NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 28 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is going to be a pretty packed session. I may even spill over and go into a second short YouTube if I have to. This is the most difficult parable I think to interpret in the New Testament. It is the Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto of parables. So, to place us. We start the parable of the wedding feast at exactly the place where we left off last time. Remember, Jesus has told the parable of the wicked tenants and then hinted that he has some sympathy for them, and that actually their killing of the Son and Heir is going to be the wonderful thing that opens up the gift for the coming of the kingdom, the establishment of the temple, the new temple, them becoming the owners of the vineyard of the Lord and being able to produce its fruit. All of this, if you remember, was part of Jesus trying to get across to the chief priests and the scribes what was going on in their temple. He'd come in enacting the promised Davidic signs of the priest-Messiah who would come in, perform the sacrifice on the last day, and then that would precede the end of the temple and the arrival of the new temple, the bringing in of the kingdom. Those were the signs that he was enacting. They had said, "By what authority do you do these signs, and who gave you this authority?" He had then tried to get them to see if they could work out for themselves how to determine the question of authority, by showing them, "You can work this out for yourself." He gave them the example of John the Baptist. They refused to answer. They got stuck and remained caught in silence. He gave them the story of the two sons: the one who said yes and didn't, and the one who said no and did — which was to say, "You can work this out yourself. You know." And then he told them the parable of the wicked tenants, to bring out the difficulty of recognizing the arrival of the Heir, but also saying, "The one who's coming in is giving himself up to death as a gift in your midst. This is going to be something wonderful. I'm not here to attack or blame the murderers. That's going to be part of the gift." At this, it says, the chief priests and Pharisees went off to talk about this amongst themselves. They were disturbed by it because they could see that he was saying this was about them. In other words, they had begun to understand that he was putting them on the spot, but they didn't want to say anything because they were frightened of the people. In other words, they stood silent. So here, in this third parable, Jesus is taking his teaching further, and I think the best way of reading this parable is to see it as the continuation of the last, and in some sense it's an inversion of the last — it's turning elements of the last one upside down, so as to obviously look at the story the same story in a different way. You get some sense of this in a word which is not brought out in our Gospel translation, where it says "once more Jesus spoke to the chief priests." And holds of the people — actually in the Greek it says "apokrytheis": answering, Jesus spoke to the chief priests the parables. In other words, he's answering their inability to say anything. It's there having been caught silent. And that's a key element in this parable, because if you remember, at the very end of our parable we have the king coming in, finding the guy who's not wearing a wedding robe, and saying to him, "How did you get in here without a wedding robe?" And he was speechless. And it's the speechlessness that refers to the two times when Jesus has tried to get a straight answer out of the Temple authorities, and the two times when they won't speak. So this is, if you like, an illustration of what's going on with them, and why it's dangerous. Let's have a look at the details. In order to understand what's going on here, there are references — hidden references — to two prophets and the book of Deuteronomy. The prophet Zephaniah, whom we rarely hear from; the prophet Isaiah, whom we hear from quite frequently; and the book of Deuteronomy, which is of constant background to much of the New Testament. But here Jesus is bringing out passages from those three in a very subtle way. What I'd like to bring this out to you is as if… So let's read this parable as taking further his previous parable, turning around some of its elements, giving them a new take. Let's read it through in that sense and see whether we can get somewhere. "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son." Okay, so the last one, the son was the heir who got killed. That was going to be what enabled the new vineyard to start giving fruit, what enabled the Temple to be brought to an end, what enabled the banquet to start — the promised celestial banquet. So here he's giving a wedding banquet for his son. That's right, that's the heir, the heir who's been killed, the wedding banquet for the heir who's been killed. That's going to be an important part of this, because in fact the son doesn't appear for the whole of the rest of the wedding banquet. The son is entirely absent from this point onwards. So he gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who'd been invited to the wedding banquet. These were the same, if you remember, as the various servants whom the master of the vineyard had sent out before in the previous parable to come and check in on the fruits. But here the flip side of that is that the messages have been called, have been sent out to summon people to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves in the second round of prophets, saying, "Tell those who've been invited: look, I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready — come to the wedding banquet." So here he's using the great Isaiah promise of the wedding banquet that would be the sign of all being called in in the end. This is the beginnings of the new creation. This is what the prophet Isaiah had told people about. So the references were quite clear to his listeners. "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." Okay, so apparently we've got the same people as the wicked tenants who were also the guests to the wedding banquet, and they mistreated the servants and slaves in the same way — mistreated them and killed them. Then it says, "And the king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their city." These words are playing with the word play of the chief priests and elders' response to him from the previous parable — how they, you know, said he will treat those wretches in a wretched way, he will kill those murderers. In other words, here Jesus is playing to their sense of the violent reaction to the refusal to come to the wedding banquet: "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." So here the invitation is going out to those who said no but then came in, in the previous parables. "The slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so that the wedding hall was filled with guests." Please remember, this is one of the central parts not only of Matthew's Gospel but of the Gospel. The Gospel is not about summoning the good — it's about summoning all of us, and us finding ourselves becoming good as we enjoy the summons, as we are able to relax into the invitation to take part. There's no moralism here. There's just the reverse: the second round comes in and the whole place has become completely full. But when the king comes in to see the guests, he noticed there a man who is not wearing a wedding robe. This, I think, is a delightful part of the brilliance of Jesus's teaching in Matthew's Gospel. You see, there's a word play going on here related to two different interpretations of the same word: milḥamah can mean "go to war" or can mean "go to feast" — "go to bread," quite literally. And why is this important? In chapter 20 of the book of Deuteronomy we have the instructions concerning being summoned to war, being summoned to war by the Lord. "When you go out to war" — that could also mean "when you go to feast." Those two phrases can be the same. And in fact, everything thereafter is going to depend, in this parable, on whether the people involved think they are taking part in a holy war or think they're being invited to a feast. Everything. All the passages can be read two ways. Here's the example. The people who refused to come to the banquet gave an excuse for it. Remember, they said one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves. Now please notice that there were actually, if you were summoned to war, there were good reasons why you might prefer to go to your business or prefer to go to your farm. In fact, that's what the book of Deuteronomy commands: "Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house. Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed his fruit? He should go back to his house. Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house." In other words, the war instructions gave a very good excuse for not coming to war, which looked very strange if there is a wedding, if it's a wedding banquet instruction and a person is turning down a wedding banquet. You see, Jesus is playing with how the call to the wedding and the call to a holy war could be exactly the same thing, and which one you think you're in is going to be tremendously important. Why do I say this? Well, there were two takes on what it looked like to be in the land of the wedding banquet: one, the curse for those who were thrown out, and the other, the blessing for those who were allowed in. The blessing for those allowed in we get in Isaiah 65. With the creation of the new heavens and the new earth, the banquet is going to go on: "They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a "Three shall be the days of my people; be my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands." That's the positive side. But then we get rather mysteriously the prophet Zephaniah. With Zephaniah, what you get on that day — the day of the judgment, which is also the day of the coming of the kingdom, the creation, the new creation, the banquet — is: "Their wealth shall be plundered and their houses laid waste; though they build houses they shall not inhabit them, though they plant vineyards they shall not drink wine from them." Now, the really interesting thing is that Jesus is pointing out that one is the result of regarding themselves involved in a holy war, as the chief priests and scribes seem to have thought of themselves when they regarded the proper response to the killing of the son as being an act of vengeance. Or it could be the coming into the wedding banquet. But you have to decide which one you're involved in when you come to the reality of the Son coming in. You're going to have to decide whether you're part of the holy war, in which case you're tied up in vengeance, or whether you're being called into the wedding banquet, in which case it's going to be plentifulness — entirely unmerited plentifulness — from here on out. Let's have a look at the passage from Zephaniah, which is going to be key to this. Here is Zephaniah 1, verses 7 to 9: "Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is at hand. The Lord has prepared a sacrifice; he has consecrated his guests. And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice I will punish the officials and the king's sons and all who dress themselves in foreign attire. On that day I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill their master's house with violence and fraud." Now I hope you can see that this is tough stuff for the chief priests and scribes to be hearing in the Temple. This is how he says it: "The king came in to see the guests; he noted a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe" — so here we have someone in foreign attire — "and he said to him, 'Friend'" — the Greek is hetaire, it means companion, and the interesting thing is it can be either a military companion or a banqueting companion; this is part of the key distinction: are you part of a holy war, or are you part of a guest feasting? — "'How did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless." You see, in Zephaniah it says, "Be silent before the Lord God." And remember what Jesus had been doing was putting the chief priests and the scribes in a position where they needed to say by what authority he was doing these things, if they wanted to get him. to speak. They wouldn't. They were tongue-tied, they were bound by fear. He was speechless. So the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot and throw him into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." In other words, if you are bound, self-bound into your fear and scandal at the coming in, you will remain bound and scandalized. That's not how you come into the feast. And he says, "For many are called but few are chosen," and that's an Aramaism, a Hebraism if you like, for a way of saying being called and being chosen are not the same thing. And he's going back to the account of the two sons who were called at different times, and one said yes and didn't, the other said no and did. In other words, the being called is one thing. The finding yourselves chosen – that's actually finding yourselves invited into the wedding banquet – for those who know themselves invited, this is something that is free and wonderful, and they know that they're part of it. They would never be inclined to take revenge. On the contrary, this is what is being set up for them. I hope you can see that what Jesus has been doing here has been continuing, if you like, the previous parable. The murderous vineyards, the murderous tenants have killed the son; the son's wedding banquet is now being opened up by the same king who was that absent landlord before. The previous tenants are now the guests, but they seem to think that they have been called to a war, and for that reason they've engaged in perfectly good delaying tactics for not going to war, because that's what the Book of Deuteronomy allows them to do. They failed to see that they are actually taking part in a wedding banquet. They can't imagine this is what is being called, so they've rejected the invitations. And all the others are now being called – all those who didn't think of themselves as having been worthy to be called into the banquet – and now are good and bad alike. And then we get the inspection, where the state of stunned silence, scandalized silence, of the ones who were not prepared to decide whether they were there as soldiers in a war, thinking the whole thing was about vengeance, or guests at a wedding banquet who were being taken into the kingdom of God. I hope that that helps resolve some of the issues. For those of you who want to look it up, remember the Bible texts: Zephaniah 1:7–9 and then 13, Isaiah 65, Deuteronomy 20. It's out of those texts that Jesus is trying to help the chief priests and the scribes find their way into themselves, deciding whether they are at war as they seem to have thought, With their previous answer, or in the wedding feast, because it's only they who could make up their minds about that. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.