SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2023 | AFTER PENTECOST - Proper 23 (A)

Notes

Isaiah:

Paul:

Women in the ministry - Paul affirmed them.

Act as it was modeled to us…and God’s peace will be with us

Matthew reading:

Another Weeping and gnashing of teeth section - very intense and violent. King is not God - King has the right ideas about iniviting others, but his sense of justice is off.

Good morning!

What a week - as if the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere wasn’t enough, we now observe the violent conflict between Hamas and Israel that has been decades in the making. Acts of terrorism are never good as violence only breeds more violence, no matter the cause or justification. So far 2200 people were killed and more than 10 000 were injured, both in Gaza and Israel. As in any conflict, civillians on either side are the most affected - artillery and guns do not discriminate. Kyrie eleison. The official ELCA stance is:

As Lutherans, we are accustomed to holding tension between two truths. Thus the ELCA denounces the egregious acts of Hamas, acts that have led to unspeakable loss of life and hope. At the same time the ELCA denounces the indiscriminate retaliation of Israel against the Palestinian people, both Christian and Muslim.

And I cannot help but co-sign this - it is not an one sided issue.

And the BIble is not a stranger to ambiguity either - The Parable of the Wedding Banquet shows it well. It is a prime example of Matthew’s weeping and gnashing of teeth section for sure - very violent and unforgiving. And I do not think we need to dissect it all at the moment - there is enough violence in the news.

However, let me affirm this - the king is not God, just like the invited guests are not exclusively Jewish. These parables are never one to one, they still bear a lot of the brokenness and ambiguity of our world, nobody’s acting perfectly in them and nobody is fully righteous. The king is quick to anger and even quicker to punish. A whole city was burned to the ground and many died.

I turned to Stanley Hauerwas (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew) for guidance and what he has to say makes a lot of sense and will give us some pointers (189-190):

This parable reprises Matthew’s gospel. Jesus has come to feed us. He has fed the five thousand and the four thousand. The kingdom is about food and, in particular, food for the poor. But the food given by Jesus is not only to feed the hungry but to stage a banquet. This is a feast of God’s abundance. Yet many seem to think that they have all they need and refuse to take the time to attend the king’s banquet. They act as if they need no king, consumed as they are by their daily lives.

Jesus suggests that the way the king’s slaves were treated is the way that Israel had treated God’s prophets.

This is an extraordinary parable that makes for uneasy reading for those who want Jesus to underwrite a general critique of elites in the name of creating a community of unconditional acceptance. To be sure, just as the previous parables had been, this parable is meant to make those in power and the well-off uncomfortable. Most of us, particularly in the commercial republics of modernity, refuse to recognize that we are ruled by tyrants or, worse, that we have become tyrants of our own lives. We believe that we are our own lords, doing what we desire, but our desires make us unable to recognize those who rule us. We have no time for banquets prepared by the Father to celebrate Jesus’s making the church his bride.

Yet this parable also makes clear that those who come to the banquet from the streets are expected to be clothed by the virtues bestowed on them through their baptism. If the church is to be a people capable of hospitality, it will also have to be a community of holiness. Jesus expects those called to his kingdom to bear fruit (Matt. 21:43). He has made clear in the Beatitudes how those called to his kingdom will appear. To be poor and outcast may well put one in a good position to respond to Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom, but Jesus expects the poor and downcast to live lives worthy of the Lamb who will be slain. Only a people so formed will be able to resist emperors, who always claim to rule us as our benefactors.

Well, that’s a lot to ponder for sure. I think it is most certainly true that in the culture of capitalistic individualism we live in, it can be far too easy to dismiss God’s invitation to the banquet of God’s blessings in a time of abundance - we are doing just fine on our own! Thanks, but no thanks - you are awesome, but I need to get to the next thing in my life. Some of us have the means to attend, but we do not want to.

Others want to, but do not have the means - the wedding robe is missing. A life of faith is absent, a life living into baptismal promises. And I think that is where a faith community like us can be helpful - evangelism applies to both people in the church and out of it - the means and needs might be slightly different, but it is why we are planted here, in this place. To accompany whomever and whenever to walk humbly with God and learn from Jesus, so that not only our wills are changed, but also our actual lives. It is only through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit that one is able to not only want to live in accordance to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, but also actually do it. To practise mercy instead of judgment, to support life rather than taking it, to be hopeful rather than fearful, to be generous…To go against the patterns of this world, where people kill each other, mutilate each other’s children, destroy each other’s homes and hospitals, put up high fences with barbed wire on the top… You get the idea. Be it Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Syria or anywhere else. God’s Peaceable Kingdom is nothing like that.

Beloveds, let us strive for the Kingdom of the Lord - with our wills, lives, actions, minds… Let us be like the ones that not only can but also want to come to God’s banquet of mercy, love, and justice. Amen.