2 Corinthians
1:21-2:4; Matthew 22:2-14
We began a
new ecclesiastical year on September 1, which also marked the beginning of the
new civil year in the Byzantine Empire. For
the ancient Hebrews, September was a time of gathering the harvest and giving thanks
to God. It was in this context that Christ read from the Prophet Isaiah in the
synagogue in Nazareth to “proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk. 4:19)
He said to the astonished people of His hometown: “Today this Scripture
is fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21) His neighbors quickly moved from
praising Him to trying to throw Him off a cliff, however, when the Savior noted
that there were times when God had blessed Gentiles through the great prophets
Elijah and Elisha and did not come to the aid of Jews. The Lord had promised to Abraham “In your
seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,” but the dominant hope in
first-century Palestine had become nationalistic, focused on building an earthly
kingdom in which righteous Jews would be blessed and Gentiles and sinners would
be put down. (Gen. 22:18)
The people
of Nazareth tried to kill Christ when He proclaimed that He was a very
different type of Messiah than they had expected. Today’s parable of the wedding banquet
follows the parable of the tenants in the vineyard, which was last Sunday’s
gospel reading. The Savior used these
parables in the week leading to His Passion to make clear what was at stake in
the actions of the corrupt religious leaders who had blinded themselves
spiritually to the point that they orchestrated His death. The parable reveals that they had become so
obsessed with their own desires for worldly power that they rejected the
Messiah in Whom God’s promises to Abraham are fulfilled and extended to all.
The context
of the parable is a wedding feast for the son of a king, which would have been
the greatest celebration imaginable in that time and place. The prophet Hosea had spoken of the
relationship between God and Israel as a marriage, and weddings were signs of God’s
faithfulness in blessing the Jews from generation to generation. It is not surprising, then, that Christ often
compared the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast.
He is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride. (Eph. 5:32) The book of Revelation also
describes the fulfillment of the heavenly reign as a marriage banquet, the
Wedding Feast of the Lamb. (Rev. 19:6-9)
How tragic,
then, that the religious leaders who should have been in the best position to
enter into the joy of spiritual union with Christ refused to do so. They were like the guests invited to the
wedding in the parable who “made light of it and went off, one to his farm,
another to his business, while the rest seized… [the king’s] servants, treated
them shamefully, and killed them.” In
the parable, the king then sent his servants out into the streets to invite
whomever they could to the celebration, “both bad and good; so the wedding hall
was filled with guests.”
When Christ spoke of those who disregarded the invitation in
order to go to their farms and businesses, He was criticizing those who were so
obsessed with their wealth, possessions, and status that they refused to attend
to the healing of their souls. They were
so passionately attached to the things of this world that they chose them over entering
into the fullness of God’s blessing. They
were honored religious leaders, but the desires of their hearts were focused elsewhere. It is not surprising, then, that the others
who refused the king’s invitation “seized his servants, treated them
shamefully, and killed them.” Even as idolatrous
rulers and false prophets killed the righteous servants of God in the Old
Testament, those primarily driven by the love of money, possessions, and power stopped
at nothing to destroy even the Lord Himself, Whom they perceived as a threat to
what they held most dear.
In light of their refusal to come to the wedding feast, the
king in the parable instructed the servants to invite as many other people as
possible, including “the bad and the good.”
The Savior points here to the Church in which the distinction between
Jew and Gentile is overcome, for He invites everyone to enter into the great
joy of the heavenly banquet. As St. Paul
taught, “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His fulfillment of the
human person in God’s image and likeness is not reserved for those of a particular
ancestry or nationality. It is not reserved for those who have never
fallen short of doing what is pleasing to God.
If that were the case, it would have nothing to do with us. The good news is that, even as the king in
the parable wanted the banquet hall to be filled, Christ came to save the
entire world and turns no one away who responds to Him with humble faith, love,
and repentance.
“Many are called, but few are chosen.” Those words end the parable right after the
king ordered that the man without a wedding garment be thrown out of the
celebration. In that time and place, the
host provided guests with the proper attire.
This fellow, after being invited to the great banquet, did not respond
with gratitude and respect toward his host.
He must have refused to put on the garment, apparently wanting the
benefits of being at the party on his own terms. Thus, he excluded himself from the
celebration.
We enter into the Body of Christ through baptism, in which
we put Him on like a garment. “As many
of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” wrote Saint Paul.
(Gal. 3:27) Our baptism is the beginning of the Christian life, and we must
attend mindfully to living each day as those who are entering into the Kingdom
of God by grace. If we do not, then the
entire life of the Church will leave us cold, and we will find even the most basic
spiritual disciplines to be burdens we would rather do without. If we define what is truly important in life
as fulfilling our usual set of daily obligations, satisfying our self-centered
desires, and finding ways to distract ourselves from confronting the true state
of our souls, then we will always think
that we have better things to do than to unite ourselves to Christ. We will then become like that man who wanted
the benefits of being a wedding guest without accepting even the most basic
expectations of the invitation. He was so
focused on himself that he shut himself out of the great celebration every bit
as much as those who had refused to come in the first place.
Living according to the “acceptable year of the Lord” is
completely different from becoming like those who disregarded the invitation to
the wedding feast or like the fellow who was thrown out. We must not give our hearts to the things of
this world but to the eternal blessedness of a Kingdom that we do not
deserve. Instead of making religion a
tool for getting what we want on our own terms or pretending that this or that
is somehow more important than sharing in the life of God by grace, we must
cultivate the gratitude of those who are shocked to become guests at the
Wedding Feast of the Lamb. That is not
simply a future hope but also a present reality, for we enter mystically into
the Heavenly Reign whenever we lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine in
the Divine Liturgy. Our calling is to
live each day as those who wear a wedding garment, the garment of light restored
to us in baptism. Recognizing that “Many
are called, but few are chosen,” let us begin this new year in the Church with
a steadfast commitment to make doing so the highest priority of our lives.
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