Homily for 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A 2020
Isaiah 25:6-10: Philippians 4:12-14.19-20; Matthew 22:1-14
Introduction
The parable of today's gospel could be
described as both strange and shocking.
The story seems unbelievable and excessively violent.
·
On the one hand, you have the invited
guests, mistreating and killing the messengers who bring them the invitation to
the wedding. Who does that, except
perhaps ISIS, the Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan?
·
On the other hand, the reaction
of the King, also seems over the top. We
heard that he "destroyed those
murderers, and burned their city."
And then later when the king finds a guest without a wedding garment, he
instructs the servants to "Bind his
hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be
wailing and grinding of teeth."
Many of us would be within our rights to ask:
"Is our God as violent and vengeful as this king in the story?" What are we to make of this parable, in which
everybody, the king and his guests seem to be nuts?
Scripture and Theology
Clearly this is hyperbole; Jesus is using exaggeration
to drive home an extremely important point, even when this portrays his Father
in such bad light. If you recall, Jesus
used a similarly shocking parable in last Sunday's gospel, when he suggested
that the owner of the vineyard, God, would punish harshly the rebellious
tenants, the people, saying: "He
will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other
tenants." That is what parents
sometimes do, threatening their teenage children with extreme punishment, such
as grounding them until they are thirty, something that would probably be
illegal in many states. But they do it
to show that they are at the end of their tether.
Flannery O'Connor, that great twentieth
century Catholic writer explains why we must sometimes use hyperbole. She says:
When you can assume that your audience
holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways
of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to
make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for
the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.
These shocking parables were Jesus' ways of
shouting to the deaf people of Israel; his parables were the large and
startling drawings of Jesus to the blind chief priests and elders. And what was their deafness? What was their blindness? They had rejected Jesus, the Saviour of the
world.
As we know, the image of a banquet is often
used in the Bible to signify heaven, life with God, God's blessings. That is why Isaiah in the first reading of
today tried to give the people of Israel hope saying: "On this mountain the LORD of hosts will
provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food
and pure, choice wines." That
prophecy of Isaiah and others like him would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the
one who opens the doors to heaven. But
now the people and their leaders had rejected his teaching, had rejected the
way to heaven that he was proposing. In
the parable, they are the people invited to the wedding, who refused to
come. Worse still, like their ancestors
who had killed the prophets, the priests and elders are going to have Jesus
killed; they are the invited guests who killed the servants that brought them
the invitation.
Although we don't have kings in this
country today and even the nearest thing we have to royalty, Hollywood, Sports
and Political celebrities have lost some of their shine recently, we can
probably imagine how rejecting an invitation to a royal wedding would be
considered a snub of the highest level. How
much worse would rejecting an invitation from the Lord of Lords, the Prince of
Princes be?
Christian Life
I once saw a T-shirt with the words,
"When mummy says 'No,' dial 1-800-GRANDMA." Perhaps often we also think of God as being
only some nice grandma, a God of God of love and mercy, like we have heard in
the gospels of the last several Sundays.
We forget that God is also a parent who dishes out both gifts and
tough-love; he is also a God of justice and righteousness. That is why this parable is fitting for us
today, because we too need a reminder, a shock, not to take the Lord's
invitations for granted, either by rejecting them or worse, by attacking those
who bring us the invitation to God.
How have we rejected, how have we not loved
God? Let me count the ways.
·
In the first commandment the
Lord says: "I am the LORD your God:
you shall not have strange Gods before me." But we respond by having
other gods: money, politics, football, pleasure, physical beauty.
·
In the second commandment the
Lord says: "You shall not take the
name of the LORD your God in vain." But we disrespect the divine name
in all manner of ways: false oaths, curse words, blasphemy.
·
In the third commandment he
asks: "Remember to keep holy the
LORD'S Day." But only about 30% of Americans visit the Lord's house on
the Sabbath, even fewer in Europe. Many
use Sunday to visit the temples of the other gods, the gods of Football, Hollywood
and the Mall.
·
The fourth commandment enjoins
children: "Honor your father and
your mother." But instead we
attack the family, that basic unit of society, morphing it into all kinds of
configurations, and leading to a breakdown of authority in society at large.
·
The fifth commandment says:
"You shall not kill," but
kill we do, from unborn infants to the elderly and everybody in between.
·
The sixth commandment asks:
"You shall not commit adultery,"
but we have invented new ways to do just that, some of them even sacrilegious.
·
The seventh commandment says:
"You shall not steal," but
steal we do, especially from the most needy, as Pope Francis recently reminded
us.
·
The eighth commandment, "You shall not bear false witness"
is today honoured more in its breach that in its observance. Truth has become a casualty of ideological
wars, of tribal allegiances, of pre-conceived notions. We seem to live in a world were facts do not
matter and if we need them at all, we just manufacture alternative ones that
suit our point of view.
·
The ninth and tenth
commandments, "You shall not covet your neighbour's wife" and "You shall not covet your neighbour's goods"
have been replaced by envy, which leads to materialism and consumerism.
Is this how to respond to an invitation to
the wedding banquet of the Lord? That is
a question that you and I have to ask ourselves every day. And if we find that we have rejected the Lord
in any of the above ways, go to him in confession!
Conclusion
Finally, do you remember the poor fellow,
who actually came to the wedding, but had no wedding garment? What is this wedding garment? It is the garment of righteousness! It is the garment we receive at baptism and
the priest asks us to keep it spotless until we return to God in heaven. How clean is our garment? Shall we show up at the Lord’s banquet
without the garment of righteousness?
Like a patient who has gone into cardiac
arrest needs a defibrillator, may the shocking parables of the Lord provide the
electric shock we need, to restore the rhythm of our hearts, so that when the
Lord calls us, we shall be found in good spiritual health, wearing the proper
wedding garment.
No comments:
Post a Comment