When was the last time you got a wedding invitation? Did you get it in the mail? Did you get it on Facebook, or even through an e-mail? Now the world is so different that people don’t even have to attend a ceremony in person anymore, they can watch it from the comfort of their own homes. Things have changed a lot, even in the past five years.
And how did you decide whether or not you were going to
accept that invitation? Did you make the decision based on how well you liked
the couple, or how well you knew the family?
How did you feel if you heard that a wedding was happening to a family
member yet you weren’t invited?
In the parable of the wedding a lot of people were invited
but made excuses to avoid the party.
What a curious thing. How could
someone turn down such an invitation?
But the story was about just that.
The ruler got panicky and started bringing in everyone he could
find. Rather like the recent
installation of the new president of Athabasca University, the invitation to
the community reception was thrown wide to anyone within earshot. “Fill that Hall”, the king demanded and the
servants scurried around to do their best to do just that.
There’s an uncomfortable theme of violence in this story
when the King orders servants to retaliate against the city who killed his
employees. Massacres like these are on
our news feeds and TVs this week and they horrify us anew. Jesus throwing this little detail into the
story is disturbing to say the least.
The massacre part of the story would probably not have
shocked his listeners though. Kings were
a part of the honor code of the middle east culture of the time. They had to protect their reputations and
show strength at all times. If someone
insulted another person, the insult had to be addressed immediately and
aggressively to prevent appearing weak.
If a king was insulted, it would be justification to him for starting a
war. People knew that a war could start
at any time and that innocent lives would be sacrificed for the honor of a king
they never knew. An example of this was
Herod the Great, in power before Jesus, who had a reputation of being so tough
on his enemies, he even executed his wife and sons for treacherous plots based
on manufactured evidence. He was known
as a brutal leader who assassinated anyone who threatened his power. This was normal politics back then.
The shock of the story for the listeners would not have
been the violence, but the king’s insistence on inviting everyone else for the
wedding banquet. He may have started
with inviting other royalty, people who were the same status of him, but then
he got creative. He thought outside of
the box and invited people who didn’t measure up, who didn’t have the
appropriate status, who shouldn’t be in a royal dining room bumping elbows with
their betters. It would be like Elon
Musk being turned down by Bill Gates, going out to the local Walmart and
insisting that everyone in the store come to his gala party. This is the surprise twist, the punch line
that would have surprised the followers of Jesus. This is the shock that they would have
remembered when they shared the story with family and friends.
That picture of royalty eating with commoners predates the
Magna Carta by about 1200 years. It
predates the U.S. Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal by
more than 1700 years. It predates the Canadian
Act of Union’s call for Peace, Order and Good Government by 1800 years. And it planted the seed for all those
documents, as well as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
adopted in the 1940’s.
Equality was a founding principle of Christianity. Everyone was to be able to sit and break
bread together. The feeding of the 5000
was a scandal because it erased patriarchal hierarchy at meals. The early church as described in Acts and
other scriptures was a community where all ate together as equals. Paul’s letter reminds people that God doesn’t
want us to hold grudges, God wants us to stay on track, focusing on what is
truly important, a community that celebrates and rejoices in fellowship with
God.
In Canada, we have been living without murderous kings for
a very long time. We have lived with
democracy. We have universal human
rights, we kno that war crimes will be prosecuted, that torture is no longer acceptable,
that discrimination is not the hallmark of a healthy society. We take for granted that the worst of
oppressive, bullying behavior can be addressed appropriately in a court of
law. Or I should say, we can take this
for granted if we are English or French-speaking people with pink skin. Even in Canada, not everyone can take these
rights for granted. We need to remember
that all are invited to the banquet without regard of their age, race,
ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, family structure or
any other factors.
How do we respond to the violence and mayhem in our world? As Dr. Alex Clarke said during his inaugural
speech at AU, we need to hold fast to our own North Star, the values we hold
near and dear. As Paul said, Stay on track, steady
in God. In United Church words, deepen
your spirituality, be bolder in your discipleship and practice acts of daring
justice with joy and thanksgiving. Let
other people see your joy and ask how you find it in these challenging
times. Join the Barrhead bible study online. Take the prayer practices we do here and
incorporate them into your days. Think
deeply about what your values are. And
join our faith community in making a difference in the lives of those who need
to hear good news. Draw our circle of
love and hope and joy wider with every day.
May it be so with us all. Amen
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