A sermon for 15 October 2023, on Year A Proper 23 readings Matthew 22:1-14, Philippians 4:1-9, Exodus 32:1-14, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

Paul writes, Beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

“The God of peace will be with you.” But this is not a peaceful parable. 

Remember that it is being told in the holy city during Holy Week. Tensions abound, becoming unbearable. As Jesus was arriving to Hosannas through one gate, Pilate was processing with Aves through another.^[i] The chief priests and elders, the Pharisees and the faithful are caught between them, fearful not only of God but of the empire. The so-called Pax Romana, an uneasy and ill-named peace maintained only by brutal conquest, was not an easy rule under which to live.^[ii] And they so wanted to live, and to sacrifice the Passover in the Temple, and to tell their children the old stories of God’s deliverance, and for their children to believe them.

And how is that even possible, when the fear of the golden calf, or the bull-calf sacrificed to Mars the Roman god of war, is as strong a motivator as the love and fear of God? 

So Jesus tells them this parable, about a wedding feast, the consummation of God’s love for God’s people.

In the story, there is a king. He invites the kind of guests a king would expect at his table: rich merchants and so on; but they will not come. Worse, they do violence to the messengers sent to bring them, just as Herod beheaded John the Baptizer, as Zedekiah handed Jeremiah over to be half-drowned in the mud pit, as Jezebel and Ahab tormented Elijah and pursued his life.^[iii] Some do not want to hear the summons of God, even to the feast. Some would rather dress for war than for a wedding.

Too often we have heard this parable as the rejection of one class, race, or religion of people and the elevation of a substitute, as though God were subject to the same division as we practise among the bearers of God’s image. Too often we have decided that we are to judge who is invited first or second, or who is improperly dressed, instead of looking at our own invitation and making sure that we are ready.

But in the story, the people are not shut out of the feast because of who they are, but because they refuse to come, because they refuse to lay down the distractions of business, money-making, empire-building, or simple self-interest that keep them from seeing the grace that God has laid out before them. And look, the others that are gathered in from the highways and byways, they are good and evil alike. They are not the virtuous, the moral elite. They are just people, willing to come to the wedding and sit down together around the table.

There is no avoiding the acknowledgement, with fear and trembling, of the terror attacks that ravaged Israel last weekend. Let it be said clearly that there can be no justification for such cruelty, such atrocity. The terrible stories, the awful details continue to emerge. We hesitate in the face of raw pain, yet it must also be clearly said that there can be no justification either for cruel vengeance. We have heard from our own churches and hospital there how desperate conditions have become in Gaza. To withdraw the human rights to life and living water and any hope for peace from an entire people cannot be what Christ commands. 

Too often we dress for war instead of the wedding feast, ready to wield the sword against the unworthy, to cast out one people and elevate another. We relegate Christ to the role of the man of sorrows, cast out by our arrogance into the darkness, where he wails and weeps over Jerusalem.

There is, it has to be said, a moment in the parable which would seem to prop up our desire for punishment, whether or not it results in peace. The reaction of the king to the rejection of his invitation and the abuse of his servants is fierce. He destroys those murderers, and burns their cities. How many innocent servants and citizens, how many children perished in that revolt? It is unfathomable.

Yet when the moment comes for the elders and the authorities to come and arrest Jesus, as the prophets were abused and killed before him, he does not wreak vengeance. He tells them clearly, I could bring down legions of angels to destroy you (Matthew 26:53-54); but that is not how this story goes. That is not how the Gospel goes.

Because the parable, the Gospel, is not about revenge. It is not about rejection. It is about the complicated, difficult time we have gathering around a table, good and evil alike. It is about the tendency we have to pull away from God’s invitation to celebrate the Christ, even on his way to the Cross, because we would rather look away. It is about the ways in which we resist the call to end the violence, against the prophets, against the innocents, against God’s invitation to mercy, against each other, preferring to keep up the cycle, dressing for war instead of for a wedding. 

And it is about God’s tendency to keep reaching out into the highways and byways, calling good and evil alike, anyone who will listen, regardless of history, ethnicity, anything except the willingness to accept the invitation to come to the table, to put down the sword and put on the wedding garment, to be fed with the bread of life, the water that washes away all tears, the medicine of mercy.

Because the Gospel is the incarnation of God’s love, not of our failure to love.

St Paul knows that better than many. And so he writes, Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

May it be so. Amen.

^[i] See The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, by Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan (HarperOne, 2006), 2-3
^[ii] See Post-Traumatic Jesus: A Healing Gospel for the Wounded, by David W. Peters (Westminster John Knox, 2023), esp. chapters 2, 9
^[iii] Matthew 14:1-12, Jeremiah 38, 1 Kings 19:1-3

A lament for peace

God of mercy,
your peace still passes our understanding, and far off seems the time when we will study war no more. Rachel weeps anew and unconsoled, for her children dead and missing; a grief which is both universal and particular. 
God of compassion,
protect the innocent, receive the dying, be among the grieving, strengthen the hands of those who labour for life and peace.
God of peace,
save your children from vengeance. Turn our hearts toward wisdom. Guide the powerful, stay the hand of the desperate, and shepherd your people toward your peace, though yet it passes our understanding.
Amen.

A prayer for the helpers

O God, our salvation and our hope,
be with those who venture into danger to help and save the innocent, the injured, and the lost. Be with those who continue to work for the relief of pain and grief under impossible circumstances. Sustain those who bear the weight of their own trauma even as they tend to the wounds of others. Protect the hearts of those who will see terrible things. Give them hope that in serving the vulnerable, they are your hands and feet and heart in your world. Save them, save us from this time of trial, and deliver us from evil.
Amen.