 | PREACHING AT ST. MARK’S CHURCH “Glimpses” The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 23 9 October 2011 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church Berkeley, California |
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14
INI
I. Introduction
Friday night we sat down to dinner and instead of our usual Bach Cello Suite, or some jazz by Fred Hersch we ended up listening to a panel discussion presented by the Commonwealth Club of California. Perhaps it was the participants that drew us to it: Alan Jones, former Dean at Grace Cathedral, or Steven Krazny, commentator on KQED, or Bishop Bill Swing founder and chief guru at the United Religions Initiative, or the rabbi from Temple Emmanuel, or a reporter from St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in San Francisco. More likely it was the topic – “Is Religioun facing the dawning of a new day?” It was a shame that the panel wasn’t more diverse, 2 Episcopalians, 2 Jews, and a Roman Catholic. Where was, I wondered, the Muslim, or the Evangelical Baptist? And these were just the “people of the book!” Regardless, they were soon into the thick of it – how can we live together? The talk was hopeful, but tinged with human darkness and zenophobia. Our readings for today wrestle with these notions, sort of. We have to be aware that they represent cycles of development in at least two major religions, so they will be pressed to come up with an answer that might be agreeable in our time. Let us look at the glimpses that these writers have.
II. Isaiah’s Oracle
First Isaiah is in the thick of it. Those writing later in his name will have a glimpse of a wider view of Yahwism, but for now we have a prophet who is struggling with the notions of a national God, and national priorities, that suddenly breaks through to a wider vision of what might be. The first reading begins with an oracle that rejoices over the defeat of national enemies. Isaiah assigns to them the fate, an uninhabitable and ruined city, which will soon be Jerusalem’s fate. It’s rather like a national schadenfreude – a deeply felt joy at someone else’s sorrow. Isaiah doesn’t stop there, however, for that is not his point. This defeat is the sign of Yahweh’s superiority, and of Yahweh’s destiny to be the one God. He is not standing in a new theological place, for his counterparts in Egypt, Canaan, and Ancient Near East had similar notions about their own national gods. He develops his dream further.
III. Isaiah’s Banquet
Isaiah talks about a fine banquet, set with fine foods and wines, but there is more than that. This is the messianic banquet – a banquet that is more than just satiating our nutritional needs. There is healing in this banquet.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Isaiah’s time was no different than our own. The national gods fought against one another. But here, on this mountain, the traditional seat of gods, there was something different. There was a healing that was to be available to all peoples, and the threat of death was to be abolished. This is a remarkable prophecy given that Isaiah’s hearers would soon be dealing with death, and war, and bloodshed in good measure. Isaiah paints a picture of a universal situation in which all are involved. Even the psalmist who dreams the dream of the 23rd psalm knows the reality of human life:
You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me
Perhaps what the prophet and the psalmist are attempting to tell us is that yes, the shroud has been lifted so that we might not only see that we live in difficult times, troubles all around us, surrounding even our celebratory meal, but that God is there also, guiding and protecting us. This had to be the faith that the Exiles took with themselves into Babylon, or in the Diaspora in Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and Rome. The mountain was no longer Zion – the mountain was wherever God fed them.
IV. Matthew’s revisioning of the Banquet
Matthew wrote his Gospel in difficult times, and his writing mirrors those troubles as he attempts to relate the Good News of Jesus with the dangers and challenges that surrounded them. The Palestine of Matthew’s time lived with the reality of a Jerusalem that was once again destroyed, this time by the Romans. The Jewish leadership had largely abandoned the land, and those that did gather in Jamnia in 90 CE decided that those who followed Jesus were out of the family and out of the faith. Thus when Matthew takes this story of the Banquet that he shares with Saint Luke, he puts his own twist upon it. Luke’s much gentler version follows his program of the invitation into the Kingdom of God of those who are lowly, the poor, the dispossessed. Matthew’s banquet is put on by a great king, and his guests, like Luke’s rudely dismiss the banquet invitation. It is here that Matthew adds new elements, the slaves that call others in, who then are slain, and the son who is slain. Matthew is living deeply in the troubles of his time. The Christians who listen to his Gospel are now the “other”, the “ones outside”. Deep rifts of family and of religion form a scrim through which we hear his Gospel points.
The good news is that the invitation is given to all, as in Isaiah and in Psalm 23. All are invited to attend. And it is at this point we come to the question that the panelists on KQED attempted to address, and which we are all bidden to take up. Who is in, and who is out? How do we look at the other, and how do we judge life?
Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
The house of prayer is full. It is filled with all who have been bidden to come and who have accepted the invitation. It is amongst all these that the banquet will be served and eaten. It is these who will take delight in the invitation of the king. Some are good, and some are bad, but all have been called. Matthew is aware that this new covenant in Jesus is not attractive just to some Jews, but to others, slaves, wealthy people, gentiles, and all sorts and conditions. It is at this point, in a further addition to the Lucan text, that he asks the real question. Who is to be chosen?
V. Matthew’s Robe of Righteousness
In this final paragraph, really a separate parable from the Banquet parable, Matthew wrestles with the notion of righteousness. Who will be right with God? He does this through the story of a man who comes to the banquet, but who is not adequately or appropriately clothed. Last Sunday, Greta Jane came to her baptism clothed in a white baptismal robe. Had she come in purple or green or any other color, we would have wrapped her in white to signify her presence among us as one clothed in righteousness.
Matthew is attempting to get us to understand two things. The first is, who is the final judge? – which he identifies as God. God is the one who knows the good and the bad, the called from those who are chosen. From Matthew’s point of view, certainly the followers of Jesus are among those who have been chosen. But there I another point, and that is what is righteousness? What does it mean to be right with God? Our Anglican understanding of this connects each of us to the acts of Jesus – the righteous one. But is there more? Is there a clothing of acts, deeds, prayers, sacrifices that truly set us apart? And our panelists wondered if that righteousness was truly the property of only one religion?
For me, for me, the banquet is the Eucharist, set and presided over by the Christ. But what is the banquet for others? Who is led to eat and drink in God’s presence and what is their understanding of that action? We live in times in this country where some would answer that question with a single place, a single thought, a single mindset. God however is the judge, and we are not. Let us go out then, filled with the meal, and refreshed in mind, body, and spirit, and listen to all who are called to the banquet. And let us be filled with good works but for them and with them. As Isaiah said:
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
SDG
