When we read Matthew’s version of this story, there is a sting … “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  For many are called, but few are chosen.” OUCH!

These parables we have been reading over the past 4 Sundays all come towards the ending chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.  We are on our way to Jesus’ death.  And by this time, there is great tension in the air about who this Jesus is, and what he’s doing, teaching and saying: and how people are responding.  These are questions about the authority of Jesus.

Some of these tensions we understand in post-modern Western thinking.  We are, more than ever, aware of those who might be called ‘Disrupters’: in our context, we saw it emerge in Federal parliament back in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd days: when an opposition changed it’s role from working within democratic processes for outcomes best for the Nation: to a stupid and simple strategy of ‘Nope, Nope, Nope.’ (… and maybe onion eating.)

Disrupters have existed, and will always bring change: often because they offer an innovation, or a point of difference.  In a market place economy, it could be that they find a gap in the market… or they find a new way to communicate. 10 years ago, who would have thought that ‘influencers’ were a thing?  In our current election cycle, I have listened to commentary on political advertising: and how there are no regulations on some platforms.  And I’ve come to understand  how the rise of podcasts, which don’t have the editorial oversight that traditional media law require, enable miss-information to spread like wild fire. 

Jesus is a disrupter in storytelling.  Jesus uses storytelling to disrupt, illuminate, ‘wedge-in’.  He uses story to… Help the marginal.  Help the trapped.  Help the silenced, oppressed, the women, the children, the sick, the diseased… the over 50% of the population. 

The other thing we have noted in these parables is how the writer of Matthew’s Gospel starts the parables: “There was a King, there was a man, there was a householder, there was a ruler…”  These differences matter,  and their framing is almost like… “Once upon a time… there was a King, a man, a householder, a ruler…”  NOW; one of the problems we have is that any parable that features “the King, a man, a householder, a ruler” , we may automatically think – here is image of God… then, what do we do if ‘God’ is depicted, as in this story as violent? Have we got a theological challenge in this story or what?

So, here is something to remind ourselves about Parables… James Alison, gay catholic theologian, – whose work is exemplary (even to those who don’t like him), reminds us of things we know: but need to hear again:

“The parables are highly creative little stories sprung from Jesus’ imagination and have as their aim helping people to overcome their being blocked-up with respect to God and [God’s] project. However, behold, they are two edged weapons, capable of different interpretations. It is perfectly possible to interpret the greater part in terms of a violent God. In that case the parables only serve to reinforce what people already think anyway, and they move on no further.”  He says to us that this is a ‘dull-hearted’ reading of the parables. “At the same time it is perfectly possible to read the same parables as obliging us to overcome this vision. This means that there is an interpretation for those who understand, and that what they understand will increase exponentially… and there is another interpretation for those who do not understand, so that what little they do understand is in the process of being lost, for they will get into an ever more tied-up and painful understanding of the things of God. (Raising Abel, pp. 83-84)

Now, who’d like a Bible Fun Fact that might help us?  This part of the story of not ‘wearing a wedding garment’ is not a reference to a personal’s moral behaviour; the writer of Matthew has emphasised that all people were called in, good and bad alike.”  And, – here’s the fun fact: “it is known that the custom of that age and place was to provide tunics to place over one’s street clothes so as to participate in a wedding party, and which would have been at the disposal of all the guests on their way in, without the slightest consideration for how good or bad they were.” (Raising Able, pp. 152-153.) 

OK, so we’ve sorted that bit out: now what do we do about the King?  

Theologian Marty Aiken remains us that this depiction of the King in this parable would have be VERY familiar to the listening people in their context.  he says, “This king (in the story) would have sparked in Jesus’ audience thoughts of kings much closer to their situation in history, namely, the Herods, especially the first King Herod.”  And from historical sources such as Josephus, he points out that the Herods actually behaved in ways very similar to the king in this parable.  And he asks the rhetorical question, ‘With a monarch so brutally dictatorial, does Jesus really mean for us to think of divine kingship with this parable instead of the kind of petty dictators such as the Herods who so litter human history with victims?

So we’ve sorted out some things: but we’re in a bit of a mess eh? What might this parable be doing to us to help us understand the Kingdom of God? This is where we need WHOLE of BIBLE reading…  and whole of GOSPEL reading…

Matthew’s Gospel spends a fair bit of time with John the Baptist; the for runner to Jesus’ ministry: and just a John the Baptist has been jailed, and even he begins to doubt if Jesus is the Promised One; he sends a message from prison seeking confirmation: “Are you the One we’ve been waiting for?”  The reply is to tell him how the margins are lifted up: the blind see, the deaf hear.  And then we get this verse that illuminates the whole of Matthew’s Gospel… Matthew 11:12: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” This nugget then helps us: Matthew’s Gospel emphasises Jesus’ silence before his accusers more than any other Gospel. 

(Matthew 26:62-63: “The high priest stood up and said, ‘Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?’ But Jesus was silent.”  Matthew 27:11-14: “Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus said, ‘You say so.’ But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer. Then Pilate said to him, ‘Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?’ But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.”)

Marty Aiken then goes on to weave in the motif the Suffering Servant, so important in Isaiah – ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.’ (Isaiah 53:7) The kingdom of heaven as suffering violence is represented in this parable not through the figure of the king who dishes it out, but in the lone figure at the end who takes it upon himself. 

Matthew signs off this parable with a silent person: at the banquet: who, are the good and the bad who have been gathered into the Banquet: and that One will be subject to the outer darkness.

Each Sunday we gather around this cross: a symbol of the cruelty of Empire: a reminder to us of the potential of all humanity at our worst.  How do ancient words of violence, and perhaps, on first reading, a violent image of God get perpetuated?  (And AI summary of this story, I can assure you ascribes the man, the ruler, as God.)  But as Derek Flood asks, “Is it possible that Matthew’s violent additions to the Jesus-story are a reflection of the worldly religious thought-world that Jesus was trying to move us away from, and that Matthew was perhaps, to some degree, still captive to? (Derek Flood, in Disarming Scripture, p.216)

Each Sunday we gather and walk into the ancient story to see how it can help us in the present.  The writers of the Bible lived in a world of Jewish Apocalyptic Imagination: one that could only imagine a political revolution: that would be resolved, most likely, with human violence, and to meet their oppressors with like force that they were subjected to themselves.  As Derek Flood says, “This was the violent hope of his religious audience. This was the starting point of Matthew’s audience, but it is not where Matthew leaves them.  … Matthew then makes a huge reversal in combining these apocalyptic visions with the Gospel’s core message of  ‘loving the enemy’ — and inviting us to a life that completely excludes human participation in violence.

Each Sunday the stories confront our own solutions: calling us into community: and we find ourselves wondering… are we the wedding guest without the tunic provided?  Are we part of the problem, rather than the solution: and if we are part of the solution, how might these windows into the kingdom Jesus calls us into, see our own lives ushering in peace, instead of violence: resisting that within us that wants to do an ‘Us vs. Them’, rather than a ‘WE’.  God is a God of Love and relationship: that’s what the Trinity is all about – God as relationship: and we, in our humble human ways, are invited to join in that too.

This parable does present a warning, but it’s not what first appears to the post modern mind: and each week, we are invited to not be satisfied at the surface: but to dive deeper… so that the parables help us to overcome our our blocked-up-ness with respect to God and [God’s] project in this world. And to make sure we are not re-enforcing what we, as human people, project onto our idea of God.  But rather, to allow the power of the Gospel; the very person of Jesus to confront us, in his own strange ways; to liberate us from ourselves, that we might be free to find the fullness of life for all: and the fullness of the love of God in our living.