God will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all people; 
[they] will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. (Isaiah 25:7-8)

We are familiar with today’s passage from the prophet Isaiah. We often hear or read it at funerals for its comforting language. I imagine that, despite its setting, the parable from Matthew (Matthew 22:1-14) is much less often used at weddings. They do have themes in common, though: the feast that will celebrate the coming of God’s reign, and the overthrow of what has been wicked and ruthless to make way for, space for, place for the people whom God will raise up and restore and feed and celebrate; and the promise that God will celebrate with God’s people.

Now, there are complications to the celebration in the parable, to be sure, and it’s worth acknowledging the context here. Jesus is telling this parable during Holy Week, on that Tuesday. He is talking directly to the people in high places in Jerusalem who are concerned about his capacity to cause trouble for them during the coming Passover. They have seen the crowds on Palm Sunday, and they are worried not only about the Romans but also about their own Temple services, after the whole table-turning incident. They want to arrest Jesus, and by the end of the week, they will. Jesus knows this, and it is to these specific people that he is telling this parable.

The context of Isaiah is different, and the oracle of overturning here is less personal and more geopolitical. Elsewhere, Isaiah talks of beating swords into ploughshares, weapons into the opposite of war, tools for life and peace (Isaiah 2:4). The prophet makes clear that there are things that must give way, or be transformed, if the kingdom of heaven is to be built. Systems of oppression and exclusion cannot stand if the table of love is to be set. And it will be set, Isaiah insists. God’s love will conquer all. Here is the good news.

In both of these passages, prophecy and parable, the point is the tablecloth spread across the mountains, the feast of fat marrow, the wiping away of tears that have fallen, the restoration of a peace that we have never even known, the peace that passes our understanding.

When we get stuck on the narratives of vengeance and violence, when we get stuck on deciding who is deserving to attend the feast to which God, not we, issues the invitation, well, then we get stuck.

And then here we are, reduced to a nation threatening to live-stream its gun violence, state-sanctioned and sanitized, rebranded as justice, to the world.

It’s easy to get stuck on the horror of the anticipated spectacle, but the rot runs deeper.

In a statement quoted by the Religion News Service, our Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe said,

“The Episcopal Church has long formally opposed the death penalty, and more recently we have called for an immediate moratorium on its use … The idea of live-streaming a firing squad execution is reprehensible in the extreme and will cause moral injury to everyone involved.”

When we get stuck in the narratives of vengeance and violence, we risk doing ourselves a moral injury.

Many Indigenous cultures, as well as mainstream religions, agree. The UCLA Law Review cites a letter from the Attorney General to the Navajo Nation:

“Navajo holds life sacred. Our culture and religion teach us to value life and instruct against the taking of human life for vengeance. … Committing a crime not only disrupts the harmony between the victim and the perpetrator but it also disrupts the harmony of the community. The capital punishment sentence removes with any possibility of restoring the harmony in a society.”

The removal of the possibility of healing is the stuff of tragedy, not of the Gospel.

The prophet does not gloss over the pain that has occurred, the tears that need to be wiped away, the disgrace that welcomes dignity. He does not deny that there are things that need to be wiped clean before the table can be set. But those things are in God’s purview. In fact, in the Psalm, God sets the table even in the sight of those who are troubling, as though to say, “Let me handle them; you just sit down now, and eat and drink with me.”

The husband of a friend led one of the congregations that met at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Beth Kissileff wrote thoughtfully about the consideration of the death penalty in that case, where guilt was not in doubt, nor the harm caused. She cited the rabbinic tradition that states that, since biblical times, the death penalty should be decided only by God, not by human courts. She reaffirmed that conflict between belief in the sanctity of life and the order to kill. She cited secular research that undermines any inkling that the death penalty does more good than evil. She looked toward the life to come, and the chance, however small, that, given time, given a chance, given the grace that he did not offer his victims, the person who killed her friends might repent.

As the prophet, again, writes elsewhere,

Let the wicked forsake their ways * and the evil ones their thoughts;

And let them turn to the Lord, and he will have compassion, * and to our God, for he will richly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, * nor your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:7-8)

God’s ways are not yet our ways, nor our thoughts God’s thoughts.

The point of the parable that Jesus tells to the chief priests and the Pharisees is not the spectacle of death, but the promise of life. The evidence of this is offered by Jesus in the garden two days later, when he refuses to call down legions of angels to rescue him, and on the cross three days later, when he does not call on the angels to avenge him, but instead asks God to forgive them; to forgive us.

When we get stuck in the narrative of vengeance and of violence, we mistake the justice of God, which is mercy, for our own self-righteous myths, and we might just miss the invitation to the wedding feast ourselves.

Although, the evidence is that you have accepted the invitation. Through your invitation to the altar and your invitation to break bread in community, you celebrate the feast. Today, the day after the World Day Against the Death Penalty, and the day before our federal holiday, you are commemorating Indigenous People’s Day. In the face of a world that still tends to value domination over dignity, conquerors over comforters, that still tends to sweep away the tears of the oppressed instead of wiping them away, as God intended, you have chosen a different narrative.

Because the promise of the prophet, and the promise of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, is that life and love will prevail, despite our worst impulses, and that we are invited to participate in that life and that love that Jesus has shown us.

There are so many ways to do that, and the first is not to get stuck in the mud and mire of the world that offers too many false narratives and fake forms of justice, but instead to look out for the invitation of Jesus to celebrate life wherever it shows up, and then to share it, and gladly, and fully, to share in it.  

As Paul writes to the Philippians, 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[se] things …, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)

May it be so. Amen.