COME TO THE FEAST

'Come to the Feast of Heaven and Earth' is a familiar liturgical refrain that just about sums up the meaning of the gospel parable for this Sunday. The parable itself is a kind of poetic summary of our salvation story. Like all the gospel parables, it has come to us in symbolic language.

It was towards the end of Jesus' life and the forces of darkness were gathering. Tiring of Christ and his subversive parables, the religious leaders were plotting to kill him. Check the two verses just before this parable in Matthew 21: 45-46. In this sharply told tale they could not have missed the message. The kingdom preached and practiced by Jesus posed a threat to the comfortable kingdom they had fashioned for themselves.

'The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.' Throughout scripture, the kingdom of God is described in terms of a wedding feast. The sacred writers couldn't find a more apt metaphor for the coming together of the human and divine. Jesus Christ embodies within himself the wedding of humanity and divinity. He came to effect the union of all God's bridal people with Christ the groom. Great spiritual writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux and John of the Cross eulogized this relationship, calling it a 'mystical marriage' of the soul with God. The parable suggests the kind of relationship to which God call us.

'He dispatched his servant to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come.' Can you imagine anyone choosing to ignore a personal invitation to attend, say, the British royal wedding last April of Prince William and Kate Middleton? They would be monumentally unhinged. But the king's guests refused, not once, but even a follow-up invitation. The invited guests represent us who continue to refuse God's invitation to be in relationship with Christ. Most of us are blind to what we are missing!

Eventually the king instructs his servants, 'Go out into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.....bad and good alike.' Our God is a gathering God. We don't come crawling to God. He crawls to us, relentless in his pursuit of us. 'The hall was filled with guests". All kinds of scallywags and ruffians were there.

What do we find Jesus doing more than anything else in the gospels? Sitting at table with all kinds of people - rich and poor, clean and unclean, saints and sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, his mother and her friends. This, despite the fact that there were at the time all kinds social taboos about whom one could associate with, dine with, even touch. James Joyce's description of the Catholic Church, 'here comes everyone', was on display whenever Jesus sat down for a meal in the gospels. It's a kind of metaphor for our Sunday celebration of the eucharist.

In the longer version of Sunday's gospel the king 'saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.' This curious little twist to the story is puzzling. Wedding feasts at that time lasted for several days, not just one afternoon or evening as in our culture today. Guests had time to wash and wear something clean. To arrive in dirty clothes would have been insulting to the host and couple. The garment symbolizes for us personal transformation - putting on peace, love, kindness, justice, compassion and forgiveness. To be in true relationship with Christ is to be transformed. We are meant to be changed for the better in our celebration of the eucharist. To be unchanged, without a wedding garment, is to have a fake relationship with Christ - and the eucharist.

Why were the chief priests and the elders of the people plotting to kill him? Because he preached and lived the greatest commandment of the law: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself. The short form is the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. If you try putting that into practice, you'll find you have to take a clear stand for justice. That could easily get you into trouble. It got Jesus into right big trouble! Justice is threatening to a status quo which is fed and fostered by systemic injustice.

PASTOR EMERITUS