Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 11, 2020. Gospel of St. Matthew 22:1-14. Theme: Invited and Chosen
Today’s Gospel gives us another one of Jesus’ parables. As is common to these moral stories, we cannot get the heart of what Jesus is teaching unless we decipher the symbolism he is using.
• The wedding feast is the Kingdom of Heaven. Throughout the Bible festive abundant banquets are frequently used as symbols for life with God and one another in Heaven.
• The king hosting the event is God the Father. He is extraordinarily wealthy in mercy and grace, finding joy in bestowing gifts on his people.
• The guest of honor, the groom, is the king’s son, Jesus. The New Testament calls Jesus the Bridegroom of the Church, which means us. And it calls the Mass the wedding feast of the Lamb of God.
• The A-list of invited guests are the Chosen People of Israel. They were the first to be called by God to the wedding of his Son. Even though individuals of Israel chose to come to the wedding feast, overall as a people they refused the invitation.
• The B-list are Gentiles, that is, those of us whom the Jews considered sinners, cursed by God and outcasts among his people. We are like those everyday people mentioned in the parable, a mixture of good and bad.
But you know, what really grabs people’s attention in this parable is the man who gets kicked out of the party for not wearing the wedding garment. He accepted the invitation but did not come properly dressed. That particular detail contains the main moral of the story and it expresses a very important word of caution to us. But to understand why, we first we need to know that in Jesus’ culture when a king gave a party he not only supplied food, drink and entertainment. As a sign of his wealth and generosity, he also provided each invited guest with a party robe, in this case, a wedding garment. To show up at the party dressed in your own clothes instead of in the gifted garment would be very much like giving the host a social slap in the face! So, what might all this symbolism mean in regard to the teachings of Christ?
We can interpret and apply this parable as saying that in the generosity of God all people are invited to come to the wedding feast of his Son, which means to live in a relationship with Christ. By faith and through baptism, God gives each invited person the “wedding garment” which is a symbol of his sanctifying grace, a share in his redeeming love. Following this symbolic train of thought, it can be said that we change out of our own clothes and into the robe supplied by the king when we turn away from our sins and selfishness and put on the way of Our Lord Jesus Christ, striving to live and to love as he has taught us and shown us.
This parable is reminding us that accepting the invitation to the wedding feast means much more than simply showing up in church on Sundays. It warns us against having a complacent attitude based on the idea that since God is good and loving we have nothing to fear about how we think or live. These are examples of a very spiritually dangerous approach to God that is called “cheap grace”. This was a term coined by the courageous German Lutheran minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis in World War II.
Cheap grace means that we want God without his commandments; Christ without the cross; Heaven without repentance for sin; Christianity without intentional discipleship. In other words, this cheap grace means that we want a god and a savior and a religion that is fashioned according to our own likes and desires. But the parable warns us that our refusal to wear the wedding garment of Heaven in favor of the cheap grace of our own clothing, will not only get us kicked out of the party but cause us to be cast into the torment of Hell.
On the other hand, transforming grace, the real kind of grace that costs a great deal, that was purchased by the Blood of Christ on the cross. Real grace means that we accept the invitation, put on the wedding garment, and do our best to keep it clean in God’s sight. It means that we actually change our attitude and our way of living so that it conforms to the Gospel teachings of Christ. Real grace is tough and challenging because it means that we are willing to say “no” to ourselves and “yes” to God.
The parable ends by reminding us that all called to the wedding feast of Christ, but only the Chosen accept and truly respond to that call. And the thing is that anyone can be among the Chosen simply by putting on the wedding garment given at Baptism and keeping it on. It’s telling us that it is the living out of our baptismal promises to reject sin and live for God that counts, and not simply the fact that we have a baptismal certificate tucked away somewhere in our files.
The invited guest is ejected for not wearing the wedding garment.
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