2023 10 15 Sermon
Different Sides to the Story
Pentecost 20 A
Matthew 22:1-14
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Two weeks ago I attended our synod’s annual leadership conference, which was held at Lutherdale—this is the camp and retreat center we have on some beautiful grounds out by Elkhorn. Our speaker was Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, who is the first Native American woman to earn a PhD in the ELCA. She is part of the Lakota Sioux tribe. Her topic was “Storytelling” as a way to create space for people to be part of a community. Storytelling is a key feature of American Indian culture, and Native peoples tend to have quite a talent for it. Stories invite you to actively listen, and they give you an entry-point for considering different perspectives. Hearing someone else’s story naturally calls forth your own story. A story might even change your life…and even if it doesn’t, it still helps you see how other people experience the world.
One of the most well-known features of Jesus’ ministry was that he taught people using a special type of story known as parables. In a way similar to American Indian storytelling, parables also invite us to actively listen, and they open the door for us to gain new understandings about what that kingdom of God is like. Very often, the parables Jesus told were drawn from common everyday life in those times (like people being hired to work in a vineyard, as we heard the past two Sundays). Sometimes the parables are short and sweet, but other times they are jam-packed with details, confusing, and defy easy interpretation. The parable we heard today is one of those!
I was having a hard time figuring out what to say for my sermon, so I turned to several different commentaries by biblical scholars. They had lots to say about today’s parable, but each had different ideas about which details to emphasize or not emphasize, and what the symbolism meant. In part, this is because the very nature of parables is to have multiple layers of meaning. And in the case of the parable of the King’s Banquet, it seems that every interpretation had a hole in it that didn’t account for some detail in the story. So I’d like to share two interpretations that seem to make some sense of things. In some ways they contradict each other, in other ways they are complimentary.
In the first interpretation, the king represents God, and it focuses on how both “good and bad” people were gathered from the streets. If you’ll recall, the king gives a wedding banquet for his son, and all of the invited guests reject the invitation. But the king still wants to celebrate his son’s wedding. So he sends servants out in the streets, where they “gather all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Good and bad people came to the party; lots of them! When we look at the gospel of Matthew, this means a wide range of people—from those who followed Jesus and joined his ministry, to people who were regarded as the outsiders of society: the blind and lame; to those who were considered to be outright sinners, like tax collectors and prostitutes. The point is clear. You—whoever you are—are invited to God’s great party! So show up and enjoy!
But what happens next? There’s a man at the party who’s not wearing a wedding robe—the special clothing the king would have handed out to all the guests. When asked why he’s not wearing it, the man is speechless. So the king has him bound “hand and foot” and “thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” What happens to this man shows us the tension between God’s grace given freely to all, and our responsibility to live as people of faith. The wedding robe itself represents what it looks like to be clothed in the virtues of God’s kingdom—clothed with things like love, mercy, grace, truth, justice, holiness. If we refuse to put them on, we’re saying that we don’t want to stay at the party. So, will we allow God to be the “tailor” who will fit us with the wedding robe—the clothing of God’s kingdom? That’s what we have to ask ourselves. This is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the parable.
But there are some holes in it. Maybe there was a reason the original invited guests didn’t attend. Maybe they didn’t like the king’s temper. Yes, some of them were rude to totally ignore the invitation to the party, and some of them behaved despicably as they seized, mistreated, and even killed the king’s servants. The king was within his rights to respond, but did he have to burn down their city? Is anyone going to be in the mood for a party after something like that happened? As the slaves go out into the streets to “gather the good and the bad and fill the wedding hall with guests”, are these new people attending because the king invited them and they want to go to the party? Or because they fear the king’s ruthlessness?
From this perspective, the king doesn’t represent God, but the kingdoms of the world. This means that Jesus is the man with no wedding robe! He is speechless (like Jesus was speechless when being questioned by Pontius Pilate in Matthew 27:14). He is speechless because Jesus refuses to answer to a kingdom based on violence, fear, manipulation, and terror. Jesus becomes the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53: “he was wounded for our transgressions, and by his bruises we are healed.” Jesus takes the sin of the world upon himself, and willingly descends to the “outer darkness” so that he can meet the world in its pain, suffering, sin, and death, and from there open the way to new life and salvation! Jesus invites us to follow him by faith into God’s alternative for the world—the way of love, mercy, grace, truth, justice, and holiness. And you—when you were baptized into Christ—you were “clothed with Christ”, as St. Paul writes in Galatians 3:27. You were clothed with Christ, so you can throw away the wedding robes offered by the kingdoms of this world, because Jesus is your wedding robe! This is also a reasonable interpretation of the parable.
Maybe the key to understanding this parable is that we have to hear the different sides to the story in order to gain a full understanding. One perspective isn’t enough. Maybe this approach is also a way to help us understand any complex situation that defies easy understanding or simple answers. Listen to people’s stories. Consider what you can learn from them. Consider what the “holes” in the stories might be, and how someone else’s story might fill in the gaps—because every story has things it puts in, and things it leaves out. No one story ever says everything that could be said. Even the ending to the gospel of John recognizes this, where it says (in John 21:25) “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” This is why the New Testament has four gospels—no one story says everything that could be said.
Sometimes (like in the two interpretations of the parable of the King’s Banquet), the things you learn from different stories you hear may contradict each other. Contradiction might make you uncomfortable, and contradiction means things are unpredictable. But sometimes those are good things because unpredictability means there are openings. And where there are openings, God can work. God can write a new story, just as God did when the tomb was opened, and God raised the crucified Jesus to new life. Where there are openings God can work. Amen.