What would you like to hear on Judgment Day? I assume most of us would want to hear that everything is okay. The prophet Isaiah takes us to the top of the holy mountain where the Lord will provide a banquet for all people – endless and rich. And that is certainly very much to our liking. Isaiah gives us the God who wipes away tears and bandages our knees. Fair enough.
By contrast, Jesus seems strict. He tells a parable about some people refusing to partake in a feast. The call then goes out to everyone on the margins. That’s fine, too, we might think at first. Americans love victims and are none too thrilled with royal guests. But then the glitch comes. The new recruits are rejected because they are not wearing the right wedding garment. What’s going on?
We’re not the only ones confused by this parable. Some argue that the notion of the king’s sending armies to blot out their enemies cannot speak to a postindustrial, democratic society. Indeed, Jesus’ parable spoke to sectarian concerns in the early church. The chosen people of Israel rejected the invitation while Jewish-Christians accept it. Yet just being invited will not suffice. A white garment is required.
The lesson? Even those who were asked to come from the highways and byways must be prepared. Let’s face it. This parable, as confusing as it is, would make anyone uncomfortable at anytime. And it is meant to do so, to shake us up. It is, after all, about judgment and that will be more and more the agenda of the church in the remaining weeks of the liturgical year.
It may be best to keep the last sentence of this story as a backdrop: “Many are invited but few are chosen.” From this perspective, the call issued in Isaiah becomes refined in Matthew. I like to think of this parable very much along the lines of Jesus’ call to discipleship and our response. Jesus issues forth his call to everyone, but not everyone responds. In my mind, the “wedding garment” suggests a baptismal garment. Many have been clothed in that garment, but not all have lived out its promises.
Somewhere along the line we may have lost our white garment or even given it away. We proceed, as if by inches, to slip a little bit at a time: an unkind word here, a lie there; something stolen or a little infidelity – we might call it an indiscretion. Before you know it, we are dressed in attire not fit for a wedding.
The parable, then, is a call to honesty – to live out what we have been given by baptism. It is also a reminder to live in the “now” of God’s kingdom: we long for the day Isaiah describes but the banquet invoked by Jesus is happening now. This is just as it should be.
The first reading and the Gospel position us in the middle of two worlds. The Christian community lives in a marvelous tension between the present and the almost: for the day when the God of all creation will come to set his people free.
But until then we must beg the Lord to fully supply whatever we need, “in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” That means Jesus expects something from us in response. That gift is not ours to hold, but to share with a broken and weary world that desperately needs healing and hope.
The gift given to us at baptism has to mean something. The unconditional love of God is made possible for others – for the poor and the needy – by the gifts that grace us. So, let us in love and gratitude share the riches of God’s grace far and wide, through acts of love toward those who are broken and hurting, because we have been given no less than everything.
Paul A. Magnano
Pastor