The Parable of the Invitation
11 October 2026: 9a.m. Sung Mass
Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin, Oregon
Proper 23A
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Isaiah 25:1-9 Psalm 23 Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14
God, give us hearts to feel and love.
Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
What in the world was that Gospel reading about? If a king invites a whole lot of people to a party and he’s so scary that everyone finds some lame excuse to get out of it, there’s something wrong with that king. And if you dragoon me in from the street as a party stuffer to fill in for all the declined RSVPs you have received, only to humiliate and shame me for not wearing just the right clothes, and then throw me out, there’s something the matter with you, not with me.
Matthew’s Jesus starts it with “the kingdom of heaven is like….” But remember that this isn’t saying that king is somehow God. The phrase means something more like “Let me tell you a story that will help you see how God rules over us and how God doesn’t.”
The king here is clearly a psycho, totally self-absorbed and narcissistic. This is how Nero, Caligula, or some petty but nasty dictator in a banana republic, or unfortunately now our own President, treats party guests. By seeing how bad such “hospitality” is, we see maybe what God’s invitations are like by contrast.
Matthew was written just after Vespasian destroyed the Jewish homeland and its Temple in 70n CE. The Gospel writer suffers from serious post-traumatic stress syndrome. Matthew tries to come to grips with that earth-shattering event by looking at Jesus’s parables and applying them to his own day: Jerusalem was destroyed, he says, because Jesus was crucified there. In trying to make Christianity a little more respectable in Roman eyes, he lays the blame of the crucifixion on the Jewish leadership and mobs, not on the Romans, even though crucifixion was not a Jewish form of execution, but a Roman one specifically reserved for rebels against the Roman Imperium.
Matthew here has taken a parable from Jesus with a single point of comparison and added all sorts of details to turn it into an allegory, changing its meaning in the process. Like all the parables in the last few weeks in the Lectionary, the earlier form of the parable had one meaning, one critical of the careless rich and powerful of Jesus’s society, the very kind of message that got him killed by the Romans. Matthew allegorizes the stories, adds details, and interprets them as moral admonitions and explanations for his own day.
The powers at play in these stories are not attractive. In one (Matt 20:21-35), a landowner pays day-laborers such a pittance that he cannot be bothered to prorate their wages for the amount of the day they had worked, and then blames the ones who complained they had worked longer for being stingy. In another (Matt 18:21-35), a petty king forgives a subordinate a 100-million-dollar debt so he can look good and hide his own corruption, and then condemns that very subordinate to endless torture because he didn’t see the need for such PR methods and wouldn’t forgive a sum paltry in comparison to someone else. In another (Matt 21:31-46), an absentee landlord applies squeeze on the tenant farmers working his vineyard, who resort to violence to defend themselves, thus getting landlord’s goons and his own son killed in the process so he ends up annihilating all the tenants. In today’s parable (Matt 22:1-14), a psychopathic ruler throws a dinner party that everyone rightly is afraid to attend. He then dragoons passersby on the street as party stuffers, and then punishes them when they show up underdressed. Matthew has turned all of these into allegorical dramas explaining the dynamics of Jewish-Gentile relations in the Christian Church in Syrian Antioch, and making some sense of the Temple’s destruction: Jewish members of the church shouldn’t resent the grace shown gentile coverts. Gentiles coming late to the party might not be expected to be circumcised or keep Jewish Law, but at least should dress right by avoiding things that were totally revolting to Jewish sensibilities. The destruction of the Temple was not a random misfortune, but punishment from God. In Matthew’s reading, the power in these parables seems to be God, and those fairing ill seem to be Matthew’s Jewish compatriots who declined, wholly or in part, Jesus’s invitation to welcome God’s Reign. Both God and the Jewish people come off poorly in the process.
Today’s parable, like last week’s, is preserved not only in Matthew, but also in the Gospel of Luke and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. If you carefully compare these, it is clear that the parable on Jesus’s lips originally ran this way:
“A rich man gave a great dinner to which he invited many guests. When all was ready, he sent his servant to summon the guests. But one by one, they all gave excuses for not coming. Hearing this, the rich man commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys and bring in anyone you find. I want my great hall to be filled for the banquet.’”
Most of Jesus’ audience knew that a great banquet was a big scriptural image
for God’s future saving act. Even though
many passages said, like today’s Isaiah reading, that this banquet would be for
all nations (Isaiah 25:7), many teachers—including some of the wealthy
criticized in Jesus’ parables¾said that it would
be an exclusive event limited to God’s elite people only.
Jesus replies to
such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says
that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt.
5:45). He points to families and notes
that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or
when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion, or when a fish,
not a snake. “If even average parents try to give their children good things,
how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)
And Jesus’ actions match his words. He regularly eats and drinks with people
declared contagiously unclean by his religion.
He welcomes them. He tells
people to accept God’s invitation without fear or anxiety. “Don’t worry about how you’re clothed,” he
says, “the wild flowers are prettier than King Solomon all decked out, without
any worries at all” (Matt 6:28-29). When
he sends the apostles out, he tells them to just take one change of clothes and
no more, to accept people’s hospitality, not be picky about their food, and eat
whatever their hosts give them, presumably whether it’s acceptable to the
religion or not (Mark 6:8-10; Luke 9:3-4; Matt 10:9-10). He asks Martha, driven to distraction about
getting every little detail of her dinner for Jesus just right, whether she
might relax a little, and focus on the one thing that will give her joy, Jesus’
word, just like her sister Mary (Luke 10:38-42).
Jesus’ original parable here tells the story of the host forced by RSVP
“regrets” to drag in people from off the street to say God’s banquet is open to
all. It’s all about God’s kindness,
God’s grace. But Matthew adds all the
nasty details about a psychopathic king and invitees scared to death of getting
things wrong, and that poor guy without proper wedding clothes thrown out into
the street bound hand and foot. Matthew is
trying to explain that no matter how gracious God’s invitation, we need to be
attentive and intentional in accepting it.
Matthew’s image of having proper clothes for the wedding becomes in the
Gospel of Thomas a symbol of whether we have actually truly accepted God’s
gift. This corresponds to a little-known
fact about Jesus’s culture: lords who threw big parties with dress codes beyond
the means of their guests were expected to offer them proper dress as part of
the invitation. So those folks showing
up dressed wrong declined this offer of hospitality just as much as the folks
who gave such lame excuses as a reason for RSVP-ing no.
I have to tell you, we live in a messed-up world full of leaders like that psychopathic king. And we seem to respond by being just like them. I was horrified in reading the New York Times this morning that threats of death and violence against our political leadership at the national, state, county, and city levels are at an all-time high, both from the right and the left. And we have that odious fellow who serves as secretary of defense but styles himself as the secretary of war saying he plans on live-streaming the firing-squad execution of a mass-murderer in December. I won’t even talk about his boss. We are led by Nero’s and Caligula’s, and are increasingly becoming like them. What a broken, broken mess we are, having Made America Grotesque Again. So when Jesus calls us to joyous acceptance of God’s gentle invitation, and asks us to extend it to others, especially those who hate us and whom we find ourselves hating, that is something really, really important.
At Caesar’s party, where all is fear and stress, if there is anyone like that guy thrown out on the streets, it is Jesus himself. Jesus was taken outside the city wall and nailed to a cross because he just was not up to snuff when it came for giving proper respect to Rome.
God is a kind and loving host, and invites us all. There is no need for stress or anxiety. The good news in this is that God’s invitation is not like Caesar’s. God is not a psycho killer. We need not fear.
But in order to
accept God’s invitation, we do have to be open to receive it. St. Augustine
says, ‘God gives where He finds open hands.’ You can't receive the gift if your
hands are already full, or are clenched tight.
In yet another parable, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a narrow path and a
tight gate, which at any given time only a few can manage to squeeze through
(Matt 7:13-14). This is because in order to get through such a tight fit,
people have to be willing to abandon all the baggage they are carrying, whether
riches, resentments, self-will, sins, or even what appears to be good things if
they are getting in the way.
What does accepting
grace, freely offered, look like in practical terms?
It looks like me admitting that I am helpless and hopeless. It sounds like the
sincere phrase “I am sorry and I humbly repent.” It feels like Martin Luther’s
heartfelt cry when barely missed by a thunderbolt, “I am yours, Lord; Saint
Anna, help me. I will become a monk!”
I myself have known
God’s grace. Once for me, all was
hopeless and helpless, through my own “thoughtlessness, weakness, through my
own deliberate fault.” I found that I
had to accept my own powerlessness and turn it all over to God. And keep doing
that, each day. Gradually, steadily, God
worked wonderful changes. I am still far from what God wants. But I live each
day in gratitude.
I know that many of you have had similar experiences. Some of you have told me
your stories. We need to continue in
faith and gratitude, and share the invitation to God’s splendid party through
our actions and words.
If you have not had such an experience, then please listen to this call to
God’s banquet, you random passerby on the street, and come it to the
party. The tickets are free. But they
are not cheap. Once in the door and settled at the table, we must continue to
respond to Jesus’ beckoning call. Without
sinking into fear or anxiety, let’s give some thought to how we’re dressed. This
means amending our ways, making up as far as it is possible for our
misdoings. It means trying to be our
best selves, being a bit better today than yesterday, this year than last.
The banquet is priceless, the bread the finest, and the wine, a vintage that makes our hearts gladder than any other. Come to the banquet; don’t worry whether you are worthy. Don’t about your clothes. Don’t be afraid. Just come.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
