This Week: Proper 23A
Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14
Jesus tells another parable.
Another parable. Remember there was one before this.
And that one came in a context. The original Jesus Movement is in Jerusalem, come to the Temple, to confront its leaders.
A confrontation about the future of the faith. How to the be the most attuned to the love of God, to the dream of God, to the work of God.
This is behind this second parable of the encounter.
I find the parable disturbing. In part because I, like those leaders, am afraid of what Jesus is saying.
I also find it disturbing because the part of me that wants a revolution is afraid that the revolution isn’t what’s been televised.
A parable with two parts
The first part tells a fascinating tale of a king wanting to celebrate his son’s wedding. It is supposed to be festive and grand, but his stupid, no good friends all forget their obligations to friendship and go off to do assorted other things. Totally relatable.
So he has them killed; which I’ll admit is a lot less relatable.
Then the king has his slaves round up whoever they can find to fill the place. If his no good friends won’t show, he’ll replace them with people who will!
Reading this first part, we may be left with a great sympathy for the man. And probably his son.
We also might love the depiction of replacing the guests as a critique and a promise. That we are, ultimately replaceable, if we aren’t doing right by God. Not that we want to be replaced. But that most of us aren’t the ones in charge. And we want God to care if we show up.
Most importantly, the first part reads like a critique of the Temple leaders—and a threat. That God is the king and will replace them for not showing up to the wedding party.
But then there’s a second part.
And in this one, the king we hope is God replacing those no-good leaders with good faithful people (and doing this throughout history, too!) reveals an outrageous mean streak extends to…clothes?
One of his guests pulled off the street isn’t wearing the proper wedding attire. So he doesn’t just have him thrown out, he has him exiled to a place of suffering.
So…that generous God just got a crazy case of overkill.
Two parts, two problems
The messages we are likely to take away from these parts seem to conflict. And it is hard to get to what we think Jesus is getting at.
While, I think the one thing we can be confident about is that this is a critique of the Temple leaders and that it is primarily concerned with their rejection of God’s work (in Jesus’s eyes), the rest is far less clear. Including what we’re supposed to think this has to do with the Kin-dom.
At the root of the conflict, is what happens if we are to think of the King as God and the two parts as a coherent and consistent story. For these two, very specific problems with that second part:
- The king rounds up subjects
- Then condemns one for not dressing right.
The story, which sounded like inclusion, is really coercion. And his overreaction to a peasant who isn’t dressed the way the king expects his rich friends would…doesn’t sit right. Even as metaphor.
The challenge of dark parables
I don’t feel good reading this because it doesn’t make sense all the way down. Every time I begin to interpret it, I find myself conflicted somewhere else.
This, however, is consistent with the late teachings in Matthew’s gospel. The ones in Jerusalem are dark, twisted, and difficult. I often describe them as looking in a funhouse mirror. It stretches, distorts the image you see of yourself. It is, in one sense real, but not in the sense we generally mean. Especially given the fact that seeing one’s reflection is distorting enough.
My fallback for this whole section of Matthew is on the context. Of Jesus being at the epicenter of the faith. He’s surrounded by crowds who hear his message of change and conviction as both novel and deeply consistent with the faith.
That he is followed by people who have learned that they are the practitioners of God’s work. And that they will be sharing this way of love with the world.
He is also being challenged by the ones in charge of how things are. Who are the ones Jesus is constantly critiquing and encouraging to turn toward God.
All of these people are hearing about Jesus’s vision of the Kin-dom. And most of his talk of the Kin-dom before Jerusalem was about what it is. So now his talk includes what it is not.
With the end in mind
Jesus is walking toward the cross, of course. And this should always be on our minds.
Reading Matthew’s gospel, I’m also keeping the end of the teachings in mind.
The last of all of the dark teachings, in public and private, comes in the last half of chapter 25. When Jesus talks about caring and not caring for him: in doing and not doing for the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, or imprisoned.
At the end, we get a message of service to God in Jesus by serving those harmed by the way the world is. The ones who will be first in the Kin-dom.
Keeping this in mind makes the king in this week’s parable look like one who isn’t serving the stranger or the naked. He’s expected the naked to clothe himself! And then punished him for even being there!
In short, the vision of inclusion looks exclusive and the generous God looks capricious.
Regular readers know my relatively low view of kings. But this is entirely about how they are depicted in scripture. Including in parables like this one.
So then, what to do?
I suspect our first impulse toward the parable is pretty good, actually. If we’re going to pick a way in, the one most consistent to the moment makes the most sense.
So a critique of the Temple leaders is probably the main order here.
But I, of course, can’t resist the conflict within the text itself. Nor can I resist the challenge of wrestling with our expectations.
I would welcome a conversation about inclusion or expectation here. And as I wrote earlier, there is an element of “dressing up” that could be poignant at the moment.
Challenging the king as God is a move I’m want to do with all of these parables in Matthew. But that, too, is a challenge. Especially because there is a solid case that it actually is.
But mostly, when I’m keeping the end in mind, I’m thinking about where doing for the least of these comes into play—in the parable itself and in the context of Jesus telling it at the Temple.
And the challenge becomes illustrated in moments like Jesus condemning the dove-sellers, who we consider as necessarily offering access to the poor. A person who, from the institution’s perspective, really is serving the poor. And yet Jesus condemns them?
Well…perhaps he sees it like today’s payday lenders: people who profit off of the poor. And that people who are poor are often poor because we have organized our culture to keep poor people poor—and rich people rich.
If doing “for the least of these” is serving Jesus, who then is Jesus in the parable? Given the context, perhaps he’s the one condemned.