Refusing the Feast

A sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on Sunday, October 9, 2011.

Exodus 32:1-14

Psalm 106:1-6,19-23.

Philippians 4:1-9.

Matthew 22:1-14.

The chief priests and elders brought up the question of authority in chapter 21 – what right do you have to do these things?

Jesus had just rode into Jerusalem, taught in the temple, cleansed the temple, healed blind and lame in the temple, provided for the poor, and begun a children’s choir (Hauerwas, Matthew, 185).

Jesus then likens them to a son who says he will obey his Father and work in the vineyard but doesn’t and then to tenants who refuse to share the harvest with the absentee landowner and mistreat and kill the servants and even the son of the landowner.

The overwhelming theme of these two parables that Jesus tells the chief priests and elders is that the question is about authority but not in the way that they think.

It is not, “what right does Jesus have to do these things?” but “what right do the leaders of the Jewish community have to do the things that they have been doing throughout Israel’s history and even into Jesus’ day?”

Jesus’ story about the tenants associates the chief priests and elders with those who killed the prophets in earlier times in the life of the community of Israel. They, just like many before them, cared more for their own way of being toward God and others, than the way that God was reminding them through the prophetic voice.

The conclusion of the parable is important to understanding the next parable that Jesus tells:

When Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants, the chief priests and elders reply that he will kill them and rent the vineyard out to others who will share the harvest at the right time.

Jesus replies and says “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the proper fruits.”

IN the parable of the wedding feast we see this reality fleshed out.

But the interesting twist we see in Jesus’ parable is that the reason the original invited don’t end up at the wedding banquet is not because they are rejected, but because THEY reject the invitation to the feast.

The kingdom of God is taken away from the chief priests and elders and given to another people BY their own rejection of the kingdom of God. They don’t recognize God in Jesus because they have forgotten God’s true nature as one of humility, justice, and mercy.

The chief priests and elders are the ones in the parable who refuse the invitation to God’s feast. Seeing Jesus’ compassion and life-giving presence in their midst, they refuse to rejoice – but become defensive of the way things have been and their own authority.

They have no respect for the king’s son and refuse to join in his celebration. We see this throughout the gospel stories as Jesus heals someone and instead of delighting in life and wondering at God’s power displayed through Jesus they criticize him. Or when Jesus shows compassion to someone who is rejected in society, instead of delighting in the mercy of God shown in Jesus’ actions, they bristle with offense at Jesus’ audacity to break social norms.

God is not primarily rejecting them, they are rejecting God’s kingdom as it is being made manifest all around them in the actions and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Even still, the king sends out the messengers when the food is ready and invite the guests to come and join the celebration.

Many of the guests ignore, but others violently reject, harm and even kill some of the messengers.

We can easily see how this part of the story points to the way Jesus will be treated in less than a week’s time from his telling of this parable.

And so on account of their refusal of the invitation, their refusal to celebrate with the son of the king the joyous event of his marriage, their refusal to delight in the abundant offerings of the king’s feast, they are replaced by any and all people on the streets good and bad alike.

On account of their refusal of the compassion and miraculous life-giving presence of Jesus, the chief priests and elders lose out on the opportunity of participating in the new messianic community begun by Jesus.

the kingdom of God is taken away from them and given to a people who produce the proper fruits, enjoying the presence of the king’s son, delighting in the feast of compassion, justice, and truth.

It’s taken away not against their will, but in accordance with their will since they wanted nothing to do with God’s reign of justice, mercy, and truth.

And so the banquet hall is full –yet there is one there in the room who is not properly attired. I think it’s safe to infer that this person could have worn the proper wedding garments but refused to. It doesn’t seem at all to be in line with the spirit of Jesus for a person to be rejected on account of his inability to afford or obtain the appropriate things. It is rather that this person refused to wear the right attire for the ceremony and in his refusing rejects the invitation of the king even though he showed up at the feast. He followed the letter of the invitation but not the spirit. He is still not delighting in the joy of the feast.

This is a mysterious part of the parable to be sure and I’m not quite sure what to do with it to be honest. But I think this makes the most sense. This person is refusing to fully participate in the feast and therefore in essence rejects the king’s invitation and excludes himself from the feast.

He is bound and thrown out to where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Everywhere else Jesus talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth, it is in reference to those who refused God’s kingdom of justice, truth, and mercy for whatever reason.

I would venture to say that no one is ever excluded who hasn’t already excluded themselves.

God’s offer to us is to participate in the life and light of God’s reconciliation and forgiveness, of God’s love and freedom. When we reject God’s love because we love to hate, when we reject God’s forgiveness because we don’t think we need it, when we reject God’s mercy to our enemies,

when we reject God’s generosity towards the weak, the poor, the despised – we exclude ourselves from fellowship with God and from true fellowship with our neighbors.

It is when we embrace God as we see God in Jesus Christ, in his truthful, justice seeking, merciful LIFE, his self-giving, enemy-forgiving, nonresisting DEATH, and his renewing, death-conquering, life-giving RESURRECTION – it is when we embrace Jesus’s call to follow him, to receive God’s love and participate in God’s love for the world – we find a feast – a joyous feast, delighting in the joyous inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth.

The chief priests and elders could not embrace Jesus’ way because they loved their own way too much. They were unwilling to do the 180 degree turn that true repentance requires. If we as those who have been trained to consider ourselves as most important, our self-advancement and self-preservation as the highest goal, our enemy as undeserving of mercy, our way of seeing the world and our ways of living in it as final and unquestionable, if we are incredibly attached to the self that we have created, we will be unwilling to come to the feast of God’s truth, God’s mercy, and God’s justice. We will not recognize them in Jesus, and we will not experience the incredible joy of the new life that God offers us.

Let us not refuse the offer to become a part of God’s new kingdom life. Let us not harden our hearts to the invitation to God’s feast of reconciliation.

The feast will go on regardless, let’s humble ourselves and take part, lest we miss out on the truth that sets us free.