TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a marriage feast given by a king.  So, the progress of 2,000 years will require us to make a kind of adjustment in order to hear and understanding this parable.

 What may be hard for us to imagine is that the marriage contract negotiated was a financial contract between the bride’s father, and the groom.  The period of betrothal, then, was not so much a time in which two persons got to know each other better and grew closer in love – but a kind of “grace period” in which the groom could cancel the contract – for some justifiable cause, but without penalty. So, a man works out a deal with a woman’s father, and she is ordered to go and live with that man. After a period of a year or more, the man decides that this is working out, and he and his contractual partner (not his bride, her father) lays on a feast.  You send out messengers to invite everyone to the marriage feast. Come to the feast; it is happening right now, today.

And pretty much everyone would come. In those days, ordinary people owned two changes of clothing: your regular, everyday work clothes; and a festive garment, something usually white, that you kept clean. And most people did not own much more. When the messengers came to invite you to a marriage you put on your wedding garment; and go to the party. And what feasts these were frequently lasting for days on end.

 So, what relevance does this gospel passage hold for us,   

In this parable there are two groups,  the first group, who simply decline the invitation. And then the second is the guy without the wedding robe, who refused to participate completely.

This is a parable, remember. An analogy of the Kingdom of Heaven, a story of the way God acts in the world.

God has invited us to be partners in the building up of that kingdom, on earth as in heaven. We are invited to the greatest feast ever imagined. And how many of us fully participate all of the time? Precious few.
And this God, who could reign down fire from heaven does not act like the king in today’s story, although he could. God does not enforce the dress code or punish us for not participating fully.

Instead, our God invites us again and again, over, and over. We are called to that feast of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. The feast at which the disgrace of the people will be taken away from the earth when God will wipe away the tears from all faces.

You, me, and every person on this planet are welcome at this table.
When God is the host, everyone is invited. Sadly, as in today’s parable, not everyone comes – but everyone is invited.

When God is the host, the food is rich beyond our imagination or understanding. Sometimes it appears to be quite simple – like bread and wine – yet we can be profoundly moved and transformed by this feast. 

When God is the host, we are nourished not just for the morning, but for the journey.  And when God is the host, everyone gets the same gift: the amazingly abundant, undeserved, and inexhaustible gift of love.

But this parable also tells us that this banquet brings about transformation on our parts. God expects something from those who accept the invitation: conversion of life to live according to a gospel of abundance.  There’s room at the table for everyone—we may need to set more place settings or maybe add a new leaf. We may need to build a bigger table.

Here is  the Good News: God calls everyone into God’s kingdom.
And here is the bad news: God calls EVERYONE into God’s kingdom.