding garment and decide to act into and out of that defining reality or we can do something else—refuse to get out of bed at all or decide to get up and to put on a funeral garment instead.

And so I believe it’s not enough in this day and time just to try to get by or just to try to get through things ourselves. With God’s help, we need to find a way to stay in touch with a different reality and clothe ourselves in it. We need to find a way to know that we, all of us, are invited guests at a wedding feast and that we are to be clothed in peace and in gentleness, clothed in kindness and civility, clothed in justice and rejoicing.

And so we will not wait for a better time to be our best selves, to dream our dreams of renewal or to take steps to make them real. We will not wait for a better time for political or economic or societal or personal renewal, for a better time has already dawned. We, all of us, are invited guests at a wedding feast here and now.

And this table, of course, is here to remind us of this reality, to in a sense be this reality and also to strengthen us to put on our wedding garments, to clothe ourselves in peace and gentleness, in kindness and civility, in justice and rejoicing even as we draw near to it, and especially as we leave this place.

There’s a wonderful spiritual that many of you may be familiar with. Called “Heav’n, Heav’n,” it’s all about the things an oppressed people do not have but yearn for now and will have and use someday in heaven. The spiritual also asserts that not everyone who just talks about heaven will get there. What I’d like to suggest this morning is that you listen to its words with the idea that heaven is here and now—the wedding feast to which we are all invited—full of beautiful clothing and music for those who dare to respond to the invitation with willingness and rejoicing.

I got a robe, you got a robe,
All God’s children got a robe.
When I get to Heav’n gonna put on my robe,
Gonna shout all over God’s Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n
Everybody talkin’ about Heav’n ain’t going there,
Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n.
Gonna shout all over God’s Heav’n.

I got shoes, you got shoes,
All God’s children got shoes.
When I get to Heav’n gonna put on my shoes,
Gonna walk all over God’s Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n
Everybody talkin’ about Heav’n ain’t going there,
Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n.
Gonna shout all over God’s Heav’n.

I got a harp, you got a harp,
All God’s children got a harp.
When I get to Heav’n gonna play on my harp,
Gonna play all over God’s Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n
Everybody talkin’ about Heav’n ain’t going there,
Heav’n, Heav’n, Heav’n.
Gonna shout all over God’s Heav’n.

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