It has been interesting, to say the least, to read and re-read this parable against the background of collapsing financial markets around the world. For me, the Bible is, among other things, the record of how certain people lived in the real world of politics, economic and personal realities, while experiencing a strong pull toward a reality currently being called spirituality, and called in Matthews Gospel the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matthew, who wrote the first of the four Gospels, was a Jew by birth, who became a Christian by choice. When he wrote his gospel, his world was in chaos. The Roman Empire had occupied his country for decades, and that empire had recently destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the spiritual and cultural focus of Matthew's world and the world of his people. Even the faith community he had entered was squabbling over who could be in it and who should be excluded from it. The Messiah he had trusted had been executed, but had been experienced as alive and spiritually present among groups of people. Such was the setting of Matthew's Gospel.
He tells a story about a king who gives a wedding banquet for one of his children and who invites a wide range of people. In the custom of the time, the king sends out invitations well in advance of the feast. When everything is ready, the king sends his messengers to inform the guests, who are expected to attend the feast. But the invited guests are otherwise involved—distracted by family and work. The king is angry—enraged to the point of mobilizing his army and burning the city. All this while the food is being kept warm! I wonder how people who interpret the Bible literally handle this.
Then the king sends his messengers out again, this time to invite the previously uninvited. They accept the invitation, and the banquet hall is full. There is a little more to the story as Matthew tells it, but we can talk about that part on another occasion.
What does such a story have to do with the world as you and I are experiencing it right now? What is the connection between Matthew's wedding feast and us?
Some commentators have seen the story as an allegory, and Matthew probably meant it to be heard that way. The king is God, the invited guests who didn't show up are the people of Israel, the messengers are the prophets, and the people who finally made it into the banquet hall are all those who respond to the Christian Gospel. Matthew may well have had the church of his time in mind as the banquet hall packed with people.
The problem with framing the story that way is that the Christian Church hasn't always been like a banquet hall. Earlier today Good Morning America spent a lot of time exploring the Christian Church's history of racial segregation in this country. It wasn't a pretty picture.
We all know people who have had bad experiences in various kinds of churches over the years. I have asked women and men over a period of years to tell me what church or the church felt like when they were young or maybe not so young. Some people have said church felt like jail. Other people have used descriptive words that imply boredom, rejection, judgment, shame, guilt or the like. Still other people have felt that the church always had a hand in their pocket, looking for money, or worse, exploiting them sexually. In contrast, some people have said the church has been a place of safety for them, a place of welcome, a place of acceptance. But such people haven't been a strong majority.
For me, to hear the story of the wedding feast as a parable with one central point is to understand that God's intention for humanity is that we experience life like a wedding banquet—no, not the kind where everybody has too much to drink and people end up fighting and making fools of themselves. Over many years I have attended wedding and commitment ceremonies, straight and gay, where guests witnessed people making promises to love and honor each other, where guests shared good food and wine, where strangers around a table became acquaintants and then friends. I have actually officiated at a few weddings and commitment ceremonies where the two principals were a man and a woman, or two women, or two men, who had met for the first time at a wedding reception where they were invited guests. Wedding banquets can be celebrations of love at its best—physical, emotional, and spiritual love.
The point of Matthew's story may well be that God intends for everyone to enjoy life as the Westminster Catechism says it, to enjoy life in all its fullness as the fourth Gospel puts it. And if being part of a loving and affirming church is part of that full enjoyment, all the better.
In Matthew's story not all the people who refused the king's invitation were bad people, wicked or hateful. Some of them were otherwise engaged and so missed out on a great party, a wonderful celebration. Yes, Matthew in his zeal depicts some of the non-attenders as murdering the messengers who presented the invitations and reminders. I've sometimes wondered whether Matthew had a problem managing anger. More than once he writes about frustrated authority figures throwing rebellious subjects into burning fires or into outer darkness. Maybe we can credit such language to mideastern hyperbole.
Matthew's story reminds me that the essence of Christian faith is simple: God is love. God loves the world and everything in it, even things and people you and I find difficult to love. God is love, and God desires that we allow that love to heal whatever hurts we have so that we can live the way God intends us to live. And that means honoring God, loving and caring for other people in a healthy way and loving ourselves in a healthy way. Simple but not easy. Not easy because we are imperfect and we resist the disciplines that would help us to deal with our imperfection.
Friday night George Soros was a guest on Bill Moyer's television Journal. Soros is a seventy-eight year old multi-billionaire. He was born in Hungary, spent some time in England and came to this country in the 1950's. He has made a fortune by knowing when to get into markets and businesses and knowing when to get out of them. More significantly, he has given away hundreds of millions of dollars, supporting what he calls open societies where information flows freely, where people govern themselves, and where people take care of one another.
His comments on our current economic crisis were thoughtful and clear. What struck me was his observation that capitalism, his economic system of choice, has been taken over by capitalism fundamentalists. They are people who believe that markets, to use his language, will correct themselves. They believe the economic system needs no regulation. Soros says they are wrong, and the evidence is the collapse of markets around the world in the past couple of weeks.
What fascinated me was his statement that those who were managing the system took care of themselves very well and forgot about the larger community. He was not repudiating self-interest as a motivation for work and acquiring wealth. Obviously it motivated him, and he has accumulated immense wealth. What he was repudiating is self-interest that stops short of seeing oneself as part of a larger whole and taking responsibility for contributing to the good of the wider community.
I found myself thinking of what Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians: "We are members of one another." He was describing the ideal church and seeing it as the model for what the human community could be. It's the same point Jesus made repeatedly in his simple phrase "Love one another." George Soros, who may or may not be a religious man, said we should have been thinking of the larger good several years ago but all we heard about was keeping as much of our money for ourselves as possible. He spoke about human imperfection when analyzing why even the best economic system needs checks and balances from the outside as well as from the inside.
As I walked down Broadway on my way here this morning, I was aware of the worry and fear many people are feeling today. I know that some people in my building have lost large sums of money they thought they had. It was in shares of stock in companies that are bankrupt. I hear their conversations in the elevators.
I'm not an economist, and people who are economists have different opinions as to how bad this recession, or depression, or crisis is and how long it will last. But there seems to be an emerging consensus that we need to change our government, but even more important, that we need to change our understanding of what the good life is and how we can experience it. We need to expand our vision, so that we are focused not just on our own comfort, our own security, our own well—being-but on the well-being of the wider community, on the rest of the world as well.
This congregation at its best is a loving, caring faith community. Our challenge as I see it is to deepen our understanding of our faith, strengthen our ministries of compassion and outreach, and, as Suzanne Spears reminded us, expand the circle of our love and care by inviting neighbors and friends to join us on our journey toward life in all its fullness.
Let the banquet hall be full. That's the way God wants it.