The Parable of the Man with No Wedding Clothes

I brought a special box with me today!

Although, y'all have already heard Jesus' parable
and I don't know... its not an easy parable to take out of the box.
(though this parable is bursting out of this box...)

In case you need to hear this up front,
this sermon is not about answers.
It is about questions.

Here it comes.

This box is the color of gold.
Parables are even more valuable than gold.
This box also looks like a present.
Parables are presents.
They were given to us before we were born and they are ours,
even if we don't know what they mean.
This box looks old.
Parables are old.
This box is closed.
Parables sometimes seem closed to us.
We need to keep coming back to them to see if they will open.

Let's look inside.
We have a king,  (crown)
we have invitations (invitation card)
we have a wedding banquet, (plastic food)
we have servants/slaves (towel)
we have people (wooden people figures)
we have wedding clothes (wedding clothes)
we have a man with no wedding clothes.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who invites people to a wedding banquet...

I wonder how this parable is more valuable than gold
I wonder how this parable is a present
I wonder where we see ourselves in this parable

At the core, this parable is about transformation.
The question is, who's transformation?
The biggest indicator of the theme of transformation
is that this parable takes place around a wedding feast.

Weddings have always been events of transformation.
The people involved go from part of one family to creating a whole new family.
And wedding clothes are simply one of the outward and visible symbols of what is going on.
Everyone is invited to change their clothing for a wedding,
whether for a garden party, a black tie event, or a barnyard hoe down.
Weddings are celebrations of transformation.
In weddings today, we celebrate the transformation of the people being married and their love,
and we also acknowledge the transformation of everyone's relationships to the couple.
In the first century, weddings weren't always about love
but they were still transformations of family and loyalty and care
and frequently a transformation of wealth.

This parable is usually interpreted in one way.
With God as the king, throwing the Messianic banquet for his son, Jesus,
with the rejected and murdered slaves being the prophets
and the first set of invited guests being the Israelites
who are destroyed because of their refusal to believe
and the second set of guests, those off the streets,
are the gentiles, the church.

Its an interpretation that has been part of Christian teaching for far too long.
And is an horrible way in which Christians have supported antisemitic thought throughout the centuries.
Certainly, in light of recent atrocities, this is the kind of Christian thought
we need to lament, repent, and seek transformation around.

I do think it might be helpful for us to think about ourselves in this parable as those who have been invited,
both the first and second times.
Have we not accepted the invitation of God in our lives?
Have we refused to be transformed by the invitations of God?
Are we fully accepting God's invitation to the banquet,
or do we partially accept them, coming in an unprepared state?

However, we cannot stay in this interpretation of the parable
In this direction we see a God who does brutal things,
burning and destroying a city during a wedding feast.
That is not the God I believe in.

I know Jesus was a smart teacher
and I trust Jesus' teachings.
Parables have many ways of interpretation.
I wonder what other ways we can see this parable.

Debie Thomas, author and christian formation minister,
wrote an article about this parable in October of 2020,
wondering about what we might learn by seeing Jesus as the man who shows up without wedding clothes.

Instead of having God as the king and humans as the people,
flip the story on its head,
have humans as the king and God as the man without a robe.

She writes,
"What if the “God” figure in the parable is the one guest who refuses to accept the terms of the tyrannical king? The one guest who decides not to “wear the robe” of forced celebration and coerced hilarity, the one guest whose silent resistance leaves the king himself “speechless,” and brings the whole sham feast to a thundering halt? The one brave guest who decides he’d rather be “bound hand and foot,” and cast into the outer darkness of Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross, and the grave, than accept the authority of a violent, loveless sovereign?"

We know human kings have acted as the king in the parable acts.
We know governments and organizations which have brutalized others because they did not conform to their ideas.
Such behavior is going on in our world today.
I wonder what we see if we see the wedding robes as the robes of privilege, power, and complicity.

What if this parable is a comparison
in the ways in which God does not act?

I wonder if we can see Jesus as the man who shows up defying the understanding of the world
to show us something new
something different.

I wonder how this interpretation calls us to be transformed
transformed by a God who is selfless in the face of violence.

Jesus always fosters change
and the best changes are transformations of life.

In all the preaching Jesus has done before this moment,
in the Gospel of Matthew
which we have heard in the last few weeks:
the other parables about the kingdom of heaven,
the story about the sons doing the will of the father,
the parable of the vineyard owner
the debates with the local religious owners
there is a recognition that something has to change in order to move forward.

I mean, Jesus wasn't crucified for being nice to people.
He was crucified because he was a threat to the status quo of the world structures.

This parable still feels quite harsh.
Spiritual maturity doesn't come easy with this parable.

I wonder what you think Jesus was teaching with this parable.
We have a king,  (crown)
we have invitations (invitation card)
we have a wedding banquet, (plastic food)
we have servants/slaves (towel)
we have people (wooden people figures)
we have wedding clothes (wedding clothes)
we have a man with no wedding clothes.



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