Dress Code (Matthew 22:1-14)

 *****Formal banquets among people with power weren’t just occasions to eat and drink. The politicians and power brokers who attended were all there to get something. They were all trying to make an impression, or cut a deal, or win favor.

So they showed up dressed to perfection. Not one hair out of place. It was important to look confident… and to be seen with the right people. 

If the right people weren’t there… if the people with whom you needed to cut a deal weren’t there, or if those who owed you a favor weren’t there, or if the ones you wanted to impress weren’t there… well, it would be easy to think that there wasn’t much point in going.

A king who gives a banquet for his son’s wedding would certainly invite people close to him, and close to his son—friends and family—as well as the friends and family of the bride.

But he would also send out invitations to important people whose favor he needed to maintain, or with whom he might want to cut a deal, or who he wanted to impress in some way.

In our story today, those who the king invited—for whatever reason—chose not to come. This is not realistic—no one would actually refuse an invitation from the king. But in this parable, that’s what they do.

And the king doesn’t take no for an answer. So he sends slaves to invite them again, and to say to them: “Look! Everything is ready! Come to the banquet!”

Again, they refuse. They even kill some of the slaves sent by the king.

So the king, in return, kills them and destroys their city.

This king just won’t take no for an answer.

Which, by the way, reminds me of the time Jesus taught his disciples to let their “yes” be “yes,” and their “no” be “no.” I always thought of this as a teaching to be honest in what I say, in what I promise… but it also works the other way… to accept the “yes” or “no” that someone gives to you.

Let their yes be yes. Let their no be no.

If someone says no to you, you accept their answer. 

The king didn’t do that.

It reminds me of another king: King David. Israel’s greatest king.

**** King David really wanted Bathsheba for himself. So he didn’t give her a chance to say no. He just took her. Nevermind that she was already the wife of a man named Uriah.

And when it was discovered that Bathsheba was pregnant, David arranged for Uriah to be killed. All because he couldn’t accept “no” for an answer.

Now, such behavior was acceptable for kings in ancient times. Kings had the right to do whatever they wanted, at least in the eyes of men.

But not in the eyes of God. And God held David accountable for his actions.

*****Two years ago, at Cornell University, a sexual assault took place that you may have heard about in the news lately. 

Apparently, a young woman at a college party was assaulted by 7 members of a fraternity. More than 50 other young men were part of a group chat inviting them to take their turn. None of them honored the “no” of this young woman, or even gave her the opportunity to say “no.” She never gave consent. 

Yet they didn’t let the fact that she never said “yes” stop them.

And now, people are wanting them to be held accountable.

Let your “yes” be “yes.” Let your “no” be “no.” And let your neighbor’s “no” be “no” as well. 

***** The king in our story today would not take no for an answer. 

And he kills all those important, powerful people who refused to come to his party.

Because that’s how kings behave when they don’t get what they want.

Now, Jesus told this parable in the temple, to a group of chief priests and elders, men with some level of power and influence.

But there were others there as well: common people; Jews without power and influence.  And they may not have taken this story about the king who threw a wedding banquet seriously. They may have laughed at all these rich and powerful people fighting with each other, killing and being killed, getting what was coming to them.

And then the king sends his slaves out into the streets, to invite anyone they could find to the banquet. Not the wealthy. Not the powerful. But average, common people. He wanted that banquet hall full!

And the people listening to this story may have thought to themselves: “Like that would ever happen…” yet they also were interested in seeing where this story was going. So they started listening more intently…and the parable begins to call them out as well.

Because now, in the story, the banquet hall is filled not with rich and powerful people, but with people like them. 

And there was one guest there who was not wearing the proper clothing. 

It’s not clear why this person was improperly attired. One commentary I read said that, at a banquet like this, if someone didn’t have the proper attire, the host would provide them with the proper attire.

So there really should be no excuse to not be dressed appropriately.

And evidently this particular guest had not heard of how ruthless this king could be. If he had, I doubt he would have refused the clothing provided to him.

And the king ordered that this person be bound hand and foot, and thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And that is a turn in this story that the people did not expect. When it started, it sounded like a parable being told against the rich and powerful, but in the end, it was a person just like them who suffers from the king’s wrath.

Not the ending to the story they were hoping for.

And this parable, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Well. How? How does this parable show what the kingdom of heaven is like?

Matthew ends the parable with this statement: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” 

Really?

Thanks, Matthew, but that’s not helpful. There is so much more going on here. So much that challenges us. So much that provokes us. 

As is often the case with parables. Parables often start out heading in a direction we want them to go, but then there’s a twist, and the parable becomes a burr, poking us in the side, irritating us, challenging us.

Here is what I think:

This king does not act the way God would act. This king lacks mercy, lacks compassion, lacks kindness. This king compels people to obey his commands through threat of force, violence, and death. This king does not allow anyone to make a choice other than what the king has already chosen for them.

As for the poor individual who wore the wrong clothes… despite the harshness of this story, it does lead me to wonder about what is appropriate in terms of dress. I think one question on the minds of those hearing this story would be: “Come on! He’s a poor commoner! How could he have known how to dress? How should he have dressed?”

This person’s attire seems far more important in this story than it should be. 

And yet, the story also makes me think about how much time we do spend on figuring out what we should wear.

***** The invitation to my nephew Zander’s wedding (that took place at the beginning of summer) said that dress for the event was “summer chic.” 

I had no idea what that meant. So I looked it up online, and the search results… were quite interesting.

I texted Zander and said, “this?” And he texted back, “Yeah… pull up in that!”

Well, after thinking about it some, I decided that maybe this would not be the proper attire for his wedding… especially since I was officiating…

***** Whenever we have a baptism here at church, like we did last week, there is one thing I dread, and that’s making my way through the centrum in the shorts and t-shirt I’m going to baptize people in, just as folks are arriving for worship. That’s always a little weird for me… because I, like everyone else, is probably a little too obsessed over what I wear, how I appear, whether I’m properly dressed or not…

Especially since I’m the pastor. People expect certain things of the pastor in terms of appearance, especially when they are walking into church…

Well, what is the proper attire? For church? For anything?

I don’t know what proper wedding attire looked like in the first century… 

**** But several places in the New Testament do describe how followers of Jesus are to clothe themselves.

Eph. 4.24: “Clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Col. 3.12-14: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience… and above all, with love.”

Gal. 3.27-28: “Clothe yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.” 

(In that passage, clothing is equated to identity, and people identified themselves as part of a group, separate from people in other groups. But now they are to identify themselves, first and foremost, as followers of Christ. United. And perhaps this is important, because before, one might—upon being invited to a banquet (say, a banquet featuring the Lord’s Supper) be tempted to ask: “who’s going to be there? Will there be Jewish men like me? Or will there be gentiles? Or women?” In other words, will there be people there like me, people who speak my language, who look like me, who dress like me?” But, clothed in Christ, those divisions are overcome, for we are all one in Christ.)

***** After last Sunday’s worship I had a conversation with someone about baptism, and I remembered that, in many early Christian communities, those being baptized would strip naked as they entered the water. The clothes that they cast off, they would then trample underfoot. This symbolized the casting off of their worldly identities. Then upon emerging from the baptismal waters, they were given new clothes to wear, made of white cloth, symbolizing that their identity was now wrapped up in Christ.

Being reminded of that made me thankful for the shorts and t-shirt I got to wear in the baptistry last week.

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***** I don’t think there is one specific way to read this parable. I don’t think you can simply say: “the king represents God;” many interpreters do say that, though you can probably guess that I have problems with that interpretation. At the very least, it’s too simplistic. If the king is meant to represent God, I think we can at least say that not every act or behavior by the king is consistent with how God acts.

Some have also said that those who refused the invitation are the Jews who rejected Jesus. But that interpretation quickly becomes a justification for anti-semitism, and is also problematic. Instead of saying that they represent “the Jews,” at most one could say that they represent those among the Jews with power, the Jewish authorities—the chief priests and elders, perhaps—and certainly not the Jewish people as a whole.

And any interpretation of a parable that casts those hearing it as the “good guys” and casts some other person as the “bad guy” is problematic, because just about every parable is meant to provoke and challenge you, the hearer. Parables are meant to shake us out of our complacency and rock our self-righteous attitudes. 

For me, this parable does that in two ways:

It reminds me that I need to honor the “yes” or the “no” that someone gives me…

And it challenges me to consider how I dress… and to always clothe myself in Christ.

One River, One Table, One World (Psalm 65)

 *****This is the last week we have with our theme, “Immersed in Living Waters,” the theme for this year’s Season of Creation. 

And with all these scriptures that talk about rivers and lakes and seas and oceans, it all reminds me of so many other stories from my life and from the world, that involve water.

I remember my 7th grade science teacher, who one day assigned us an essay to write; the title of the essay was: “I Was a Teenage Water Molecule.” In this essay, we were to creatively imagine what it would be like if we ourselves were a water molecule, and what our life would be like.

Of course, the essay would talk about how we fell to the earth as rain, joined up with other molecules in streams and rivers, how we eventually made our way to the sea, and how we then—through evaporation—made our way back to the sky, thus completing the entire hydrologic cycle. 

Not every essay I had to write in school was fun, but I did enjoy that one. And I still think about watersheds, and where rain goes after it falls to the ground, and the life that rain brings.

I almost included in this sermon a story about a river in Wyoming that got blocked by a landslide and changed direction. And since the river is near the continental divide, it meant that, instead of flowing west toward the Pacific, it now flowed east, toward the Atlantic. Fascinating, I thought… until I realized the story was made up by a satirical website.

But I almost believed it, because rivers do change. Humans changed the direction of the Chicago River, but often, rivers change due to natural causes.

******The town of Kaskaskia, Illinois—located on the Mississippi River—was the first state capitol of Illinois. In 1881, a devastating flood caused the Mississippi River to change course, so that, instead of flowing west of Kaskaskia, the river now flowed east of town. How strange is it to have an Illinois town sitting west of the Mississippi River!

Today, Kaskaskia has an Illinois telephone area code but a Missouri ZIP Code.

And there are other spots, all along the Mississippi River, where state boundaries no longer follow the river. Once upon a time they did, but the river changed, while the boundaries stayed where they were.

It’s a reminder to me that rivers, like the rest of creation, are alive. The water that flows really is living water. 

We often set state or national boundaries at major bodies of water, like rivers, but the rivers don’t pay attention to where we have drawn our lines. The rivers move; they alter course; and they are always at work, changing and reshaping the geography.

In the same way, God’s spirit is always at work, shaping and reshaping the church, giving the church new life. And as a result, the church itself is always changing. 

***** We see this today in the baptisms of Audrey and Edward: every new person who joins the church changes the church. We are not the same church today (Oct. 4) that we were yesterday (Oct. 3). God’s spirit is changing us, moving us, leading us and guiding us, into our next stage of existence.

And just as the rivers pay no heed to where we set our boundaries, the same is true for God’s Spirit. We find ways to divide ourselves from one another, to divide humanity into groups, nations, races… and these divisions lead to animosity, exclusion, and even hatred… but we are all one in God’s eyes…. Something we are especially reminded of on this World Communion Sunday.

Rivers also provide essential transportation links. The rivers themselves keep us united. This is certainly true for the Mississippi River. Barges transport goods up and down the river, and even today, passenger boats take people up and down the river, something that was even more true in times past.

Even the oceans unite us.

***** We often think of oceans as great divides, but ancient Polynesians saw things differently. They saw the ocean as that which connects different island nations to each other. 

Some anthropologists even believe that ancient Polynesians made contact and traded with indigenous peoples along the west coast of North and South America before Columbus ever set sail across the Atlantic.

Having learned a little bit about the canoes of the Tongva and Chumash people where I grew up in southern California, and the skilled ocean navigators of ancient Polynesia, I’m inclined to believe that this is true, that Polynesians made it to the Americas before Columbus did………

Just as the ocean connects, so does God’s Spirit. And so does the church. 

***** The church connects us to God and to each other.

The word religion, in fact, comes from a Latin phrase re-ligio, which literally means to reconnect. 

Religion that is done right and which honors God is religion that reconnects us to God and to one another. Religion that is done right reminds us that we are one with creation and one with each other.

Which means that a primary task of the church is to connect and unite, and overcome the barriers and divisions that keep us separated from one another.

And what better day than today to ponder all these things. World Communion Sunday. Baptism Sunday. The last Sunday of the Season of Creation. 

It all comes together. 

And after worship, we’ll gather in our fellowship hall, and hopefully take another step toward unity and understanding, overcoming the divides and barriers that separate us, and charting a new course… just like the Mississippi River, that often changes its course…

…as we continue journeying toward God’s beloved community, that kingdom of heaven, marked by peace and understanding and justice and reconciliation and hope — all the elements that, together, are what the Bible refers to as shalom; the world as God desires it to be; the world where all can live together, and thrive, and experience all the blessings God has to offer.